YV\ THE ENGLISH SAINTS THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY UPON NATIONAL CHARACTER ILLUSTRATED BY THE LIVES AND LEGENDS OF THE ENGLISH SAINTS Bampton Xectures PREACHED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD IN THE YEAR 1903 BY WILLIAM HOLDEN HUTTON, B.D. FELLOW, TUTOR, AND PRECENTOR OF S. JOHN'S COLLEGE, OXFORD EXAMINING CHAPLAIN TO THE BISHOP OF ELY LONDON WELLS GARDNER, DARTON & CO. 3, PATERNOSTER BUILDINGS, E.G. May, 1903. EXTRACT FROM THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF THE LATE REV. JOHN BAMPTON, CANON OF SALISBURY. - " I give and bequeath my Lands and Estates to " the Chancellor, Masters, and Scholars of the University " of Oxford for ever, to have and to hold all and singular ** the said Lands or Estates upon trust, and to the intents " and purposes hereinafter mentioned ; that is to say, I will " and appoint that the Vice-Chancellor of the University of " Oxford for the time being shall take and receive all the " rents, issues, and profits thereof, and (after all taxes, "reparations, and necessary deductions made) that he pay " all the remainder to the endowment of eight Divinity " Lecture Sermons, to be established for ever in the said " University, and to be performed in the manner following : " I direct and appoint, that, upon the first Tuesday in " Easter Term, a Lecturer be yearly chosen by the Heads " of Colleges only, and by no others, in the room adjoining "to the Printing- House, between the hours of ten in the " morning and two in the afternoon, to preach eight Divinity " Lecture Sermons, the year following, at St. Mary's in " Oxford, between the commencement of the last month "in Lent Term, and the end of the third week in Act " Term. "Also I direct and appoint, that the eight Divinity " Lecture Sermons shall be preached upon either of the [ v] vi EXTRACT FROM LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT " following Subjects to confirm and establish the Christian " Faith, and to confute all heretics and schismatics upon " the divine authority of the holy Scriptures upon the divine " authority of the writings of the primitive Fathers, as to " the faith and practice of the primitive Church upon the " Divinity of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ upon "the Divinity of the Holy Ghost upon the articles of the " Christian Faith, as comprehended in the Apostles' and " Nicene Creeds. " Also I direct, that thirty copies of the eight Divinity " Lecture Sermons shall be always printed, within two "months after they are preached; and one copy shall be " given to the Chancellor of the University, and one copy " to the Head of every College, and one copy to the Mayor "of the city of Oxford, and one copy to be put into the " Bodleian Library ; and the expenses of printing them " shall be paid out of the revenue of the Land or Estates " given for establishing the Divinity Lecture Sermons ; and "the preacher shall not be paid, nor be entitled to the " revenue, before they are printed. "Also I direct and appoint, that no person shall be " qualified to preach the Divinity Lecture Sermons unless " he hath taken the degree of Master of Arts at least, in " one of the two Universities of Oxford or Cambridge ; and " that the same person shall never preach the Divinity " Lecture Sermons twice." TO ALWYNE LORD BISHOP OF ELY AND LORD HIGH ALMONER IN DUTIFUL AFFECTION PRE FACE THERE are few more unpleasant, or more constant, additions to modern literature than those which contain morsels of trivial and unnecessary autobiography from uninteresting and unimportant persons. And yet I am unable to resist the temptation to make my contribution to this rubbish-heap, because I feel that these Lectures need a word of apology and explanation. The task was undertaken, or rather the subject (which had long been vaguely in the writer's mind) was suggested, at the last possible moment, and in consequence of a chance conversation during a few minutes' railway journey. It was impossible at such short notice to prepare a syllabus or even to sketch a definite scheme : and, when the work was once begun, the future Lecturer discovered that he had indeed rushed in where angels might well fear to tread. The greater part of a Long Vacation, with a few weeks at Christmas and in March, and a few hours snatched during Oxford terms and spent in the Bodleian Library, have, owing to the engrossing claims of tutorial work, been all the time which it has been possible to devote to the work of preparation, composition, and x PREFACE revision. And these have been seriously affected by what an earlier Bampton Lecturer has also had cause to describe as " the common enemy, the influenza." Lectures produced under these circumstances may indeed demand long and full revision : but this the explicit direction of the Founder's will for a practically immediate publication renders impossible. I am therefore compelled to let what 1 have written go forth as it stands. That I have been able to complete the Lectures at all is not a little due to the kindness of many friends. Lecture II. is especially indebted to their aid. I have endeavoured to acknow- ledge it in the footnotes ; but I cannot forbear to mention here an act of great kindness, which has come to me as indeed a great relief at a time when, owing to " the common enemy," I am capable of very little exertion in the strongly urged offer of my friend and former pupil, Mr. Lionel Strachan, Lektor in the University of Heidelberg, to make the index an offer which I have most thankfully accepted. To all those who have helped me in many ways I desire to express most grateful thanks ; not least to my publishers for the special interest they have shown during the progress of the book, and particularly to my friend, Mr. F. J. H. Darton, for his kindly and valuable assistance. Part of Lecture VI. appeared some years ago in The Chtirch Quarterly Review, and a few pages here and there in other parts of the book have been already printed in The Guardian or The Pilot. My thanks are due in each case for permission to reprint them now. And so the book must go forth. No one can feel more keenly than I do how incomplete it is much PREFACE xi more incomplete than the necessary limits of the Lectures render inevitable. In regard to the lives of the saints, it has dealt only with representative names, and that often in a most meagre way. And the treatment has been primarily, perhaps almost entirely, historical. As an historical contribution to theological study it must be judged. It is in this regard that I have thought it not unfitting to publish, as an appendix to Lecture IV., the hitherto unprinted MS. Life of Edward King and Martyr, one of the valuable posses- sions of the College to which I have the honour to belong. But I do not imagine that in offering this contribution, even if the book approached more nearly to what I should have wished it to be, I am touch- ing more than one aspect of Christian apologetics : and I am touching that but slightly. The influence of religion on character is not a complete argument for religious belief: it needs to be supported and supple- mented by others. My work is limited to the effects, and does not touch the essence, of spiritual truth. W. H. H. THE GREAT HOUSE, BURFORD, OXON. S. Benedict's Dav, 1903. CONTENTS 1'AGE LECTURE I THE WITNESS OF THE SAINTS i LECTURE II NATIONAL SAINTS 38 LECTURE III THE SAINTS OF THE ENGLISH CONVERSION - - 92 LECTURE IV THE ROYAL SAINTS - - 125 Appendix to Lecture IV. : Passio et Mimcula Edwavdi Regis et Martins - 167 LECTURE V THE IDEAL OF MONK AND HERMIT - - 181 LECTURE VI THE STATESMEN SAINTS - 227 Appendix to Lecture VI. : English Medieval Miracles - 277 xiv CONTENTS PAGE LECTURE VII WOMEN AND CHILDREN AMONG THE SAINTS - - 299 LECTURE VIII THE COMPLETION OF FAITH - - 331 INDEX - . 369 Benedicat Israel Dominum : laudet et superexaltet Eum in scecula. Benedicite sacerdotes Domini Domino : benedicite servi Domi?ii Domino. Benedicite spiritus et animce justorum Domino : benedicite sanctt et humiles corde Domino. Benedicamus Patrem et Filium cum sancto Spiritu : laudemus et superexaltemus Eum in sacula. THE ENGLISH SAINTS LECTURE I THE WITNESS OF THE SAINTS "What is man that Thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that Thou visitest him ? For Thou hast made him but little lower than God, and crownest him with glory and honour. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of Thy hands ; Thou hast put all things under his feet" Ps. viii. 4-6. " For both He that sanctifieth and they that are sanctified are all of One." HEB. ii. 11. So the Psalmist witnesses to the place of man in God's creation : and in the first age of the Church the Christian who would encourage his Jewish brethren in the trials that beset the life of their conversion appeals to the words again, in proof of God's call and man's destiny, and in illustration of the work of Jesus, the Incarnate Son. The life of Jesus Christ on earth links man to heaven. It is with a significant change that the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews 1 uses the Psalmist's words before he expands the argument. " Thou madest man 1 Heb. ii. 5-18. On this passage Bishop Westcott has much illuminative comment : but I am not taking precisely the same point of view. Hebrews ii. 7 follows the LXX. L i ] I 2" * THE ENGLISH SAINTS a little lower than the angels," he says, for when he_ sj>eaks. of. Jesus. Himself he sees the height from which He descended in His voluntary humiliation. To that man can never reach: " but little lower than God_" is an elevation too startling for man, when we think of what Jesus was. And yet He, very God, " hathjbeen made a little lower than the angels," and became man : and the unity which He assumed with His brethren and ratified by His sacrifice, He retains for ever : and He wins for them the holiness which is His own, the holiness of God. " Both He that sanctifieth and they that are sancti- fied are all of One : for which cause He is not ashamed to call them brethren." In an age_ like our own the old grounds of Christian apology cannot wholly content us^. We restate theo- logical arguments, we follow anew the divergent lines of philosophic speculation, we reconsider, we adapt, we controvert, sometimes we accept, and find in things that seem discoveries of our day but the old founda- tions of Christian thinkers of the past. Is the new statement satisfactory ? Is it complete ? Are we secure ? There will be many answers. The world unfolds before us new wonders year by year, and space is filled with life and mystery. It is not strange that at times faith staggers. At such times the witness of the ages to the life and mission of Christ is invaluable. The revelation of Christ^is a revelation in us. Not apart from man, but He live, and witness to the troth ..of immortality and God._ Like the thinkers of the Renaissance, we are brought back to the thought THE WITNESS OF THE SAINTS 3 of the essential dignity of man a dignity which Christ came to justify and to confirm. Man knows, even in the depth of his humiliating self-knowledge, that God has made him L _ worthy ofJJis love. Truly, " Thou hast made him but little lower than God, and crownest him with glory and honour/' The world is morally at his feet : he has dominion over all the works of his Maker's hands. The grandest thing that we know on this earth is the character and potentiality of man. But that moral greatness is only realized we claim it unhesitatingly as man draws nigh to the character of Jesus Christ, the unique revelation of God to jiian. In Him there is the effulgence of His glory, the very impress and expression of His Divine being. His character is inexhaustible. The Incarnation presents to man, for guidance, for healing, for imitation, the limitless energies of the life of God. And upon this Divine life the ideal of the Christian character is based. It is full of endless possibilities, as the revelation of God grows and inspires in the human heart. " Uno itinere non potest perveniri ad tarn grande secretum." God is not only Himself eV Tracri reXao?, but Ttaoav aper^s ISeav eV law /ce/rr^yitefo?. 1 And the possibilities of the Divine life among men are gathered and cherished in the Communion of the Saints. The Communion of Saints : not for slight cause was this made an essential Article of the Christian creed. It proclaims the unity of the redeemed with their Redeemer. " For both He that sanctifieth and they that are sanctified are all of One : for which cause He is not ashamed to call them brethren." His life, the 1 S. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catech., iv. 4. I 2 4 THE ENGLISH SAINTS life of God, is shared with them : and their Communion means not only the present and essential fellowship of Christians in spite of our unhappy divisions, which may God pardon and heal but it preserves for aid and for example the different types of character in which special aspects of the Divine image have been approached. The life of Christ is the source, the Church of Christ is the home, of the Communion of Saints. That is the true Catholicity of the Church, the unity expressed, as of old, TroXf/xepw? KOI TroXvrpoTrcos, by divers portions and in divers manners. "The Church is one," says S. Cyprian. " which is spread abroad into a multitude far and wide by increase of fruitfulness, as many are the sun's rays but one light, and many the tree's branches but one strength founded in its tenacious root ; and since from one fount flow many streams, although the multiplicity seems diffused in the richness of an overflowing plenty, yet the unity is still preserved in the source." 1 So S. Cyril of Jerusalem in a glowing description of the Catholic Society which is extended over the globe, and teaches without error all things w T hich man needs to know, and subjects the whole race of man to godliness, rulers and subjects, learned and ignorant alike, and treats and heals universally every kind of sin that is committed in the soul and in the body ends by proclaiming that it possesses in itself every con- ception of what can be called virtue, in whatever form, whether it is shown in deeds or words, or in any sort of spiritual gift. 2 1 S. Cyprian, De Catholica Ecdesice Unitate, 5. 2 Catech., xviii. 23. THE WITNESS OF THE SAINTS 5 " Every conception of what can be called virtue," every endeavour, in divers manners, to reach to the fulness of the character of Christ : it is that which the lives of those whom Christians call saints present for our admiration and our support. Living among men as men live, they show that the imitation of Christ is possible, without affectation or unreality, in singleness of heart. " Christians," says one of the earliest apologists, " are not distinguished from the rest of men either by land, or speech, or customs, for they do not dwell somewhere in their own cities, or use a different language, or practise an extraordinary kind of life. . . . They dwell in their own countries, but as sojourners ; they take part in all things as citizens, yet they suffer all things as strangers. Every foreign country is their fatherland, and every fatherland is foreign." 1 And so it comes that " what the soul is in the body that the Christians are in the world." 1 This, then, is an apology for the Christian faith which in days of unrest and hesitation we may put forward with unhesitating assurance. " It is, indee.d, an enormous fact which there is no evading . . . not to be slurred over with indolent generalities, with unmeaning talk of superstition, of the twilight of the understanding, of barbarism, and of nursery credulity." 2 Here are lives, lived under all sorts of conditions, in ages most different, which exhibit a holiness and a beauty that no man can deny. In all their diversity they agree in one invariable claim : they derive their sole inspiration, their sole power, to live the godly life 1 Ep. ad Diognetum, 5, 6. 2 J. A. Froude, Short Studies on Great Subjects (1881), vol. i. p. 565. 6 THE ENGLISH SAINTS from the belief in Jesus, Incarnate, Crucified. Chris- tianity has no being apart from Christ. JHis life was a Theology : but, no less, His Theology was a life. It is so, it must be so, with those who have truly followed Him. Whoso doeth the will of God, he shall know of the doctrine. Human life is not complete, human nature has not realized its full powers, till it is drawn to the imitation of Christ : and as it lives in Him, in Him it comes to know. All our knowledge, and that is our highest good, not merely depends upon the know- ledge of God, but in that wholly consists ; for man advances in perfection in proportion to the perfection of that which he loves above all other things : and he who knows and loves God is alone most perfect and most blessed. It is the thought of Spinoza : l arid the lives of the saints are the perpetual evidence of its truth. In the knowledge and love of God alone is their power to live the life of goodness : in that only is their confidence :'- and that is the root of their witness in the world. 1 Tractatus Thcologico-Politicus, iv. 12 (Opera, ed. Leipzig, 1846, vol. Hi., p. 64) : fc 'Atque adeo tota nostra cognitio, hoc est, summum nostrum bonum, non tantum a Dei cognitione dependet, sed in eadem omnino consistit ; quot etiam ex hoc sequitur, quod homo pro natura et perfectione rei, quam pras reliquis amat, eo etiam perfectior est, et contra. Adeoque ille necessario perfec- tissimus est et de summa beatitudine maxime participat, qui Dei, entis nimirum perfectissimi, intellectualem cognitionem supra omnia amat eademque maxime delectatur." 2 " Plega . su Majestad nos le dd a probar antes que nos saque de esta vida porque serd. gran cosa d. la hora de la muerte, que vamos donde creemos haber amado, sobre todas las cosas y con pasion de amor que nos saque de nosotras, al Senor que nos ha de uzgar : siguros podrdmos ir. con el pleito de nuestras deudas. No THE WITNESS OF THE SAINTS 7 It is from this point of view, then, that we may approach the consideration of the effect of Christianity upon national character. We are to judge of the doctrine by its fruits. Are they truly set for the healing of the nations ? Has the imitation of Christ, has the treasury of Christian types in the Church, really modi- fied human character, purified aims, elevated life ? It is not to be denied. In the European civilization that has been built up since Christ was preached in the West we have the historical answer. When all deduc- tions are made, it must still be admitted that society impenetrated with Christian ideals : and the Christian ideal is the character of Christ. Goodness, be it in justice, or purity, or charity, or in any of the many conceptions of what can be called virtue, has been beaten down, but it has recovered : and truly "society in Christian times has somehow or other possessed a security, a charm, against utter ruin, which society before them had not." 1 A great writer has analysed the influence for us, as it has been exercised on the Greeks, the Latins, the Teutons. 2 A race of splendid gifts, of widespreading sympathies, of extraordinary assimilating power, welcomed the Gospel, as indeed the good news of life. And the Gospel preserved for it its very existence. Persecuted, massacred, scattered, the Greeks sera ir d. tierra extrafia, sino a propria, pues es de quien tanto amamos, que eso tiene mijor con todo lo demas, que los quereres de aca, que en amandole, estamos bien siguras que nos ama." S.Teresa, Camino de Perfection, in Works, Madrid, 1861, i. 371. 1 Dean Church, Gifts of Civilisation, p. 1 50. 2 Dean Church, op. cit., pp. 155-249, whose argument I compress during the next few sentences. THE ENGLISH SAINTS have held together through unfaltering loyalty to the faith of Christ. The Faith added to their ideals of character by the principles which underlay its teaching of the eternal kingdom of God, of brotherhood among men, of unalterable hope. National endurance, national fellowship, national hope these were ideas indeed that saved the race through the Church of Christ. That the influence was complete, that the character was transformed, is not asserted : but undeniably it was enriched and strengthened in the very points where most conspicuously it had been weak ; and in words whose power we shall not soon forget let us repeat " that the Greek race, which connects us with some of the noblest elements of our civilization, is still one of the living races of Europe, that it was not trampled, scattered, extinguished, lost, amid the semi-barbarous populations of the East, that it can look forward to a renewed career in the great commonwealth of Christendom this it owes mainly to its religion." 1 And while Christianity preached to the Greeks of severity and hope, to the strong, stern Latin races it gave imagination and the sense of beauty, thankful- ness, pity, and "the religion of the affections." The love of God, revealed in Christ, created a new literature as the evidence of a transformation of the character of a race. Sympathy and sweetness, the fruits of love, joy, and peace, came to the peoples of whom Rome was the mother through the Gospel of Christ. Closer to us is the influence on the Teutonic races, of which we are .visible_.examples. Here a new spiritual power was awakened : civilization and Christianity came 1 Dean Church, op. tit., p. 185. THE WITNESS OF THE SAINTS 9 together to a conquering race, and came to soften, and at once to elevate and to subdue. How the vital force has worked in one branch of the great Teutonic family it is the special object of these lectures to illustrate. But in each branch, in different degrees and in divers manners, the same subtle and compelling influence has been active. Through the teaching of God in the Church, " the tenderness, the sweetness, the earnest- ness, the solemnity, the awfulness of the Christian faith, sank into their hearts, diffused itself through their life, allied itself by indestructible bonds with what was dearest and what was highest with their homes, their assemblies, their crowns, their graves." 1 So Christianity has left its mark, writ large upon the history of Europe, on the Western nations of the old world. But the process of change in national character, the working out of enduring influence, is not to be traced out merely in the records of the past. We can see it before our eyes to-day. Nor is this change con- fined to the races of the West. No one can read the reports of Christian work in Asia and Africa, or in the isles scattered over the Pacific Ocean, without seeing that a real and a decisive influence is exercised on the national character by the acceptance of the Faith. In China it is found most prominently in the awakening of the idea of progress. A Chinese Christian is one who looks forward, who substitutes for a dead con- servative tradition a living power of adaptation and advance : the future in the eternal purpose of God inspires him with an activity, a vigour, an enterprise, 1 Dean Church, op. cit., pp. 231, 232. io THE ENGLISH SAINTS utterly unknown before. 1 The Chinese Christian is alto- gether a new character, a new type : and the next century may witness through it one of the most marvellous de- velopments that the history of the world has ever seen. 2 1 " By conversion," says a very acute observer (the Rev. Roland Allen, Church Times, July 25, 1902), "the personal existence of the individual soul is realized, the belief that its powers can be strengthened and renewed by the infusion of the Divine Spirit of Jesus, the consciousness of communion with a personal Saviour and Lord, the hope of an eternity of glory in the presence of God, these things once grasped lead the inquirer gradually to set his face forward to the future with a new and surprising vigour of life, and so the whole aspect of earthly things is changed. Everywhere the man learns to look for progress, moral and intellectual ; a spirit of inquiry, of diligent hopeful effort after the highest and best end of existence, usurps the place of the former negligent, indifferent con- tentment with the present ; new power is sought and found, new aptitudes discovered, old capacities enlarged and directed to new ends. Life becomes realized in growth, in progress towards an end which appears more glorious as it is more clearly seen. The effect of so great a change of the mind's outlook is incalculable and astonishing even in the most ignorant and imperfect Christians. With all their faults and it is manifest that they will not in a moment cease to be what they have ever been, or grasp at one bound all that the new faith implies and demands still, they have that which was unknown to them in their heathen life, and the highest becomes possible. Informed by this new ideal, the old conservatism is no longer a dead and slavish clinging to ancient ideas : it becomes an element of the greatest strength in the new life. The virtues which it bred patience, reverence for the past, for all that is best in their old tradition remain, and save them from wild and extravagant outbreaks of lawlessness in the disguise of a new liberty. The stability of Chinese converts has often been remarked, and has received new confirmation in the late persecu- tions. Slow to accept new ideas, the people are slow to renounce what has been once accepted and approved. Outward persecution does not shake them, neither do they hastily rush into newer and untried paths." 2 Mrs. Bishop, at the Newcastle Church Congress, 1900 (see Church Missionary Intelligencer, November, 1900, p. 828), said : THE WITNESS OF THE SAINTS n In Central Africa we have the same picture from another side the development of the natural strength of solid force, that lies deep down, determined and persistent, in the native character. Acceptance of the Christian brotherhood, with all its abundance of joy, 1 brings also with it far more than this. It brings intel- lectual and moral awakening that can be seen and noted in a " visible change ": 2 it brings, with the know- ledge of the fatherhood of God, a sense of the equality of man, of the sacredness of life and the dignity of work, and, most of all, the whole life is raised by the Christian ideal of purity. 3 A hard struggle, very many failures and falls, but quite unquestionably a gain on the whole field, is the acquisition, not of civilization, but of Christianity. In spite of all failures, " there is a very real difference " After eight and a half years of journeying among Asiatic peoples' I say unhesitatingly that the raw material out of \vhich the Holy Ghost fashions the Chinese convert, and often the Chinese martyr, is the best stuff in Asia." 1 Cf. the striking passage in Miss Ward's Letters from East Africa, pp. 193, 194, addressed to one who, though conversant with the lives of early medieval saints, had not taken a broad view of the effect, historically, of Christianity upon national character. I have also to thank Miss Ward for giving me her own impres- sions, very interesting and by no means always seen with rose- coloured spectacles. 2 Cf. note of Bishop Smythies in 1893 in Life (Ward), p. 216. 3 Miss Ward says : " From the very first they are taught that purity is essential to a Christian. This may almost be said to be the beginning and end of all missionary endeavour. They learn the new ideal of a Christian family, all the children having * one father one mother.' They learn that human life is sacred, so that infanticide, poisonings, etc., are against the Christian law." 12 THE ENGLISH SAINTS between the lives of Christians and the lives of heathens ; and the simple piety and faith of those who try to follow our Lord are a perpetual joy and encouragement to those who watch them." 1 And in South Africa we are told by those who know that the spiritual appre- hensions of the native races have been awakened in a marvellous way. We hear of the gravity, the tender- ness, the whole-heartedness, the simplicity, the absence of superstition, the growing power of self-control, the intelligent grasp of truth, the passionate search for perfection, by the Kafirs who accept the Gospel, make the great sacrifice, and enter the fold, which is the home of every kind of virtue the Church of the living God. " For themselves, the affair of their salvation is real, and grace works in them with a mighty and evident power, not, of course, in a sudden elimination of every fault, but in a genuine infusion of faith and hope and love, and the prayer and effort and sorrow which are among their effects. It would seem as if these simple natures, with their direct and uncom- plicated passions, their physical vigour and unshaken nerves, move towards Christ as towards a food which their whole being requires, and which they receive and hold fast with the force of a normal desire." 2 1 Miss Ward in Friendly Work, August, 1902. 2 P. N. Waggett \tL Journal of Theological Studies, vol. i., p. 221. It is not European civilization which can do this. "The mere removal of social disabilities and abatement of social tyranny cannot raise the 'red' Kafir and fit him to take his place in a Christian community. The heathen dock-labourer in Capetown will never get a glimpse of civilization in the canteens and overcrowded lodging-houses. A native chief from an independent territory, paying a visit to one of our South African ports, and seeing there THE WITNESS OF THE SAINTS 13 Or take the change, wrought among the cannibals who inhabit New Guinea, that is brought before us in the words of British administrators the miracle, as the originally simple savages of his own tribe transformed by the vices of civilization, said, 'This is like hell !' But what the high wages and vices of a big city cannot do for the native, Christ is doing for him in every Christian Mission Station to-day. Christ by the Word and Sacraments is showing to-day the place in the Christian society for which the native is fit, as in S. Paul's day He raised the Christian slaves from the brutality of the slums of Rome to the spirit and fellowship of the Saints and Martyrs." Too much consideration cannot be given to the following words from the sam source : " It is also to be considered that the prin- ciples of British Colonial rule, which insists on protection and a fair chance for every native, need all the support they can get from Christian Missions. Dutch and English selfishness is con- stantly reproaching the Government for the justice which it does to the natives. 'Look,' it says, 'at the native wild beast whom you leave us, even in Adderley Street, in danger of brushing against.' Our statesmen believe in the principle of justice and protection for the aboriginal races under our rule, but they have to hold it against an intensely strong and constant stream of selfish opposition, which would deliberately thrust back the native races, and keep them locked up in ignorance and degradation, to be used for cheap-labour supply only at the white man's convenience. The result of our missionary work among natives at Capetown, and of every Christian Mission in Africa, is showing more or less clearly, and increasingly, the reasonableness and Tightness of the British Colonial principle of government. The law insists upon the native's right to rise, if he can, to civilization : S. Philip's Mission is, by God's grace, showing that he can. I believe nobody could ever again doubt of this who has helped to teach in our Kafir night-school, or has knelt with our native Christians at S. Philip's altar to receive with them the Holy Sacrament, and sing with them in Xosa, ' O Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world,' or the 'Gloria in Excelsis,' or Dr. Bright's Eucharistic hymn, 'And now, O Father, mindful of the love,' etc." Report of S. Philip's Mission, Capetown, 1890. 14 THE ENGLISH SAINTS one governor rightly calls it, which has uprooted the superstitions and horrors of centuries, and turned men verily from the power of Satan to God. Well might the great man who was the creator of the British power in that land say in an official report: "The labours of the missionaries have to such an extent modified the ways of thinking and the social relations of the natives that the good they have done is incal- culably great." And, again, eight years later : " The lapse of time has steadily strengthened the conviction that mission labour is of immense value and importance in the possession." 1 Truly, the Church is teaching these savages that man is not in the power of devils and wizards: for, in the faith and love of Christ, "Thou hast made him but little lower than God, and crownest him with glory and honour. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of Thy hands : Thou hast put all things under his feet." It is the same a great man of letters has left the testimony not to be gainsaid with the simple pleasure- loving Polynesians. 2 " I had conceived a great prejudice against Missions in the South Seas, and I had no sooner come there than that prejudice was at first reduced, and then at last annihilated. Those who deblatterate against Missions have only one thing to do to come and see them on the spot. They will see a great deal of good done ; they will see a race being forwarded in ^ 1 I quote these passages from Sir William Macgregor and from Mr. Le Hunte, the present Lieutenant-Governor, from a report of the Mansion House meeting in behalf of the Diocese of New Guinea, July 9, 1902 (Spottiswoode and Co., pp. n, 26-28). 2 R. L. Stevenson, Life, by Graham Balfour, ii. 193. THE WITNESS OF THE SAINTS 15 many directions ; and I believe, if they be honest persons, they will cease to complain of Mission-work and its effects." As with races primitive and barbaric so with old civilizations : so, slowly but surely, India is changing before our eyes. No man can contrast the Christian population of Goa with that of any non-Christian State without seeing what Christianity has wrought ; and within our own dominions we have the testimony of men honoured in this place to the power of the living Christ. 1 1 Sir W. W. Hunter, Life, pp. 375, 376 ; and cf. Life of Max Miiller. See the most impressive paper of Mr. A. C. Ghose (Cambridge University Press, 1896) on Indian Christians. The author is himself a native Christian of very high ability, who is now, I believe, in Holy Orders. In a very striking way he sketches the condition of his country, in which English education has so enormously widened the outlook of the people. But he continues : '' But there is still a dead weight of caste prejudice and super- stition lying like a curse on the country. It is only the Indian Christian who finds himself really free, and therefore able to devote himself to new pursuits. The dissatisfaction with the old standard of life and thought finds its culminating point in him. Education, added to his religious and social freedom, brings high professional prizes within his grasp. His origin may be low, his income small, but he is free in the real sense of the word. He has secured the freedom required to enable him to live up to the new and en- lightened standard of life. There are no caste-fellows to cramp his ambition. There is no uneducated wife or mother to thwart him at every turn. He has no child-wife growing up with him to nip his youth and manhood in the bud. He has broken with a dozen stale, obsolete customs which cramp and limit the energies of his heathen countrymen. A Hindu or a Mohammedan with English education may consider himself a child of freedom ; but his freedom is prison-life as compared with the freedom of an Indian Christian." He sees very clearly that the present epoch is not one in which the native Christians, bewildered by their many opportunities, and 16 THE ENGLISH SAINTS So we speak of nations and races, and we see them rising towards the conception of their place in the universe which God designed them to fill.. We can see clear lines of change, of progress : as we look back over centuries we can see the influence by which, as the voice of Christ is heard , " The whole round earth is every way Bound by gold chains about the feet of God." And the chains are the lives of the saints. We cannot estimate the influence of the law of Christ solely from the mass. The Divine character is one that judges, and sifts, and divides. The human choice can reject the ideal of Him that sanctifieth. But those who are admitted to have reached nearest towards it, they are the evidence of its supreme value and truth. The influence of Christianity upon natural character is to be traced most clearly in the lives and legends of the Christian saints. The Lives record what men did who traced their whole belief, their whole motive power, to the love of Christ constraining them. They were written by men who saw in those whom they commemorated heroes of faith and virtue. Disciples wrote down what they had seen or learnt of the Master whom they knew and still children in learning how to use them and how to discriminate, can be expected to do much direct missionary work : " The missionary epoch," he says, " is destined to be but one of the many epochs of Indian Church history. The sons of the present race of Indian Christians will yet be the religious conquerors of India." No one who knows the early history of England can doubt that what he says is true. THE WITNESS OF THE SAINTS 17 loved. The A eta Sanctorum are not merely records of the first importance, as historians have come to recog- nise ; but they are of unique evidential value in the history of the human soul. And the_legends in their different manner have a value, too. They show what qualities, of mercy or strength, men looked for in those J:hey reverenced. No man had miracles ascribed to him who had not in his lifetime, or through the cause which men believed him to represent, been one who would (if it were possible) perform such acts of love or power. Rarely indeed has " the popular worship been wasted on the memory of selfish ascetics." 1 It is the miracle of a holy life, where " He that sanctifieth and they that are sanctified are all of One," which has made the miracles that hagiologists have set down. We have truth in these records, not least where we can recognise distortions r and the truth points to the life of God realized on earth in Christ. But, it may be said, these are the abnormal char- acters, in which you trace the working of the influence which you call Divine. You cannot argue from the abnormal. The ordinary man cannot rise, as these 1 Stubbs, Preface to Memorials of S. Dunstan, 1874. 2 Fustel de Coulanges, La Monarchic franque, p. 1 1 : " Soyons certains que 1'auteur n'a pas pu tout inventer ; s'il a ajoute quelques vertus a son personnage, il n'a pas imagine les petits ddtails de sa vie ; il a de"peint des habitudes et des mceurs qui dtaient vrais. Dans chaque miracle qu'il raconte, ce qui nous inte'resse n'est pas le miracle, ce sont les ddtails qui 1'entourent, c'est 1'homme pour qui le miracle a e'td fait, c'est la physionomie de cet homme, son dtat civil, sa condition sociale, sa conduite." Cf. the striking passage on the importance of ecclesiastical Lives in Sir Thomas Hardy's Descriptive Catalogue of Materials^ etc., Preface, pp. xix sqq. 2 i8 THE ENGLISH SAINTS saints believed themselves to rise, to fellowship with God. 1 That, vye must reply, is not the Christian view. The saint is the normal Christian. Every Christian is called to saintliness. He is made but little lower than God. The ideal character is before him for imitation. He that sanctifieth and they that are sanctified are all of One. The saint is the man who has attained, with perceptible nearness, to the normal life ir^ God. Others^ have not reached it : they are in a condition of arrested development. Man is like a tree I borrow the illus- tration from one of the finest critical studies in modern literature which for completeness must grow both outward and upward. Aspiration and sympathy are as essential to human perfection as the " leader " and the lateral branches are to the development of the stately tree. 2 The force within the natural, God- 1 Thus Professor William James, in his fascinating book, The Varieties of Religious Experience (p. 45), seems to take as most characteristic what is most one-sided, and throughout to treat the saint as an abnormal creature, to whose religious experience it would not be wise, even if it were possible, for every man to attain. 2 Edmond Holmes, Walt Whitmans Poetry : a Study and a Selection, 1902, pp. 22, 39 : E.g., " Growth ... is always the outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible force. In the case of the soul this inward and invisible force is love. Now love is of two kinds, or rather it energizes in two principal directions. On the one hand there is love of the ideal, the love that lifts us above ourselves, the love that humbles us even while it exalts us, the love that is partly compounded of reverence and that looks in the direction of worship. We call this upward movement of love aspiration. On the other hand, there is love of the actual, the love that carries us outside ourselves, the love that neither humbles us nor exalts us, the love that makes us regard all things as our kith and kin. We call this outward movement of love sympathy. In the soul that is growing as it ought to grow harmoniously and THE WITNESS OF THE SAINTS ig given power must, if it freely works, both elevate and expand. Where it has not free course the soul does not enjoy its normal life, as a tree " pollarded " or shut out from light and air is imperfect and unsymmetrical. The power is given, is inherent in the very nature ; but it can be checked or destroyed. 1 It is no question of numbers or proportion. Health is the normal state : but how few there are whom examination pronounces to be of entire physical sound- ness ! The " abstractly higher type"' 2 is the normal. The saint is the man as God designed him : so the New Testament invariably regards him. " God does not wish to destroy Nature : He wishes to perfect it," says S. John of the Cross, and he declares that the perfection of the saintly character is largely dependent on its being engaged in the works suitable symmetrically both kinds of love are strong and active, and neither is allowed to develop itself to the exclusion or even to the detriment of the other" (pp. 22, 23). There could hardly be a better description of the character of the true saint. I cannot, however, agree that " in the Imitation of Christ the growth of the soul is entirely upward " (p. 72). 1 " Yet there's no one to whom's not given Some little lineament of heaven ; Some partial symbol, at the least, in sign Of what should be, if it is not, within, Reminding of the death of sin And life of the divine." H. S. Sutton : A Preacher's Soliloquy. 2 Cf. Professor James (loc. cit,, p. 375) : " The saint is abstractly a higher type of man than the ' strong man,' because he is adapted to the highest society conceivable, whether that society ever be concretely possible or not." He goes on to show that he is using the word "saint" throughout his book, or a large part of it, in a non-natural sense. 22 2o THE ENGLISH SAINTS to the position in life assigned to the particular person. All the powers are used to the full, but " all are trans- formed in God." 1 And so Benedict XIV., in summing up the requisites for canonization, says simply, " It is sufficient that there be proof of the practice of those virtues which occasion demanded, in an eminent and heroic degree, according to the condition in life, rank, circumstances, of the person." 2 Difference in the results there must be, according to the circumstances of the person : but the difference is in degree, not kind. The saint, whatever the circumstances of his life, is the man in whom " the ripe fruits of religion are found," the mature man, in whom the fulness of human nature is attained. 3 What his experience is has often been told : 4 it is, in brief, that it is possible to know God and to walk with Him as a friend. So in endless variety the lives of saints exhibit approaches, near and intimate, to the character which Christ set before the world, leaving us an example that we should follow His steps. And, again, Christianity deals with individuals. It is through them that it affects nations. " In its proper action, its purpose and its business is to make men 1 Quoted by M. H. Joly, Psychology of the Saints (English trans- lation, pp. 128, 129). 2 De Beatification* et Canonisatione Sanctorum, edit. Rome, vol. v., p. 303, Lib. III., cap. xxi. Thus he says that visions, pro- phecies, miracles, are of quite secondary importance : the heroic virtues, or martyrdom of the servant of God, are first to be proved. 3 Professor James uses this phrase : " The collective name for the ripe fruits of religion in a character is saintliness " though yet he regards the saint as an exceptional development. 4 Never more eloquently or more truly than by W. R. Inge, Bampton Lectures, 1899, Christian Mysticism, p. 326. THE WITNESS OF THE SAINTS 21 saints :' 51 thus, by divers portions and in divers manners it acts upon the world. The individual teaches and leads the world. All spiritual advance has come from the saints : 2 it would almost be true to say that the greatest intellectual discoveries also are theirs. This it is which the Church has recognised when she has formally declared_sqme among her children, in the ages since Jesus Christ walked upon earth," to have attained to pre-eminent saintliness, to have won for themselves, as a distinctive title, that which is the heritage of all Christians the name of " saint." Canonization is the recognition of the solidarity of the Church. At first it was the spontaneous tribute of popular veneration for those who had given their lives for Christ, or who had been eminent examples of devotion. Says S. Augustine, before there was any- thing formal in the practice: " We reverence the martyrs with that worshijD of affection and communion which in this life those holy men of God receive whose hearts we know to be prepared to suffer in like manner for evangelic truth, but so much the more fervently as the conflicts of the martyrs are over and they are secure in bliss." 3 Registers of names were kept for public use, and they were recited at the Eucharist. From these diptychs came the kalendars, and from the kalendars in later days the martyrologies. Gradually, as the 1 Dean Church, The Gifts of Civilisation, p. 245. - M. Joly (Psychology of the Saints, p. 135) goes too far here. 3 Contra Faustum, xx. 21 ; cf. S. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catech. Myst., v. ii ; S. Chrysostom, Hoinil. XLf. in i Ep. ad Corinth., cxv. ; cf, Neale, Eastern Church, p. 86. 22 THE ENGLISH SAINTS custom grew, the strictness of investigation grew with it. There was the collection of acts of the martyrs, the examination of them, the inquiry if the life had been passed in the unity of the Catholic Church, the sifting of the motive and the cause of martyrdom. 1 So with the confessors, those who died in peace after the exercise of heroic virtues. For centuries this power was exercised locally by the Bishops, or by ecclesiastical Councils, as it is still exercised in the East. To quote only English cases : the Council of Cloveshoo, in 747, fixed the veneration of S. Gregory on his birthday, March 12, and on May 26, his burial-day, that of S. Augustine, Bishop and Confessor, the Apostle of England. 2 To the end of the Middle Ages and, indeed, beyond formal canonization was often anticipated by the popular voice. 3 At Salisbury, in the fifteenth century, the people had long paid to S. Osmund great reverence, and were ready to take up his body and translate it to a shrine, and so venerate him as a saint : whereby the Pope (Nicholas V.), when he heard it, should be the more quickly inclined to canonize, for fear that Eng- land should fall away from his obedience. 4 1 S. Cyprian, Epist., 37 (Ed. Benedict.), orders the deaths of martyrs to be notified to him, that they may be commemorated. 2 Haddan and Stubbs, Councils, iii. 368. 3 So the present Dean of Westminster (A Commemoration of King Edward the Confessor, pp. 7, 8), using language practically true, though technically incorrect, when he says of Edward that " England . . . forgot his fatal weakness and unwisdom, and canonized him as a saint and a confessor." 4 "Qui inde dixit quod, si hoc esset insertum in literis dominorum, causaret papam se citius inclinare ad ipsum canonizandum, quia tale THE WITNESS OF THE SAINTS 23 Long before this, of course, the Popes had claimed the sole power to canonize, and had won a general submission. 1 Till the end of the tenth century the action of the Bishops had been practically unfettered. From the tenth to the twelfth the approval of the Pope was generally, if not always, sought : the last case is said to be that of S. Gaucher of Pontoise. 2 From the end of the twelfth century the Popes asserted the right to make all formal canonizations, 3 and it was yielded almost without dispute. factum causaret partes nostras ad recedendum ab ejus obedientia et de hoc multum timet papa." Letter of Simon Huchyns to the Bishop of Salisbury, August 10, 1452, Maiden, Canonization of S. Osmund, Wilts Records Society, 1901, pp. 108-110. 1 The full Roman view is expressed in L. Ferrari's Prompta Bibliotheca, Rome, 1766, torn, vii., ff. 273-282. "Canonizatio proprie " is the public judgment of the Apostolic See. " Hinc plurimi classici doctores tenent, quod sit de fide, quod Papa non possit errare, non solum in canonizatione sed etiam in beatifica- tione" (p. 275). 2 This is put less clearly in the Bollandist Ada Sanctorum, April, torn, i., p. 853 : " Succedentibus vero temporibus, ex divina revelatione canonizatus fuit, Sanctorumque catalogo annotatus, tempore Dni Ccelestini Papys, Praesulante in sede Lemovicensi Dfio Sebrando, qui ex praecepto prsefati Dni Papas huius sancti ossa memoranda et veneranda in capsa reposuit." 3 As to the actual date there is dispute. Did John XV. begin formal canonization in the case of S. Udalric (see Pertz, Mon. Germ. Hist., iv. 377-428) ? Or was the rule first definitely stated by Alexander III.? There is the brief of Alexander III. (De- cretales, tit. 45, De Relig. et Vener. SS.), in the case of a scandal reported to him by Arnulf of Lisieux, forbidding to " honour as a saint without the authority of the Roman Church." This was con- firmed by Innocent III. and Urban VIII. It is questioned by Ferrari, 19, 20, if Leo III. in 804 did not begin the rule. (See Baronius, /;/ ann.) But the letter there given is probably not authentic. (See also Ben. XIV., De Ven. SS., vol. i., pp. 62, 63.) 24 THE ENGLISH SAINTS The right was based on a series of disputable asser- tions. There must be a secure power somewhere. Beatification and canonization, as they became distinct, must be assured by authority. There is no true sanctity, no true Communion of Saints but in the Church of Jesus Christ : and to the head, the earthly head, of that Church, the appeal must be made. It does not concern us to criticise the claim, though it may be worth while to repeat, in passing, that it was from time to time disregarded, in most European countries, before the Reformation. The English Church showed its independence sufficiently in relation to it. In spite of this some episcopal beatifications were " tolerated.' 5 The right was denied to all Bishops, to Metropolitans, to the Curia when the Papacy was vacant : and the Pope's authority to canonize was declared valid without a Council. The case of S. Roch, canonized by the Council of Constance, is interesting. The store- house of information on the whole subject, and the standard authority in the Roman communion, is the De Servorum Dei Beatificatione et Beatorum Canom'zationc, anthore Prospero de Lambertinis, S.R.R., Cardinali tit. S. Crucis in Hierusalem, An- concE primnvi episcopo, posiea archiepiscopo Bononice, (afterwards Pope Benedict XIV.); first edition, 4 vols., Bologna, 1734-38. He completed the work at Bologna. The last part, written in Italian, was translated into Latin for the Roman edition of his works. The matter occupies vols. i. to vi., inclusive, of the splendid Benedicti XIV. Pont. Opt. Max. Opera Omnia, Venet., 1767. My own copy, which I have chiefly used, is the Roman, brought out "sub auspiciis SS. D. nostri Pii Sexti, P.O.M.," 15 vols., Rome, 1787-92. It sounds audacious to praise such a book, but as it is little known among Englishmen, and even contemned by the one Englishman I know who has read it my learned friend Mr. H. W. C. Davis, Fellow of Balliol I may be allowed to say that it is a historical thesaurus, full of the most interesting matter, collected with extraordinary diligence. THE WITNESS OF THE SAINTS 25 We reach, then, to sum briefly a brief survey, a period by which the word " saint," used freely by the writers of the New Testament, and thus emphasizing its normal sense, is restricted, in strictly technical language, to those of pre-eminent holiness, who are publicly recog- nised to have attained to that fellowship with God which comes, by His grace, from the imitation of Him Who came to sanctify, and in Whom alone it is possible to realize the Divine kinship and to know that " He that sanctifieth and they that are sanctified are all of One." A distinction is_gradually enforced between the beatus, he who by special concession of the Pope to a particular kingdom, province, religious society, or locality, may be venerated publicly, with exposition of relics, 1 and the sanctus, he who by public judgment and express definition of the Apostolic See is solemnly added to the roll of the saints, and set forth for the public veneration of the whole Church militant with all the honours due to saints. 2 More briefly, the difference between beatifi- cation and canonization may be said to be that in one case permission is given to honour as a saint, in the other there is a command to do so. 3 The authorities recognise in the process a distinction between formal and equivalent canonization. The latter is the case of the saints admitted by the Popes on the evidence of an ancient cult, with the testimony of historians and of continuous miracles. 4 In this class 1 Ferrari, op. cit. >J Ibid. 3 This seems to be the conclusion of Benedict XIV., Book I., cc. 37-40, vol. ii., pp. 158-188. The matter is summed up pp. 180- 188. 4 Ferrari says, 24, 25, that, both for beatification and canonization (p. 276), "Duo copulative requiruntur, scilicet ex- 26 THE ENGLISH SAINTS are placed, not only the early Fathers of the Church, but later saints, such as Romwald, Norbert, Margaret of Scotland, Gregory VII. 1 So survives still recognised, as it were, ungraciously that earliest form of natural homage and reverence, when " a saint was a saint, as it were, by acclamation "; 2 when " the saint was exalted by the popular voice, the suffrage of the people with the Bishop." 3 And, indeed, on that on the popular reverence even the most technical system must fall back. Even at the extreme point of definition and elaboration, it is still the recognition of the essential dignity of human nature as brought out in life, witnessed, accepted, acclaimed by men, in letters of character known and read of all, that stamps the faltering follower of Jesus with the mark of achieve- ment. And even where the rigid system triumphed, or was on the point to triumph, there still remained in all its force the popular element in the practical acceptance of veneration, in the cult as it spread throughout the Church. National characteristics were represented in cellentia virtutum in gradu heroico, et miracula, ita ut nee ex- cellentia virtutum sine miraculis nee miracula sine virtutibus sufficiant, sic expresse habetur in Constit. Innocentii III., edita pro Canonizatione Sancti Homoboni : et in Constit. 4 Gregorii IX., edita pro Canonizatione mei Sancti Antonii de Padua . . . Miracula non solum in vita sed praecipue post obitum sunt neces- saria ad beatificationem et canonizationem." 1 Ibid., ii. 195 et seq. 2 Milman, Latin Christianity, ix. 78. 3 How S. Martin vindicated the Bishop's place in the decision, see Sulpicius Severus, Vita, c. xi., which shows that Rome had then no concern in the matter. THE WITNESS OF THE SAINTS 27 typical saints : racial, or historical, or local associa- tions were prominent everywhere. Nothing, to take the great example, more helped to keep East and West apart than the absence of reciprocal veneration of holy men. Hardly before the terrible havoc of the capture of Constantinople by the unworthy Crusaders of 1204, when Western Europe was flooded with relics of the East, when even the head of the great patriarch and preacher of New Rome was brought to Pisa, and distant Halberstadt was made glorious (and still is) by the stolen goods of pious thieves, did Latin Europe know anything of those who had confessed or been martyred in lands that no longer obeyed the Roman Emperor or Pope. From first to last, " of the countless saints of the East, few comparatively were received in the West. The East as disdainfully rejected many of the most famous whom the West worshipped with the most earnest devotion ; they were ignorant even of their names. It may be doubted if an Oriental ever uttered a prayer in the name of S. Thomas of Canterbury," says Milman : l and the converse is almost as true. The veneration of saints remained, as we shall observe later on in many instances, largely a national, even a local, matter. It had its expression and left its records in hagiologies and kalendars. Brief reference only can now be given to these, and, for the sake of simplicity, the reference shall be only to England. Early collections were scanty, and made almost at 1 Milman, Latin Christianity, ix. 77. How many Westerns, for example, were acquainted with S. Andrew of Crete, concern- ing whom see the interesting article in the Echos d'Orient, September, 1902, by S. Vailh ? 28 THE ENGLISH SAINTS haphazard. Bede began to collect and append lives to the mere lists of names commemorated in the Mass and recorded in the kalendars. His martyrology was fruitful, and his imitators have left valuable work. Kalendars, too, grew in interest. The kalendar of the Leofric Missal is interesting as showing how early the English Church was gradually coming to restrict its commemorations to the saints connected with its own interests. 1 The latest entry is that of the great Apostle of Germany, who died in 755. 2 In a kalendar comparatively meagre in its insertion of local saints, eighteen belong to England, two to Ireland, fifteen after 500 A.D. to Gaul and Lotharingia, the insertion of these latter being explained by the nationality of Bishop Leofric. Earlier than 500 there are nineteen commemorations of Gaulish saints : but from the sixth century England had her own saints, and from the tenth she became more and more restricted to them in her records. Evidence of the popularity of different saints in the Middle Ages can be obtained from different martyrolo- gies. 3 The martyrology was a list of the saints to be commemorated. Each large Church had its own 1 " On arranging the names of the saints according to the centuries in which they died, it is found that, with four exceptions, every saint after A.D. 500 is connected with Great Britain and Ireland or France " [Gaul] (Warren, Leofric Missal, Introduction, p. xlviii. 2 Ibid., p. xlix. 3 Interesting information as to the spread of knowledge about the saints of other countries may be found from the study of martyr- ologies : take, for example, the number of English saints in those of Fulda and Trier. See Analecta Bollandiana, i. u, and ii. 7. THE WITNESS OF THE SAINTS 29 edition, from which was read daily after prime the passage naming those to be remembered on the morrow. It was, as it were, a private memorial to stimulate devotion at the public offices : and with this aim it was that vernacular translations in different countries were drawn up for " the edification of religious persons unlearned." Such was the " Martiloge after the use of the Chirche of Salisbury, and as it is read in Syon, with Additions," which was printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1526. 1 This is especially interesting as an illustration of the late medieval cult of saints. It belongs to the period when the name of S. Thomas of Canterbury had been erased from all books of prayer by order of Henry VIII., but otherwise it represents a widespread usage sanctioned by time. It was pro- bably, like all other English martyrologies, based on that of Usuard (ninth century), " with additions of English saints, selected according to local circum- stances." 2 It has, however, few variations from earlier English kalendars. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the great work in hagiology was inaugurated. In the slowly- won conquests of Englishmen in the West, legends of the Goidelic and Brythonic Celts were collected, adapted, castigated, Latinized, and brought forward (by men who tried to rival in the ecclesiastical field the work of Geoffrey of Monmouth in the political) for the veneration of English and Welsh alike. 3 In 1 Edited by E. Proctor and E. S. Dewick : Henry Bradshaw Society, 1893. 2 Martiloge^ edit. 1893, Preface, p. xi. 3 See Willis Bund, Celtic Church in Wales, pp. 6, 9 et seq.j cf. Edmund Bishop in Dublin Review, January, 1885, pp. 123-126. 30 THE ENGLISH SAINTS North and Middle England, Goscelin, Ailred of Rievaulx> and others, searched everywhere for materials, and amplified what they had collected. 1 Ailred 2 seems to have been a scholar of the gracious and courtly type, soft and sweet of speech, keenly interested in the days of old and the memories of God's holy ones, beloved by those among whom he dwelt ; and his work, in which the literary society of his day, small but vigorous, took keen interest, had much effect. The influence of the " Golden Legend " of Jacobus de Voragine 8 (circa 1292} at last led to the compilation of a complete national collection : the " Sanctilogium Angliae Walliae Scotise et Hiberniae " of John of Tynemouth 4 in the 1 Of the work of Ailred there will be many instances later on. His own biography is given from Bodleian MS., 240 in Nova Legenda, vol. ii., pp. 544 et seq. 2 The life of Ailred, in Dr. Newman's Lives of the Saints, by J. B. Dalgairns, is written very much in Ailred's own style. 3 There was in England, though, perhaps, to a lesser extent than abroad, a gradual growth of legend, leading to the manufacture of lives which pretended to be contemporary. " Enfin, au xiii Siecle, la Legende doree de Jacques de Voragine marque le dernier terme de cette evolution, et ce livre niais, que certains qualifient encore de naif, sert de modele a la plupart des compositions plus re'centes." See Les Sources de P Histoire de France, epoque primitive, Meo- rovingiens et Carolingiens (Augustine Molinier), 1902. 4 Nova Legenda Anglie, as collected by John of Tynemouth, John Capgrave, and others, and first printed, with New Lives, by Wynkyn de Worde, a. d. MDXUI. Now re-edited, with Fresh Material from MS. and Printed Sources, by Carl Horstman, Ph.D. In 1516 Wynkyn de Worde printed his famous edition of these legends. Dr. Horstman has fully revised the text by collating it with the Cotton MS. Tiberius E. i. ; and in each case he has employed a very large number of materials, both printed and MS., in the work of further revision. He has added also Ros- carrok's Life of S. Christina (who was especially venerated THE WITNESS OF THE SAINTS 31 second quarter of the fourteenth century. This was rearranged, probably by Capgrave, in the fifteenth century. This, again, with additions, was printed by Wynkyn de Worde. Dr. Horstman, whose laborious edition, unhappily still not quite complete, has been published by our University Press, has restored and mended the text, and in course of his investigations has discovered several unknown, or little known, manu- scripts, from which he has obtained valuable assistance. Of the relation of this collection of lives of saints to general hagiology he well says : "In England, where the national idea has always been prominent as against the 'foreigner,' and w r as then intensified by the French wars, the idea sprang up of forming a legendary of exclusively English saints, though the saints themselves would have objected to being so 'nationalized,' the idea of saintship the imitation of the Son of Man being incompatible with national exclusiveness. This idea rose in John of Tynemouth, and in executing it he created a truly national work, which deserves to rank among the treasures of England." There is to the purely historical student a consider- able advantage in having a single collection of national saints. The study of national history in the Middle Ages, and of the development of national characteristics, is greatly facilitated by no longer needing resort to the at S. Albans) ; several additional Lives by John of Tynemouth, from Bodleian MS. 240 ; and the Life of S. Fremundus, King and Martyr, and nephew of S. Edmund, from a MS. at Trinity College, Dublin. 32 THE ENGLISH SAINTS great Bollandist collection in order to disentangle the particular and local interest. The collection before us is, says Dr. Horstman, " as complete as possible, and the amount of materials brought together by one man is truly astonishing." John of Tynemouth found the libraries open and the constant help of friendly com- peers ; and in his survey he exhausted nearly all the materials then known to exist, English or foreign, chronicled or in separate documents. His work is thus of the greatest value as a complete compilation and abridgement ; and in some cases his lives are the only sources now left, the primitive lives having been lost or destroyed since the fourteenth century. To each life is added a Translatio and Miracula, and frequently a highly entertaining Narratio, from which last many very interesting social facts can be learned. Of John him- self, Dr. Horstman gives a most laborious and interesting account and identification, and he shows for the first time that he fills the supposed vacuum in the line of the S. Albans chroniclers ; and that in other works of his he is among the chief original sources for the reign of Edward III. His life, by acute investigation and reasoning, is fixed as between 1290 and 1349. l England thus took her share in collecting and pre- serving the lives and legends of the saints, a task undertaken abroad by great scholars, 2 and by those 1 I have here roughly analyzed the chief points of Dr. Horstman's Introduction. 2 See the summary of Dr. M. R. James, Cambridge Modern History ', vol. i., p. 610. A characteristic (and late) example of the second class is A. Gallonius, De Sanctorum Martyruui Cruciatibus^ Cologne, 1612. THE WITNESS OF THE SAINTS 33 who popularized their work, as well as by those who wrote solely for edification. In the sixteenth century Aloysius Lippomanus of Verona, 1 and the Carthusian, Laurence Surius of Cologne, 2 made great collections : and Bolland began his great work in 1643. There were famous English collections also, made from the work of John of Tyne- mouth, notably Capgrave's, and that anonymous hagiology of women saints of our country, 3 which quaintly set out the beauty of the old lives when the Reformation had come and gone. But John of Tynemouth's work and that of his successors is, of course, not primarily of historical interest alone ; its aim was religious. And it is curious to compare it with the kalendar of the English Church as revised during the period of the Reformation. After a series of changes, 4 of suggestions that never reached the stage of acceptance if of discussion, and of formal revisions, the kalendar was drawn up, practically as it now stands, in 1561. 5 It stands in the Prayer- Book to-day, with all its imperfections and they are many 6 as England's 1 Historia de Vit. SS., Rome, 1551-1560. 2 De Probatis SS. Hist., Cologne, 1570-1575. 3 The Lives of Women Saints, etc. (circa 1610-1615): Early English Text Society, 1886. 4 I had hoped to discuss these changes and their importance fully, but I find it impossible. I will only refer the reader to an extremely valuable paper on the subject, by the Rev. Canon F. E. Warren, in the Guardian, July 22, 1891. 5 With one addition in 1604 and two in 1662. c Notably the inadequate and inconsistent treatment of the English saints, with the omission of S. Alban and seven English saints viz., S. Wulfstan of Worcester, f 1095 (January 19) ; 3 34 THE ENGLISH SAINTS proclamation of her share in the life of the Church Universal, in the unity of the Divine Sanctifier and those who are sanctified in the Communion of Saints. Here, then, with the kalendar for guide, and with the materials of English hagiologists, we may look to find for England an answer to the inquiry how the national character has been at once moulded and expressed by the lives of the saints. What influence has Christianity really had ? Let these records answer. But let it not be forgotten the answer, significant though it be, of such lives is only a fragment of the whole response of the Communion of Saints. The saints of the kalendar are but flowers plucked from the full field of Christian holiness. " As for us " they are beautiful words of S. Antonino of Florence quoted in the old Life of S. Teresa " as for us whose path is surrounded by shadows, so far as we are allowed to judge of the saints by what we know and presume of their works, I think that none can doubt but that many of the blessed of each sex who have not been canonized by the Church, nor even mentioned by her, have not been less worthy or less glorious than many who have been canonized." 1 S. Cuthbert of Lindisfarne, f 687 (March 20) ; S. Aldhelm of Sherborne, f 709 (May 25) ; S. Osmund of Salisbury, f 1099 (December 4) ; and three virgins viz., S. Edith of Wilton, f 984 (September 16) ; S. Frideswide of Oxford, f 735 (October 19) ; and S. Winifred of Holywell, seventh century (November 3). 1 "Unas palabras de S. Antonino," etc., in the Vida de S. Teresa de Jesus, por. el p. Fr. de Ribera. I am obliged to quote from the Latin Vita B, Matris Teresce de lesu Carmelitarum excal- ceatorum [etc.]. Auctore R. P. Francisco Ribera ex Hispanico sermone in Latinum convertebat Matthias Martinez, because I THE WITNESS OF THE SAINTS 35 The fame of the great saints is not subject to change, and their inheritance is enduring : they have a true Apostolic succession. Yet they shine not alone, but as the great constellations in the heaven spangled with stars. When the memory of others is forgotten theirs lingers, and is eloquent above the noise of unhappy divisions, as voices pleading in Christ for godly union and concord. " And in the after-silence sweet, Now strife is hushed, our ears doth meet, Ascending pure, the bell-like fame Of this or that down-trodden name, Delicate spirits, pushed away In the hot press of the noon-day. And o'er the plain, where the dead age Did its now silent warfare wage O'er that wide plain, now wrapt in gloom, Where many a splendour finds its tomb, Many spent fames and fallen mights The one or two immortal lights Rise slowly up into the sky To shine there everlastingly, Like stars over the bounding hill. The epoch ends, the world is still." l cannot get a copy of the Spanish, and the Bodleian Library has none : "Aliqua hie depropta verba D. Antonini Archiep. Floren. Quantum autem nobis (qui tenebris involuimur) permittitur iudicare de Sanctis, per conjecturas et praesumptiones ex gestis eorum arbitror ambigere neminem, plurimos Beatos utriusque sexus non canonizatos ab Ecclesia, imo nee nominates, non fuisse minoris meriti, et inferioris glorias multis Catalogo Sanctorum adscriptis. Non nam canonizatio adjicit ad meritum, vel praemium essentiale Beatorum, nee decernit sanctitatis gradum, sed venerationem temporalem et gloriam, ut post ipsam possit solemniter officium celebrari et festivari, quod alias fieri non dicitur" (p. 469). 1 New Poems, by Matthew Arnold, p. 176. 32 36 THE ENGLISH SAINTS They show what is possible by their splendours of achievement in victory and sacrifice. They show the life of matured growth. They are raised for ensample, after the manner of Him Whom they followed and Who made them holy. And thus " the histories of the saints are written as ideals of a Christian life ; they have no elaborate and beautiful forms ; single and straightforward as they are, if they are not this they are nothing. For fourteen centuries the religious mind of the Catholic world threw them out " the words are the well-known ones of James Anthony Froude 1 "as its form of hero worship, as the heroic patterns of a form of human life which each Christian within his own limits was endeavouring to realize." One word in conclusion as we pause at the entrance to our survey. Let no man think that it is possible truly to understand these lives without studying, and living, measureless though the distance of the imita- tation, the life of Christ the Master. " He is only perfect and fulfilled when He is united to all His 1 Short Studies on Great Subjects (1881), vol. i., p. -557. Cf. S. Wulfstan's consolation of his friends when he lay dying : " Cessent gemitus, vacent fletus, non est enim ista vitae amissio, sed vit?e commutatio. Neque umquam vobis deero, sed quanto, lutea compage soluta, Deo fuero prassentior, tanto ero in auxiliam celerior. Me impetrante, accedet vobis prosperitas, me propulsante, discedet adversitas. ' " Felix lingua," adds William of Malmes- bury, "qua? de abundanti penu conscientise tarn secura verba in hominum aures auderet effundere. Alii suspiriis et singultibus agunt ut pro se oretur, ille pro aliis se oraturum pollicebatur. Quid istuc est miraculi ? An nullius peccati conscius erat ? Immo loquebatur sancta simplicitas ; simplicitas nescia de Dei diffidere misericordia" (William of Malmesbury, Gesta Fontificum, edit. Hamilton, pp. 287, 288). THE WITNESS OF THE SAINTS 37 members, the saints." 1 They are only understood in the light of His sanctification, for " He that sanctifieth and they that are sanctified are all of One." In the words of S. Leo the Great : " He so adorns the whole body of the Church by unnumbered bestowals of spiritual gifts that by the rays of One Light the same splendour is everywhere manifest : nor can the merit of any Christian be aught else than the glory of Christ." 2 The union of the saints with the Sanctifier is not only that of His nature with theirs, but that which they have with His. 3 You may begin your study with the belief that here is all history, or anthropology, or a problem of psycho- logy or philosophy, but you are brought up before you have lived long in the company of these heroes of faith by an invincible consciousness that either all this is a reflection, a reproduction of something that is eternally true, a "sweet plagiarism" 4 of the life of Christ, or the whole is meaningless and inexplicable- it never happened, truth of life is not truth, and evi- dence brings no conclusion. In the end all returns to Christ. These lives are no delusion, for they have profoundly and permanently affected men ; and they are all based, built on Christ, and are, in Him, the manifestation of eternal truth among outward things. 1 M. Olier, Lettres, ii. 475. 2 Serm. LXIII. (De Passione Domini, xii.). 3 "Not merely the union which He has with our nature, but the union which we have with His" (Wilberforce, The Incarnation, p. 203) : and "It is Christ's manhood which binds men through Sacraments to His mystic body" (Ibid., p. 232). 4 I think the phrase is that of Archbishop Alexander, but I do not know where it is to be found. LECTURE II NATIONAL SAINTS "And He showed me a river of water of life, bright as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb, in the midst of the street thereof. And on this side the river and on that was the tree of life, bearing twelve [kinds of] fruits, yielding its fruit every month : and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations." REV. xxii. i, 2. THE inspired Seer is looking for the salvation of men through the gifts of God, the " fruits of Paradise " of the Book of Esdras 1 " wherein is healing." It is a prophecy of which the lives of the saints are the vivid presentation in the history of Christendom. The Gospel of Christ, the power of Him Who sanctifies, act in different nations by divers portions and in divers manners. Each race has its contribu- tion of character to bring, transformed and vivified by the Spirit of God, into the Holy City. As the water of life makes fertile the land, the trees bear their fruit, of different kinds, but all good : and with the fruit come also from the tree the leaves that heal old sores, and bring new life in grace. The common features of saintliness are indelible : but the infinite character, the Divine, which is to be 1 2 Esdras vii. 53 (123). [38] NATIONAL SAINTS 39 imaged among men, implies for its presentation by human agents a variety which yet does not hide the central, the essential unity. " The world's hymn which mounts up to God is a harmony, not a unison." 1 No leaf is exactly like its fellow on the same tree. The single thought of God is manifested in endless variety. In the tendency to vary biologists have found a spring of all progress. National characteristics cannot be ignored in the history of the Church of Christ. If in the Church the spring of progress comes from the inspiration which stirs to life all that is lovely and of good report, if it modifies and elevates rather than simply accepts national characteristics, it is always in and through them that it acts. There is in a sense One Type alone for the disciple, but in another sense there are national types which emphasize particular qualities that are touched and sanctified by Christ. And this has always been recognized by the nations as they lived in the fold of the Church. One type of character, strong with distinct and obvious excellences, has appealed to them, one by one, as showing forth best the life of Jesus for example among men. It has been a type which has represented what most their best and wisest spirits knew that they lacked : or it has been one which has shown in full purity and strength the virtues which seemed inherent in the character of the whole people. The influence may have been one 1 W. C. E. Newbolt, Priestly Blemishes, p. 153. Of the indi- vidual the writer well says " It is all-important that we should remember that our perfection lies in the direction of developing what we are, and that God, Who made no leaf like its fellow on the same tree, wishes that man should cultivate unity in variety." 40 THE ENGLISH SAINTS of contrast, or of familiar example raised to its highest power : but in each case it has knit itself into the national life, so that each great nation is fitly repre- sented in its contribution to the Catholic sum of virtues by saints as it were of its own choice, whom the popular reverence has hallowed. A significant example meets us, at our starting-point, in the history of the Eastern Church. No more complete example of the union of the national hero with the national saint can be found than in Russia. After the half-legendary Olga comes the great converter King. Far more than Alfred the West Saxon, S. Vladimir the Great (? 968-1052) is the type of the unity of the nation in Christ. 1 "The Clovis of Russia," a sensual and passionate barbarian,' 2 felt amidst his profligacies the need of a religion that could elevate and control. In turn the Bulgarians of the Volga urged him to accept Islam, Germans the Christianity of the Pope, Jews the Judaism of the medieval Rabbis. Acutely he questioned each ; and he accepted none. By slow argument a wise man of 1 The great authority for S. Vladimir is the Chronicle of Nestor (Nestorova ili pervonachalnaya Lyetopis), of primary value for the period from the second half of the ninth century to the beginning of the twelfth. I use the edition of M. Louis Leger, Paris, 1884 {Publications deVecole des langues orientales vivantes}. An earlier but vague authority is the monk Jacob. See M. Ldger's Introduc- tion, p. viii. Nestor, chapters xl.-xlvii. Nestor also contains much about Olga (chapters xxi., xxvii., xxix.-xxxi., xxxiv.). 2 See Thietmar, Chron., vii. 52. Rambaud, Histoire de la Russie, ed. 4, 1893, pp. 55, 56. Gibbon, speaking of his marriage, adds characteristically, "Wolodomir and Anne are ranked among the saints of the Russian Church. Yet we know his vices, and are ignorant of her virtues." NATIONAL SAINTS 41 the Greeks, pointing his lessons by the holy pictures which he carried, won him to the faith of the Crucified : and when his envoys came back from Constantinople with tales of its glory he accepted the religion of his grandmother Olga, and won a wife from Basil and Constantine, the Emperors of Rome. He returned from the Greek city of Kherson a Christian and a missionary. The picture of the Last Judgment 1 that had won him from his sins seemed ever before his eyes. If he converted his people by force, a stronger argument was the change of his life. Chaste, peace- able, generous, the words were always on his lips when men asked him to punish the crimes of others, " I fear to sin." He is the great Slav saint, to whom the historians and the people looked back as the native hero, the type of Russian civilization. Russian art as well as Christianity dates from his magnificence of patronage. He is the first of the great prince saints who taught the Russians to find their Fathers in the leaders of the Christian State no less than among the priests. He stands in the East like Clovis, or ./Ethel- berht, or Eadwine, Stephen of Hungary, or Olaf of Norway, the founder of a Christian people. 2 From him the saints of Russia take their tone. The popular martyrs, Boris and Glyeb, master and servant, brothers in love, 3 were murdered by the heathen Sviatopolk, and the memory of their heroism was never forgotten. Eighty years after their death their festival 1 Nestor, cap. xl. 2 So the great statue now at Kiev, where he stands holding the Cross and overlooking the Dnyepr where, in 988, he saw his people baptized. 3 Nestor, cap. Ixvii. 42 THE ENGLISH SAINTS was already the most popular in the Russian Kalendar. 1 They typified renunciation, as Vladimir typified mis- sionary zeal. Theirs was the strong, silent endurance which lies at the heart of all that is best in Russian life. It appears again in S. Alexander Nevski, the " Camillus of Novgorod," warrior and statesman, a noble figure in days of darkness and humiliation when Russia was under the heel of the Mongols. He held out bravely against the Western Powers: Innocent III. in vain tried to procure his submission to the Papal claims. Here he was a true national hero. But in his submission to the Mongols and his preservation of his people from destruction at their hands he showed again that strength to endure and wait which gave in the end the victory to his nation. The regeneration of Russia finds its beginning in his work. 2 The same mark lies on all the saints of that great Empire. Zosima and Savvatii, whose shrines are pre- served in the great monastery of Solovetski on the 1 When Poland (through Lithuanian conquests and union of crowns of Lithuania and Poland) obtained West Russia, the Poles found it necessary to conciliate their Russian subjects by putting the festival of SS. Boris and Glyeb into the Roman Kalendar as that of SS. Romanus and David which names Boris and Glyeb had also received in baptism. Cf. P. Verdiere, Origines Catholiques de feglise russe, Paris, Lanier, 1857. Skazanie o sb. Borisye u Glyebye^ S. Petersburg, 1860. A church of SS. Boris and Glyeb stands on extreme north-west limits of Russia, and marks the frontier of Russia over against Norway, near Varanger Fiord. Engelhardt, Russian Province of North (Eng. trans., 1899). 112-113. My best thanks are due to Mr. C. Raymond Beazley for kind help in regard to the Russian saints. 2 From the time of Peter the Great he has become a national hero. His title Nevski comes from his famous victory on the Neva over the Swedes. See Rambaud, Hist, de la Russie, pp. iSS^S 8 - NATIONAL SAINTS 43 White Sea, Triphon the Apostle of the extreme North- West, and Theodorite his companion, who abide in the reverential memory of the Orthodox Lapps, all show the ideal which the life of Christ presents to the Russian heart. The absolute surrender of all worldly prospects makes the union of political and religious enthusiasm possible. To the Russian missionaries there is no separation between their Empire and their Church. In no country in the world do the saints represent more clearly the highest aspirations of the national life. All the established institutions seem to hold together through this combination of hagiology and historic patriotism. 1 The icons of the national saints are everywhere seen, everywhere venerated : of their lives every Russian seems to know something and to cherish the lesson. So their memory lifts men to God in Christ. If we turn westwards we find, with emphasis now greater now less, the same significance of national saints. It is true that " in Germany, notwithstanding some general reverence for S. Boniface, each kingdom or principality, even every city, town, or village, had its own saint." 2 The great sees have all their own great saints, Mainz, Trier, Koln, Augsburg : 3 and the 1 The revolutionaries on the other hand make boast of throwing over all national traditions. " Neither God nor Tsar," says one of their poems. 2 Milman, Latin Christianity, ix. 8r. Some 200 saints are in- cluded in F. Heitemeyer's Die Heiligen Deutschlands, Paderborn, 1888, a series of popular uncritical biographies arranged according to the Kalendar. 3 Cf. for instance Leben und Thaten der Heiligen deren Anden- ken besonders im lUsthum Trier gefeiert wird . . . Von einem Priester der Diozese Trier, Trier, 1837. 44 THE ENGLISH SAINTS North reverences S. Adalbert the Apostle of Prussia. But the types were not divergent : they embodied, in a marked degree, the same characteristics, and they may very fitly be represented by the examples of S. Wynfrith and S. Elizabeth of Hungary. Wynfrith, 1 a Devonshire man, an Exeter monk, a famous preacher, was filled with the missionary en- thusiasm which was so early developed in the English after their conversion. The name of Boniface, 2 most 1 See Jaffe, Monumenta Moguntina ; Diimmler, Epp. Bonif. in Mon. Hist. Germ., Epist., torn. iii. : Richter, Annalen des Friin- kischen Reichs, i., pp. 188 sqq. : Vita by Willibald in Acta SS. Boll., June I, pp. 453 sqq. (abridged in Nova Legenda Anglice, i. 122 sqq.} : see also list of authorities in Sir E. Maunde Thompson's article in the Dictionary of National Biography, v. 346. See also Prof. Dr. Oelsner, Zur Einfiihrung in die Lektiire der Boni- fazischen Brief e, Berichte des freien deutschen Hochstiftes zu Frank- furt a\M., New Series, xii. 130-135. H. G. Schmidt, Die Ernen- nung des Bonifatius zum Metropolitan v. Koln, a Kiel dissertation, 1899. And also, Analecta Bollandiana, i. 49. 2 (i) Prof. Dr. Oelsner, Der Name des heiligen Bonifatius, in the Berichte des freien deutschen Hochstiftes zu Frankfurt a\M., New Series, xiii. 97-105 (1897). The Facts : Even in- his first years on the Continent B. still called himself Wynfrith {Epp. 9 and 10, Jaffe and Diimmler). In later letters he employs the old name when writing to old friends in England, etc. Ep. 31 (Diimmler 34), 86, 39. In purely conti- nental correspondence he is merely B. The Dispute: Willibald (Jaffe, Mon. Moguntina, p. 451) says the Pope gave him the name B. at his consecration as bishop, 30 Nov., 722. But the Pope wrote to him as B. on 15 May, 719, Ep. 12. Cf. also Ep. 14 and 16 (15). The usual conclusion is that Willibald's informants have confused B.'s two visits to Rome, by a fault of memory. Oelsner agrees. (2) Dr. A. J. Nlirnberger, Die Namen Vynfreth-Bonifatius, ein historisch-kritisches Refcrat, Breslau, 1896, thinks Willibald is correct, and assumes that Wynfrith already had the cognomen NATIONAL SAINTS 45 probably his cloister-name, was that with which he went forth under the direction of Gregory II. to convert the heathen Germans. From the partly Christian Bavarians and Thuringians he passed to Frisia, which was to be the scene of his most severe labours. In Hessia and Thuringia too he laboured, and elsewhere he preached the Gospel to the savage hordes who lived amid the trackless forests and on the " cold and dreary deserts " - so his early biographer calls them of Germany. The life of Boniface, written by a simple- minded monk who was the companion of his missionary journeys and the sharer of his dangers, tells how he penetrated into lands w r here no Christian foot had trod and stood face to face with gloomy superstitions and horrid rites, with sacred groves, and human sacrifices, Bonifatius in England, to which the Pope gave an official character at his consecration (Niirnberger, p. 91). He finds four examples in Bede : Aeddi Stephanus, Biscop Benedictus, Huetberht Euse- bius, and Berctgils Bonifatius. But in the third of these the familiar name was dropped, not retained, when the man became abbat. But Willibald's statement is too clear it must mean that the Pope gave him a name which he had not previously had. Cf. the case of Willibrord who in 695 was consecrated at Rome with the name Clemens. Perhaps from this case Willibald and his informants came to think it was at Boniface's consecration also that he received his new name. Orthography of name. Niirnberger shows that Bonifatius, not Bonifatius, is more correct. The form with c encouraged the etymology from bonum and facere ; that with / might be fromfatt (the good speaker, Ei}0?7/uos or evdyye\os] or from fat um (eirrux???). These etymologies occur already about 750 (solita beneficentia, Ep. 103 Jaffe, 105 Diimmler) and without doubt in biographies before 800. But in giving the name the Pope was only thinking of a name which had already been borne by 17 saints and 5 Popes, not of Wynfrith's own personal characteristics (Oelsner and Niirn- berger). 46 THE ENGLISH SAINTS and altars reeking with blood. With his own hands he felled the sacred oak of Geismar. Great as a missionary he was great also as an organizer. Germany dates her first ecclesiastical constitution from him. For twenty years the fellow labourer of the English- man S. Willibrord, he never lost touch with his native land. Many English, men and women, joined him as missionaries. He corresponded with Cuthbert Arch- bishop of Canterbury as to the condition of the English Church. 1 For nearly forty years he laboured, "in journeyings often, in perils of robbers, in perils of the heathen, in perils in the wilderness, in perils among false brethren, in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness ": and as the years went on he had the care of all the German churches. Next to the interest of the missionary was the interest of the theologian in his heart. " Though I am the last and least of the messengers of the Church," he wrote when in England, " I pray I may not yet die wholly without fruit for the Gospel." The strong dogmatic interest that has always been conspicuous in the land of Luther was inaugurated by the Apostle of Germany. When he received consecration as bishop he made, as was the custom, his formal profession of belief in one great 1 Jaffe, Mon. Mognnt., p. 200 ; see Dr. R. Schwemer, Bonifatius und die frommen angelsachsischen Frauen, in Berichte des freien deutschen Hochstiftes zu Frankfurt a/M., New Series, xii., 321-326 (1896), which traces the relations between England and the German mission-field. The best known members of this mission were SS. Willibald, Wunibald, Lioba, Tecla, Walburga. S. Lullus of Mainz and S. Burchardus of Wurzburg were both from Malmes- bury ; S. Wigbert from Glastonbury. Most of the nuns were from Wimborne, the foundation of Ina's sister S. Cuthburga. NATIONAL SAINTS 47 doctrine of the faith. Some would choose the Divinity of Christ, some the personality of the Holy Spirit, as the subject for a theological dissertation. Boniface chose the doctrine of the Undivided Trinity. 1 His later years were filled with contendings for the faith as he understood it. Great as a theologian and as an organizer, the interest he held most dear was still that which has given to England the heroic fame of many a martyred missionary. When he was seventy-five, after nearly forty years of labour among the Germans, he was murdered with fifty-two of his companions and converts on the Whit Sunday (755) when he had planned to give confirmation to those he had baptized. He forbade his companions to resist, and cheerfully incited them to win the martyr's crown. 2 " For a long time I have earnestly desired this day," he said in his own native English tongue. " Be strong in the Lord and bear with thankful endurance whatever His grace sends. Hope in Him and He will save your souls." So to the last he showed the simple trustful devotion of his character. Above his talent for organization was his talent for affectionate friendship, 3 above his intellect the life purer, fuller, truer than that of the men around him : and beneath that the inherited tenacity of the Anglo-Saxon race. 4 His blood was indeed the seed of the German Church : and his memory, the force of absolute devo- tion, the keenness of dogmatic interest, the courage 1 Willibald, Vita S. Bonif., in Jaffe, p. 450. Juramcntum in Epp. S. Bonif., Ibid., p. 76. 2 Willibald, Jaffe, pp. 464, 465. 3 Cf. Ep. 31. 4 Cf. Hauck, Kirchengeschichte, I. 575-578. 48 THE ENGLISH SAINTS even to death, were the cherished ideals for centuries of the German people. 1 In England too his memory was reverenced from the first. The name of S. Boni- face was inserted among the saints by a synod in 756, a year after his death. 2 Probably the two Herwalds, martyred by the wild Germans in spite of their " satraps " early in the 8th century, were placed in English kalendars as well as those of Gaul. 3 Great though the honour of S. Boniface be, the distinction of the " dear S. Elizabeth," 4 the type of piety, domestic and practical, is unique. Elizabeth of Thuringia, 5 like S. Boniface, was a 1 Albert Hauck, Kirchengeschichte Deutschlands (1898), I., pp. 430, 431, denies to him the title of Apostle of Germany. "Willibrord on the other hand," he says, "deserves the title of apostle of Friesland." 2 Epistola Cuthberti ad Lullum, Haddan and Stubbs, Councils, iii. 391, "In general! synodo nostra ejus diem natalicii illiusque cohortis cum eo martyrizantis insinuantes statuimus annua fre- quentatione sollemniter celebrare." Bishop Stubbs in his private letter "Joint Action of Convocations," 1887, does not count this as a national synod. 3 So MS. Vitell. A., xviii., quoted by Warren, Leofric Missal, p. xxiv. Bishop Stubbs, in Diet. Chrn. Biography, does not how- ever mention this. 4 " Di liebe sente Elyzabeth," Friedrich Kodiz, translation (1314- 1323) of a supposed Latin life of Elizabeth's husband, quoted in Boerner (see below, next note), pp. 494, 496. 5 F. X. Wegele's article, " Die heilige Elisabeth von Thiiringen," in von Sybel's Historische Zeitschrift,v. 351-397 (Miinchen, 1861), was the first biography founded on a critical estimate of the original authorities. Karl Wenck's " Die heilige Elisabeth" in the same journal (New Series, xxxiii. 209-244, 1892) limited the number of authentic sources still further, and subjected even their contents to rigid criticism. Wenck had previously written a book on Die Entstehung der Reinhardsbrunner Geschichtsbiicher (Halle, 1878). and an article, " Zur Entstehungsgeschichte der Reinhardsbrunner NATIONAL SAINTS 49 foreigner ; she was by birth a Hungarian princess, but as a saint she is wholly German. 1 Her deeds of sacrifice were done for Germans on German soil : Historien," in the Neues Archiv der Gesellschaft fur alter e deutsche Geschichtskunde, x. 97-138 (Hannover, 1884), and he was now able to make use of the researches of G. Boerner (Zur Kritik der Quell en fur die Geschichte der heiligen Elisabeth , etc. Neues Archiv, etc., xiii. 433-515, 1887), and H. Mielke (Zur Biographie der heiligen Elisabeth, doctoral dissertation, Rostock, 1888; also a work, Die heilige Elisabeth, in the Sammlung gemeinverstdndlich wissenschaftlicher Vortrdge, edited by Virchow and Wattenbach, Hamburg, 1891. A protest against some of the conclusions of their advanced criticism was made by Emil Michael, S. J., Zur Geschichte der heiligen Elisabeth, in the Zeitschrift fur katholische Theologie^ xxii. 565-583, Innsbruck, 1898. The original authorities accepted by the critical historian as first rate are two in number, (i) The letter of Conrad of Marburg (Epistola Conradi) to Pope Gregory IX., dated 16 Nov., 1232, respecting Elizabeth's claims to canonization, printed in Arthur Wyss, Hessisches Urkundenbuch^ Erste Abtheilung, I. 31-35, Leipzig, 1879, one of the Pvblicationen aus den k. preussischen Staatsarchiven. Other documents of the years 1232-5 relating to the same matter are in Wyss, numbers 28, 35, 43, 54. (2) The Libellus de dictis IV. ancillarum S. Elizabeths, a work compiled in 1236 from the sworn statements of Elizabeth's maidens at the inquiry in 1234 with reference to her proposed canonization ; printed in J. B. Mencke's (Menckenius) Scriptores Rerum Ger- manicarum, ii. 2007-2034, Lipsire, 1728. From these two sources all the other biographies are drawn, including that by Cassarius of Heisterbach (written not later than 1237, never printed in full, but excerpted in Boerner, 503-6) and that by Dietrich of Apolda, written in 1289, which Kingsley used for The Sainfs Tragedy, and which is printed in Basnage's edition of Canisius, Lcctioncs Antiqucc, iv. 116-152, Amstelaedami, 1725. The Annales Reinhardsbrunnenses were thought by Wegele (who edited them, Thiiringische Geschichtsquellen, i., Jena, 1854) 1 Indeed she lived in Thuringia from the age of four. Dietrich of Apolda, i. i (from Bertold's Annals, Boerner, p. 506). 4 50 THE ENGLISH SAINTS and the legends of later times, rich in poetry, are of German growth. They belong characteristically to "the ages of Faith." 1 An extreme scepticism has played with the historical records of her life : but facts emerge that are indis- putable. She was married at fourteen to Lewis IV. of Thuringia. She was a devoted wife, 2 who bore with to contain information from Bertold, the chaplain of the Land- grave Lewis, which Dietrich of Apolda copied. But it has been shown by Wenck and Boerner that the Annals have under- gone various revisions, and that only the political part of the Annals from 1200-1228 can have been copied by Dietrich, since the rest, legendary, is not Bertold's work at all, but a I4th century compilation from Dietrich himself, who got the stories either from oral tradition (" interrogavi personas antiquissimas et veraces," he says in his preface) or from an unknown source like the two sermons which he had read (also mentioned in the preface). All that I know of S. Elizabeth, as well as much relating to S. Boni- face, I owe to the most valuable help of Mr. L. R. M. Strachan, Lektor in the University of Heidelberg. The details in the notes are practically all his. 1 So Montalembert called his life of her " une legende des siecles de foi." Hist, de S. Elisabeth, 1836, p. vii. 2 Like all medieval saints she thought much of the glory of virginity. " Ipsam querelosam reperiens, -quod aliquando fuerit conjugio copulata et quod in virginal! flore non poterat presentem vitam terminare," Ep. Conradi, p. 32, 11. 23-25. Repeated by Dietrich in the form, " querulabatur tamen dolens, quod virginalis decorem floris non meruit conservare," ii. i. Caesarius of Heister- bach, in one of the few passages where he is not dependent on the Libellus, says : " Cumque beata et venerabilis virgo Elisabeth ad nubiles annos pervenisset, contra cordis sui desiderium nobilissimo principi Ludovico Landgravio desponsata est et matrimonio juncta," Wegele, p. 370. Boerner (p. 470) says Ciesarius must have invented the statement. But of her affection for her husband there can be no doubt at all. She accompanied him on his NATIONAL SAINTS 51 sorrow her husband's absence on Crusade and suffered bitterly at his death. Of her children she said that she loved them as she loved her neighbour, evidently re- ferring to the Gospel rule to love thy neighbour as thyself. 1 journeys, "maritum secutura ad magnam diastam," Libellns 2015 B. He cheerfully tolerated her nocturnal prayers, even when one of the maidens, going to wake Elizabeth, pulled his toe by mistake for hers, Ibid., 201 5 D. When he was away she dressed like a widow, but when he returned she put on festive apparel to welcome him, Ibid., 2016 A. Her love, mingled with submission to God's will, is seen in her prayer at Lewis' funeral : " Uomine, gratias ago tibi, quia in ossibus mei mariti multum desideratis misericorditer es me consolatus. Tu scis, quantumlibet eum dilexerim : tamen ipsum dilectissimum tibi a se ipso et a me in subsidium terras [sanctas] oblatum non invideo. Si possem eum habere, pro toto mundo eum acciperem, semper secum mendi- catura. Sed contra voluntatem tuam, te teste, nollem eum uno crine redimere. Nunc ipsum et me tuas gratiae cdmmendo. De nobis fiat tua voluntas," Libellus 2021 B. Cf. also the stories (from tradition according to Boerner) in Dietrich, iv. i, 3, 6 ; and another story in the Reinhardsbrunn compilation of 1293, Mencke, ii. 1992-3. Of the critics Wenck is the most sceptical, going so far as to say (p. 211) that the later tradition which makes Elizabeth a loving wife and mother is part of the reaction against asceticism. But even he admits (p. 231) that in her Eisenach period she combined her many charities with attention to family duties. 1 She was obliged, however, to part with them, her confessor desiring to wean her from every earthly affection. Conrad, Ep. p. 33. Libellus 2023 A. Of herself "Item beata Elyzabeth puerum ejus anni et dimidii habensaetatemjussit omnino removeri a se, ne nimis diligeret eum, et ne per eum impediretur in servitio Dei," Libelhcs 2030 D. "Deo teste pueros euro ut alium proximum ; Deo commisi eos, faciat de eis quod sibi placet," Ibid., 2022 D. Dietrich, vii. 6, in reproducing the first of these passages, says : " Vide nunc evidenter, quomodo triumphat gratia de natura, et super earn praevalet excellenter." As to Conrad's influence : " Dixit etiam [Irmengardis], quod consvevit plurimum 42 52 THE ENGLISH SAINTS But her sympathy went out everywhere to the poor and the afflicted. She was a true disciple of Christ after the fashion of S. Francis, whose rule she eventu- ally adopted. To him she dedicated the hospital she built : and it was quite in his manner that she said to the Franciscans who were showing her the decoration of their church at Marburg : " It had been better to spend the money on your food and clothing than on these walls ; for you ought to carry the subject of these pictures in your hearts." 1 And again on a similar occasion she said, " I have no need of such a picture, because I carry the subject in my heart. " s So long as her husband lived she performed the duties of her station with exemplary regularity. She managed to combine with the austerity of cloistered saints the joyful activity of a busy worker in the world. The combination was by no means rare in the Middle Ages, and indeed is reproduced with remarkable similarity a few years later by S. Louis. Her charitable work began with single acts, small and great, such as the gift of her robe to a poor woman, 3 and the building of a hospital at Eisenach : 4 but when her husband was with the Emperor Frederic I. in Italy she dealt with the timere Mag. Conradum beata Elyzabeth, sed in loco Dei, dicens : Si hominem mortalem tantuin timeo, quantum Dominus omni- potens est timendus, qui est Dominus et Judex omnium ?" Libellns 2029 A. 1 "Ecce melius posuissetis hanc expensam in vestibus vestris et victualibus quam in parietibus, quoniam hanc sculpturam ymaginum in corde vestro gerere deberetis," Libcllus 2031 A. ' 2 " Non habeo opus tali ymagine, quia earn in corde meo porto," Ibid., 2031 A. 3 Libellus 2016 C. 4 Ibid.) 2017 C : see next note. NATIONAL SAINTS 53 famine of 1226 by an organized system of relief. 1 Lewis when he returned fully approved her action. 2 A legend tells how he once lifted up her cloak to see what she was carrying on one of her errands of charity, and the loaves she was carrying were turned by a miracle into roses 3 ; and again when his mother in horror told him his wife had laid a leper in his bed God opened his eyes and he saw there the Crucifix. 4 1 " Eodem tempore marito suo in Apuleam ad imperatorem proficiscente per universam Alemanniam caristia gravis est suborta . . . Jamjam soror E. . . . precipiens . . . hospitale fieri, in quo plurimos infirmos et debiles recollegit, omnibus etiam elemosinam ibi requirentibus caritatis beneficium large distribuit, et non solum ibi, sed in omnibus finibus et terminos sui viri juris- ditionis, omnes suos proventus taliter evacuans de quatuor viri sui principatibus," Conradi Epistola, p. 32, 11. 25-34 ; cf. Boerner, p. 481. " Item tempore generalis famis et karistiae, Lanthgravio profecto ad curiam Cremonensem, omnem annonam de suis grangiis specialibus collectam, in pauperum elemosinis expendit . . . Cum itaque multitudinem pavisset, sic usque ad novas fruges omnibus, qui poterant laborare, dedit camisias et calceos,' Libellus 2017-2018. Dietrich of Apolda, iii. 6, 7, combines these two accounts. 2 Dietrich, iii. 8. Conrad, Ep. p. 32. Libellus 2019 A. 3 In 21 of the 1 5th century rhymed German Life of Elizabeth (by Johann Rothe, who died 1434 according to Boerner, p. 433), Mencke, Scriptores Reruui Germanicarum, ii. 2067. The same story is told of several other holy women, notably of Elizabeth's namesake, S. Elizabeth Queen of Portugal (died 1336), from whose life the legend may have found its way into that of our saint. See Zurbonsen, Die Rosen der hi. Elisabeth, in Der Katholik, 79, 2 (= 3rd Series, 20), pp. 481-490, Mainz, 1899. 4 First told in a revision of Dietrich's Life made by a Rein- hardsbrunn monk in 1293 (cf- Boerner, p. 491) : "Quo comperto, socrus [Sophia, the mother of Lewis] apprehensa filii manu, duxit ipsum ad lectum dicens : Recognosce modo, quod hiis Elysabeth solet inficere stratum tuum. Tune aperuit Deus interiores principis oculos, viditque in thoro suo positum crucifixum. Qua contem- 54 THE ENGLISH SAINTS Thus she was accepting the Franciscan ideal of practical charity : and as the influence of her stern confessor Conrad of Marburg grew stronger, and as her own sorrows lay heavy on her, she turned more and more to a life of rigid asceticism. Her husband died in 1227, after six years of married life. His brother cast her out, and she suffered great privations. In 1229 she renounced the world and placed herself entirely under the orders of Conrad, and retired to Marburg 1 and devoted herself entirely to the hospital which she founded and to other charitable works. Conrad endeavoured to restrain her severities : he forbade her to take the veil, or to become a mendicant, or to run risk of infection. 2 But her domestic life was over, and placione emendatus plus princeps rogavit sacram conjugem ut tales in strato suo frequencius collocaret. Intellexit enim quod in membris suis infirmis fovetur et suscipitur Dominus Jhesus Christus," Mencke, ii. 1990 C. So in 20 of the metrical German life, "Got von hymmell der vns geschueff | Der thet Ime seine innern ougen auf | Das er ein gekreutzigt bylde fandt," Ibid., 2067. 1 " Me licet invitum secuta est Marpurc," Ep. Co?iradi, p. 33, 1. 14. "Ad mandatum Magistri Conradi Marpurch se transtulit," Libellus 2021 C. Wegele (p. 393) believes the Libellus, Wenck (p. 237) believes Conrad. The only way to reconcile these con- flicting statements is to suppose that Conrad yielded unwillingly to entreaty, and against his better judgment authorized her to come to Marburg (cf. Michael, 577). Marburg was hers by right of dower, but she had to find shelter in a dilapidated hovel outside, till a rude house was built for her in the town. Libellus 2021. 2 " Utrum in reclusorio vel in claustro vel in quo alio statu magis posset mereri me consultans . . . cum multis lacrimis a me poposcit, ut earn permitterem hostiatim mendicare. Quod cum proterve ei negarem . . .," Ep. Conradi, p. 33, 11. 1-4. " Item cum esset in majori gloria sua, multum affectabat men- dicitatem, et cum ancillis suis frequenter de paupertate tractabat," etc., Libellus 2018 C. Mielke and Wenck quote her prayer at NATIONAL SAINTS 55 for the two years that remained to her she was entirely a Franciscan. As such on November 17, I23I, 1 she died and as such she was buried. The canonization of so notable a saint was not long deferred. 2 The miracles 3 that were told everywhere of her were acts of charity and mercy such as might flow naturally from her gentle and loving spirit, and the memory that was fragrant in all Germany, that was her husband's funeral as a wish to be able to go about begging with Lewis : " Si possem eum habere, pro toto mundo eum acciperem, semper secum mendicatura," Libellus 2021 B, but Wegele and Michael give it the meaning, "even if I were obliged to spend my life in beggary with him." Caesarius of Heisterbach records Elizabeth's wish for a country life in a very pleasing- passage : " Vellem nos tantum habere terram aratri unius et oves ducentas, ita ut vos terram eandern manibus vestris excoleretis et ego oves mulgerem. Ad quod verbum lantgravius subridens et simplicitati eius congratulans iocose respondit : Eya, soror, si haberemus terram aratri unius et ducentas oves, non essemus pauperes, sed divites," Boerner, p. 504. "Virginem sibi leprosam me nesciente assumpsit procurandam et in domo suo abscondit . . . Quo percepto, parcat mihi dominus ! quia verebar earn infici inde, gravissime castigavi," Ep. Conradi^ P- 33> 11- 3 2 "37- " Mag. vero Conradus bono zelo hoc prohibebat licet essent opera misericordise et de genere bonorum, contagioso morbo leprosorum timens nobilem ejus teneritatem infici vel corrumpi, et ideo arcebat earn a familiaritate et attractu et deoscula- tione eorundem," Libellus 2023 B. 1 " On the day following the Sunday before the octave o S. Martin," Postea dominica, que fuit proxima ante octavam Martini, Conradi, Ep., p. 34, 11. 16, 17. In the bull of canoniza- tion, Ibid. p. 53, 11. 24, 25, the date of her death is given as November 19, and is generally so stated, although it is really the date of her burial. Michael, p. 566 n. ' 2 The bull was issued in 1235, Wyss, Hessiches Urkimdenbuch, i., No. 54. 3 Wyss, i., No. 28. Boerner, pp. 434-442. 56 THE ENGLISH SAINTS cherished by thousands of pilgrims, 1 and that was but temporarily checked by the savage excesses of the Reformation, 2 was a memory of the power of holy simplicity and love. 3 Such out of the mass of local German saints are the two great names which emerge, simple and heroic figures, worthy patterns of virtues characteristic of a great people. Where national feeling was at an earlier date unified and fostered by State and Church, it was easier than in Germany to unite in veneration of special types of sanctity as represented in striking individual character. France has no doubt as to her typical saints. 4 S. Louis is no less a saint because he is, as Gibbon long ago said, 1 As to buildings, relics, etc., see J. B. Rady, Urkundliche Geschichte der Reliquien der heiligen Elisabeth, in Der Katholik, 71, 2 (3rd Series, vol. iv.), pp. 146-164, 254-258, .333-345, 398-413, 507-527, Mainz, 1891 ; A. Scharfenberg, Die Wiederauffindung der Gebeine der hi. Eliz., Mainz, 1855. 2 Rady, 406-7, yet Luther admired S. Elizabeth (Wenck, p. 243). 3 As such it is preserved in modern German poetry e.g., Her- mann Iseke, Derlieben heiligen Elisabeth von Thiiringen gottselig Leben und Sterbcn. Eine gereimte Erzcihlung. Heiligenstadt, 1895. Alberta v. Freydorf, Die Rosen der heiligen Elisabeth. Eine Legende in drci Acten. Karlsruhe, 1886. Robert Weissenhofer, O.S.B., Die hcilige Elisabeth von Thiiringen. Schatt spiel in Prosa. Linz a. D., 1876 (3rd ed., 1893). / Friedrich Zurbonsen, Die heilige Elisabeth i>on Thiiringen in der neueren deutschen Poeste, Stuttgart, Kathplische Vereinsbuchhandlung (noted in the Theolo- gischer Jahresbericht for 1900). 4 Even M. Ch. Petit-Dutaillis in his contribution to M. Ernest Lavisse's great Histoire de France, while frankly ignoring the Christian aspect of the question, places together Joan of Arc and S. Louis, and says of the former that she " avec Saint Louis est le charme et 1'honneur de notre ancienne histoire" (tome iv., fasc. 5., p. 70). NATIONAL SAINTS 57 "a king, a hero, and a man." 1 He is the pattern of Christian chivalry, and the French genius was never more gloriously embodied than in his person. A clear stainless face looks at us from the fresco of Giotto, a face over which sorrows have passed and left only the mark of God's grace which met them. So the soldier- saint stands forth in the inimitable portrait of Joinville. A soldier, every inch of him, quite fearless, simple, unhesitating, the soul of honour: a king who thought ceaselessly of the good of his people and how to govern them well and loyally : 2 a truth lover, like the English Alfred : 3 above all a lover of God. So the gallant old knight who loved and revered him shows him to us : " Before I recount to you his great deeds and his chivalry, I will tell you what I saw and heard of his holy words and good teachings, that they may be found in their order to edify those who shall hear them. This 1 For S. Louis the authorities are chiefly those which were collected for the canonization. The process of inquiry begun in 1273 was resumed 1297, and Boniface VIII. declared that the mass of documents submitted in the latter year was more than an ass could carry. Little is discoverable in the Vatican, but parts are to be found in the Memoires de la Soc. de Fhistoire de Paris, etc., xxiii. (H. Delaborde) : the most notable of the authorities are Joinville, hist, de S. Louis (ed. Wailly, 1890) and Guillaume de Saint-Pathus, Vie de S. Louis (ed. Delaborde, 1899) ; of modern books the lives by Marius Sepet, 1899, and F. W. Perry. 2 Histoire, ed. Wailly, p. 8. He had for his whole people that love which made him reply so sharply to Charles of Anjou in the retreat after Mansourah "Si je vous suis a charge ddbarrassez-vous de moi, mais je n'abandonnerai jamais mon peuple." Notices et Documents, published by the Societd de 1'histoire de Paris, quoted by M. Langlois in Lavisse, Hist, de France, iii. 5, 32. 3 Histoire, p. 8. " Si sainz roys ama tant veritei que neis au Sarrazins ne vout-il pas mentir de ce que il lour avoit en convenant" where the implied contrast is significant. 58 THE ENGLISH SAINTS holy man loved God with all his heart and imitated His works ; and this appeared in that as God died for the love which He had to His people, he put his body at venture many times for the love which he had to his people ; and he could have done otherwise if he had wished." 1 That indeed is the note of this type of medieval saintliness. Louis, with all his political and ecclesi- astical difficulties, was to a great extent an absolute lord. " He could have done otherwise if he had wished." All the little lords in their districts upon which the royal power was surely encroaching, could do as they wished, and did. Men did not only what was right in their own eyes, but, as the candid English monk said a century before, what was wrong. 2 And so the contrast was strange when a great King, a warrior, a wise man, the son of a clever masterful woman, the grandson of a statesman of extraordinary astuteness, showed that what he willed was to serve his people and to live according to the law of God. " God has given me all I have : what I spend thus is the best spent of all," he said when he was reproached for lavish almsgiving : it was so with his spending of him- self. He did not profess to be a theologian. He thought the best argument that a layman could use with an infidel, if he attacked the faith, was to run him through the body. 3 But that saying by no means 1 Histoire, ed. Wailly, p. 7. 2 William of Newburgh, lib. i., c. 22. 3 " Mais li horn lays, quant il ot mesdire de la loy crestienne, ne. ins doit pas desfendre la foy crestienne, ne mais de I'espe'e de quoy il doit donner parmi le ventre dedens, tant comme elle y puet entrer." Ed. Wailly, p. 23. NATIONAL SAINTS 59 represented his own practice : he delighted to draw Jews and Saracens to Christ by the bands of love. 1 He had indeed all the delicacy, the delightful inconse- quence, of a child, and with it a courage that never faltered in the most difficult times. His devotion was touched by no shadow of weakness. His life of prayer gave him continual strength and energy. He was a doughty knight and in enterprise no man of his time surpassed him. Threats of torture or of instant death left him unmoved. When the master of his ship ad- vised him to leave it because it had struck upon a rock, " Sir," he answered, "I have heard your opinion and the opinion of my people : but now I will give you back mine, which is that if I leave this ship there are more than five hundred people on board who will stay in the isle of Cyprus for fear of their lives (for there is not one who does not love his life as I love mine) and who will never peradventure return to their own land. Wherefore I had rather put my body and my life and my children in the hand of God than that I should do such hurt to so many people as are here." 2 His fear- lessness and his charity remained the striking marks of his character to the end. Perseverance alone crowns the other virtues, says one who knew him well, 3 and so in works of love and justice, humility and pity, devotion and holiness, he ended his life gloriously in the service of God in Whom he had trusted. 1 See G. de Saint-Pathus, pp. 20, 21. The same writer tells how he spared the Saracens whenever he could, and hesitated to punish criminals if he could give them chance of a better life, and how he for- bade all reproaches against those who had apostatized from the faith. 2 Joinville, Ed. Wailly, p. 264. 3 Guillaume de Saint-Pathus, pp. 152, 153. 60 THE ENGLISH SAINTS By the side of the warrior and statesman King, France places a young girl as hero and saint. The figure of Joan the Maid is unique in the history of the world. 1 An untaught child of eighteen, brought up in a far-away village, among poor, labouring folk, came to inspire the disheartened armies of France, to save cities, win battles, bring a king to the crowning, and then, as suddenly as she had appeared, to pass from the world the victim of tragic hatred and superstition. It is possible to explain much of the wonder of the work she did. Already at the beginning of 1429 the English were finding themselves incapable of controlling the great country that their forces had overrun. An insurrection in the Gatinais showed the weakness of their position : troops that they sent to reinforce the besiegers of Orleans could not penetrate to the city. The Burgundians were never more than half-hearted allies. The young King was incapable of being a leader, and there was no one among his advisers who had wisdom to see the whole situation at a glance, to plan or to provide. A great man on either side could have made France his own. The leader came at the moment of the deepest need, and she was a girl. 1 See the Prods, etc., collected by Quicherat (1841-1849): and La Vraie Jeanne d'Arc, by J. B. J. Ayroles : and the interesting English collection, Jeanne cFArc, by T. Douglas Murray. M. L. Petit de Julleville's Life contains the "Decree concerning ' the cause for the beatification and canonization of the venerable servant of God, Jeanne d'Arc," January 27, 1894. The process is not yet complete : but the correspondence between the Pope and the French bishops, published in La Croix^ February 3, 1903, shows that the beatification is imminent. See Analecta Botlandiana, torn, xiv., p. 453. M. Chevalier, L Abjuration de Jeanne rfArc (1902) is a valuable recent addition to the literature of the subject. NATIONAL SAINTS 61 The military genius of Joan of Arc is a question for soldiers to debate. At Orleans certainly she saw with the instinct of a master the right point to seize upon. At Patay and at Troyes the work was in no small degree her own. In the scheme of campaign which she instigated she was undoubtedly wise. Yet very probably all that she did in military matters was but the instinct of enthusiasm, fired by a higher and religious aim. She had come to save Orleans and to crown the King, and when these two great achieve- ments were accomplished her work was done. 1 1 Mr. Douglas Murray inclines to the view that she recognized that all was over when Charles was crowned at Rheims. He thinks that the letter to Henry VI. is of doubtful authority " And her appeal to Charles after the coronation to be allowed to return to her father and mother, supported by contemporary authority, seems to show that she looked upon her work as done, and the great outburst of weeping in the cathedral was in all likeli- hood the sob of satisfied piety and patriotism, whose cares were at an end and whose task was fulfilled even to fruition." But he is in error in thinking that " the latest French students agree "with this view. M. Ay roles denies it. M. Charles Fetit- Dutaillis, in his account of the Pucelle, published in 1902 in the fourth volume of the great History of France written by col- laborators under the direction of M. Ernest Lavisse, proves the opposite opinion to be correct. He has no doubt of the authenticity of the letter to the English of March 22nd, 1429, which declares that she was come les bouter hors de toute France. Before her judges at Rheims she declared that she had told Charles that she was come to give him all France. What she said, after the crown- ing, in the hearing of the Bastard of Orleans, was only une bontade passagcre. She had, indeed, bought herself a house at Orleans, intending to go and live there among the people she loved : she had no thought of returning to Domre'my. Not a single document, among all the letters, treaties, documents of all sorts edited by M. Quicherat in his great collection, or the Italian letters recently published in the Chronicle of Morosini, limits her mission to the 62 THE ENGLISH SAINTS But, however far her mission may have been thought to extend and men wrote to ask her advice about the Papal Schism and declared that she prophesied a Crusade and the delivery of the Holy Sepulchre it was essentially from first to last a mission of religion. In her childhood, when others were dancing round the sacred tree on which she, too, hung her garland, she was innocent of the old pagan superstitions that still lingered round the oakwood and the fountain. Only she saw S. Michael and S. Margaret and S. Catherine, the leader of the hosts of God, the young shepherdess who had conquered demons, and the virgin of her own age who had confounded the wisdom of the pagans. She heard the holy voices which willed her to deliver France ; and when she knelt in the little village church before the Host she "wept abundantly with great tears." " Do you know," they said to her at her trial, "if you are in the grace of God?" " If I am not," she answered with a magnificent simplicity, " May God place me there ; if I am, may God so keep me. I should be the saddest in all the world if I knew that I were not in the grace of God. But if I were in a state of sin, do you think the Voice would come to me ? I would that every one could hear the Voice as I hear it." She had vowed her virginity to God. Her courage was consecrated at His altars, her ignorance taught by His revelations. Throughout her whole career of victory, delivery of Orleans and the crowning of the King. To the last, in prison and at point of death, Jeanne was not sure that her work was done, that her voices would not again call her forth to champion the cause of France. NATIONAL SAINTS 63 as in the darkest hours of her imprisonment and perse- cution, she was ever asking to confess, to hear Mass, to communicate. She sought always, consciously, to walk with her Father, with all the simplicity of a peasant and a child. If her brilliant imagination, that saw war and statecraft with such clear insight, personified her thoughts and visualized the inspiration that came to a brave heart, who shall wonder ? She hesitated in the hours of her despair, she even for the moment denied ; but at the end, as she was dying in torment with the cross held " upright on high before her eyes until. the moment of death " by the faithful Dominican who had ministered to her, she cried out that her Voices had not deceived her, and she called on Jesus to the last. Joan is unique in Christendom. She was a saint because she loved God ; a genius because God-inspired; a national saint because she typified, as none other did, all the military and Catholic and racial aspirations of medieval France. Thus she goes down to posterity with S. Louis. They are the two genuine heroes and saints of France, where heroism and saintliness always reached their highest expression in union. S. Louis gave France concentration of power ; Jeanne d'Arc " saw the possibility of a great French nation, self- centred, self-sufficient, and she so stamped this message on the French heart that its characters have never faded." We see her as the men of her own day saw her ; " mounting her horse, armed all in white, save the head, a little axe in her hand," so says a letter of 1428, "and then, turning to the door of the church, which 64 THE ENGLISH SAINTS was quite near, she said, in a gentle woman's voice, ' You priests and clergy, make processions and prayers to God.' Then she turned again on her way, saying, ' Draw on, draw on,' her standard flying, borne by a icious page, and her little axe in her hand." Strange union, the little axe and the crucifix ; yet it is in that union that there lay the glory of medieval France, the glory of courage and sacrifice, the glory of S. Louis and the Maid. Chivalry and religion, the ideal that rises easily from the life of the individual to the life of the nation, from almsgiving to patriotism, such is the Christian appeal as it conquers and inspires the French. Among other Latin nations the course was different. The petty local politics and incessant quarrels of urban democracies made men turn from the society to the individual. The ideal is not one of national endeavour, but of personal service. It is that which is stamped with the very marks of Christ. E poi che, per la sete del martiro, nella presenza del Soldan superba predico Cristo, e gli altri che '1 seguiro, ei per trovare a conversione acerba troppo la gente, e per non stare indarno, reddissi al frutto dell' italica erba. Nel crudo sasso intra Tevere ed Arno da Cristo prese 1' ultimo sigillo, che le sue membra du' anni portarno. 1 In Italy, land of incomparable riches of history and tradition and the art of all ages, there stands out no national saint. The endless divisions, not yet healed, have prevented any common acceptance of a saintly 1 Dante, Paradiso^ xi. 100-108. NATIONAL SAINTS 65 ideal by north and south. There are many names that are not to be forgotten. Among women, S. Catherine of Siena, and the mystic who made a real contribution to theology, S. Catherine of Genoa, 1 are saints of the whole Church : and S. Francis 2 stands beside them, or above. Many of these have still an interest that is local and historical, that belongs to a definite era, to a particular city. The interest of medieval Siena for example culminates in its saints, in the wise and loving S. Catherine and in the inspiring and zealous S. Bernardino. In the fourteenth century Siena " was at once the most turbulent town in Italy, the home of discord and restlessness, and the city of saints, winning for itself the title of the Ante-Chamber of Paradise." M. Joly in his " Psychologic des Saints " has dwelt on the abounding and beautiful sympathy apparent in the life of S.' Catherine, instancing her winning the con- fidence and thus the repentance of a young knight con- demned to death for murder. " lo allora sentivo un giubilo ed un odore del sanguine suo, e non era senza F odore del mio, la quale io desidero spandere .per lo dolce sposo Gesu," wrote Catherine. She was the Saint of Peace, the saint who dared to teach a lesson of duty to the Popes of the Middle Age. 1 The Treatise of S. Catherine of Genoa on Purgatory, approved by the Sorbonne, June io, 1663, as "a rare effusion of the Spirit of God upon a pure and loving soul, and a marvellous token of His solicitude for His Church and His care in enlightening her and assisting her according to her needs," is a reverent exposition which might well be regarded as an Eirenicon. 2 It is unnecessary to give detailed references to the sources for the life of S. Francis as this is most exhaustively done by Professor Little in the English Historical Review, October, 1902. 5 66 THE ENGLISH SAINTS But S. Francis approaches most nearly to the position of a Saint of all Italy. More than anything else this is due to the genius of brother Ugolino, the author of the Fioretti which is still familiar to little children in the schools and remains the most popular of all books over the whole land. Filled with the romance of his native country, the simple friar, so pure in his insight, and so vivid in his realization, painted an immortal picture of the Saintly life as it was lived in the Middle Ages, on the back-ground of the enchanted country between the Apennines and the Adriatic, the land of Monte Giorgio, the heart of Italy. 1 The portrait that he gives of Francis of Assisi bears in its simplicity the certain touch of truth. Ugolino, it is true, draws himself when he draws his master. It is a singularly fresh, simple, childlike character, with its unfailing belief in the love of God and the essential goodness of all that He has created. But it is, at the core, poetic, imaginative, sym- pathetic rather than realistic. The Fioretti embodies the true genius of religious Italy ; it is indeed fit to be called " the breviary of the Italian people." The character 1 So M. Paul Sabatier in the Preface to his edition of the Floretum, p. v. " La richesse du sol et le bien-etre n'y ont pourtant pas, comme dans d'autres pays, transforme le serf de jadis en un animal dgoiste et mate'rialiste, en un etre qui a de'sappris de souffrir, mais n'a pas appris a penser : ici le paysan est gai, ouvert, simple, fin, accueillant, enjoue'. Son sentiment religieux tres vif est fort different de celui des habitants des Abruzzes ou de la Romagne. L'Eglise n'a pas encore re*ussi a ddtruire en son cceur le culte de la nature, et au soir des jours d'etd, lorsque les chars rentrent les montagnes de gerbes, les cantiques a la Madone, chantes a voix stridente par les jeunes filles, alternent avec de myste'rieuses hymnes d'origine paienne que les hommes redisent sans les comprendre, comme une sorte de liturgie." NATIONAL SAINTS 67 of S. Francis, as Ugolino Brunforte saw it, is one of very clearly marked lines. Humility, an intense belief in the reality of God's daily revelation, a perfect sub- mission to His will, a deep feeling for the pathetic and the humorous, an unstinted love of man, those are its charac- teristics. Legend already, in the sixty years that have elapsed, plays about the details of the Saint's life : we have passed beyond the simple records of S. Bona- ventura and Thomas of Celano and brother Leo. There could not indeed be a better example of the share of history and of legend in the process by which the saintly life which posterity reverences is built up. The main outlines are quite clear, quite historic. About the char- acter itself there is no doubt. It is the details, here and there, that have been touched, the strange visions that have been amplified. Unconsciously the writer who has so long meditated on the simple wonder of Christian goodness is carried up to heights of glorious expectation. " Go," says Christ to S. Francis, and it seems that the message has come into the heart of brother Ugolino, " Go and visit thy brothers and give them drink of the chalice of the spirit of life." 1 Much that was terrible lay before the brethren, in which they should taste the bitterness of sin : but those who had drunk of the chalice " were translated by the power of God to the place of life, of light and splendour." 2 The life of humility, and obedience, and sacrifice, was for them always the true life, and when they followed their Lord along the way of sorrows they carried always in 1 Floretum, ed. Sabatier (1902), p. 196. 2 Ibid., p. 199. It should be noted that the English translation of the Italian, by T. W. Arnold (London, 1898), does not represent the authentic Latin text. 52 68 THE ENGLISH SAINTS their hearts the memory of the little brother Francis who had taught them. As he bore the stigmata, they bore in their lives the marks of his sacrifice, the lessons of his love for the poor of Christ. The Italian character found a true representation of one side of its rich expe- rience, and the ideal of S. Francis passed into the life of the people. It is not a critical, combative, masterful, type: it is far from the ideal of those who take the kingdom of heaven by violence. It is rather meek, peaceable, easy to be entreated : all its victories are won by love and self-sacrificing devotion. It is that ideal which has preserved to the Italian peasants, as the centuries of oppression have drawn on, the voice of God's compassion in the daily stress of suffering. Like the Christ they have found " Men's hearts hardened, and the tender lips Of women loud in laughter, and the sobs Of children helpless, and the sighs of slaves, And priests with dead lies for the living truth, And kings whose rights were in their people's wrong. And looking, the miraculous tender eyes, Upon these perishing and gone astray, Lifted the hands of help, alone, unarmed, Struck singly out, and dashed upon the rocks. ***** So that for ever since, in minds of men, By some true instinct this life has survived In a religious immemorial light, Pre-eminent in one thing most of all ; The Man of Sorrows ; and the Cross of Christ Is more to us than all His miracles." 1 1 The Disciples (i2th edition, 1898, p. 105), by Mrs. Hamilton King, who has so wonderfully understood the Italian character in its highest aspect, and the special appeal of Italian saintliness. So Archbishop Benson (Life, ii. 565) on "il glorioso capitano de' oppressi popoli." NATIONAL SAINTS 69 The picture does not owe its vigour to art or legend. Already the lines are clear in the Speculum Perfectionist written within a few months of the Saint's death. Full of brightness and vivacity, full of enthusiastic zeal for the reform of the Church, a chivalrous knight of the Faith, as he thought were Charlemagne and Roland and Oliver and the holy martyrs, 2 ready to die like them, and while he lived to stand as a protest against the book-learning which does not profit, and to take for his motto scientia inflat et caritas czdificat, he set before his age the example of an absolute denial of private aim and private interest. And in all this, like a true son of the Italian sky, he showed how unfailing were the springs of joy even in the life of pathos. " It belongs to the devil to be sad, to us ever to rejoice in the Lord and be glad." 3 In the extremity of his asceticism Francis preserved always the genuine human feeling of a simple-hearted man. Very human, very pitiful, is the ideal of Italian saintliness, and truly those who have followed it and they have been among the noblest champions of Italian liberty have not been far from the kingdom of God. They have been translated by the power of Christ to the place of life and light. 4 1 Ed. Sabatier, Paris, 1898. 2 Pp. 10-11. So he called his friars knights of his round table, P- 143- 3 P. 1 88. 4 It is characteristic too that S. Francis was so anxious, when he obtained, through a vision of our Lord and His Mother, the excep- tional privilege of a plenary indulgence for all those who having confessed with true penitence should visit the chapel of Portiuncula, to procure a great benefit for the whole Church without any profit for the Friars. See M. Sabatier's Un nouveau chapitre de la vie de S. F. A. (Paris, 1896), and F. Francis Bartholi Tractatus de 70 THE ENGLISH SAINTS The era of the Reformation brought with it a number of new Saints to the Roman Church of the Continent : some of them such as S. Carlo Borromeo or S. Cajetan 1 or S. Philip Neri 2 typically Italian. But none of them can be said to have left such impress on national ideals as S. Francis of Assisi. From Italy we turn naturally to Spain. It was only Indulgeniia (Paris, 1900). Contrast the view, due doubtless to insufficient information, of Abp. Benson, Life, ii. 564. 1 On S. Cajetan see the Life by M. de Maulde La Claviere. Of the genuineness of Cajetan's very highly emotional life there can be no doubt. His position is among the abnormal saints, those whom Professor James in his Varieties of Religious Experience strangely regards as typical. The foundation of the Theatines bore little relation to the normal life of the Church. Their founders were men of striking personality ; their position was for the moment unique. That is in brief their history. But the work of Cajetan and Sadolet had, M. La Claviere thought, a wider scope. It was to justify the Renaissance in the economy of Christianity. " Is it not true that, as Sadolet said, the supernatural or super- human element of life does not replace or destroy the natural life, but crowns it? Religion's highest justification is its moral side, its provision of a reason for living." But the Renaissance was justified far more truly by Erasmus, and More, and by the Reformation. 2 On S. Philip Neri see the Life newly revised by Fr. Antrobus, 1902. The Life was originally written in 1837. It was translated, with omissions, under the direction of Cardinal Wiseman. It is now re-issued complete, with the addition of a few notes. The most important change in the English edition is the insertion of all the miracles. On these it is not necessary to say more than that they are recorded " for the devotees of the saint," and that we may at least endorse the opinion of Father Antrobus that they " are of themselves most interesting reading, and, moreover, give a graphic picture of Italian life in the beginning of the seventeenth century ; they also help us to understand better the rapid increase of devotion to Saint Philip in Italy." NATIONAL SAINTS 71 in the sixteenth century that the characteristic type of Spanish sanctity was developed, the type of stern reality and concrete faith, the type of S. Teresa and S. Juan de la Cruz. But in earlier days when the land was struggling to be free there was a different type, The warrior saint San Fernando who made so good an end to his life of war is an example of the fact that the duty of Crusade, in the stress of the Moorish occupation, overshadowed and, it might seem, superseded all other Christian duties. Thus his son Alfonso el Sabio wrote of him, summing up the days that lay beyond the great Christian victories of his life " And the days of his life after that Seville was won were three years and five months, in which time, as in all his life before and after, he served God loyally, and they could never prevail with him to return to Castille. But his eye was fixed to pass over the sea to conquer that part of heathendom (la morisma) that lies beyond . . . and it was certain that many Princes of great lands would have yielded to him had he crossed thither, and thus he had won more lands and more again beyond had God so willed and lengthened his life. For in him was no remissness but ever his heart was set to do battle with the enemies of the Lord God, the Blessed." 1 The claim to holiness lay in the Crusading spirit. But always the knighthood claimed to be Christian : 1 On S. Ferdinand see his life by his son Alfonso el Sabio Coronica de Espana, ed. Fl. Docampo, Zamora, 1541, pt. iv., cap. 1 1. It is worth noticing that contemporary chroniclers speak warmly of his domestic virtues. Lucas de Tuy, for instance, speaks of his great reverence for his mother, comparable to that of his cousin S. Louis. 72 THE ENGLISH SAINTS even the Cid, buried in Moorish dress, was vindicated by the popular voice for a Christian saint. 1 Such are the men whom Calderon, the great Christian knight of letters, immortalized in his idealization of El Principe Constante, one of the noblest pictures of medieval Christian aim that man ever drew. 2 1 On the Cid see Dozy Recherches sur Vhistoire de f Espagne and H. Butler Clarke, The Cid, preface p. iv. Philip II., who, says M. Dozy, would have burnt him if he had lived in his reign, en- deavoured to procure his canonization. 2 There is a great similarity between the story of S. Edmund the East Anglian King and the chief thought of El Principe Constante. There the Prince in captivity may have his life if he will give up a city to the Moors. Like Edmund, he will not place his people under heathen rule. (El Principe Constante, Act II., Sc. 2.) (I use, but slightly alter, D. F. McCarthy's translation.) " Were it well so to occasion This contingency of sin By our conduct ? * * * # Is it right, one life should cost Many lives ? And that one being Of no import if 'twere lost ? Who am I ? Am I then greater Than a man ? for if to be A Prince makes a distinction, I'm a slave. Nobility Cannot be a slave's adornment, I am one : . . . And if so, who gives advice That the poor life of a captive Should be bought at such a price ? Death is but the loss of being ; I lost mine amid the fight : That being gone, my life departed. Being dead, it is not right That so many lives should perish For the ransom of a corse !" NATIONAL SAINTS 73 But in one aspect at least the Spanish saints represent a very different type from the Italian. Though both take their starting-point from the doctrine of sacrifice, there could hardly be a greater contrast than between S. Francis of Assisi and S. John of the Cross. 1 The Spanish saint was an ascetic of the most extreme order. His vigils, fasts, penances, discipline, were carried to an excess which seriously interfered with the work set before him. Yet he was a genuine reformer, one of those whose determination, and devotion, and humility revived the internal strength of the Spanish Church And then he closes his life with an appeal to all sufferers to look to the end, to the cross of Christ, to the victory of Christ, which sanctifies suffering and glorifies faithfulness. " Let this convince All of you in pains and sorrow, How to-day a Constant Prince Loves the Catholic faith to honour And the law of God to hold." Calderon when he wrote his magnificent drama had sounded to the bottom the intense loyalty of a Christian people to the memory of an heroic death. The " Constant Prince " is a picture of the faith of medieval Christianity in all its strength and self-sacrifice it is in poetry what Englishmen for centuries remembered that King Edmund had been in act. See Lecture IV. 1 The two well known English lives greatly resemble each other. Mr. Baring-Gould adds only some extracts from the writings of S. Teresa to what was written by Alban Butler, whose facts he follows with an occasional sarcastic comment and whose text he frequently quotes verbatim. A highly characteristic example of seventeenth century hagiology is the rare work, embellished with engravings of remarkable interest, the Representation de la vida del bienaventurado p. fr. Juan de la Cruz, primer Carmelita Descalco, por el R. P. F. Gaspar de la Annunciation, Religioso de la Misma Orden. Bruxas, 1678. There is a life, compiled from the early lives, by David Lewis, 1897. 74 THE ENGLISH SAINTS and rendered all attempts at reform on Protestant lines ineffectual. 1 The reform of the Carmelites was indeed a considerable work, though the reformer cannot be compared in the active good he did to S. Francis. He had a true love of God, but his spiritual struggles read like the ravings of one possessed : and in his biographies we have hagiology run mad. Where all is simplicity with S. Francis, with S. John every detail of the life becomes transformed by miracle. When he was a child he discomfited an " inopinado monstruo " which rose at him from a lake : when he was a man his prayers frequently raised the sick and even the dead : and after his death his relics still worked extraordinary cures. All this is told with surprising vivacity by his biographer, Fray Caspar de la Annunciacion, whose moralizing and pertinacious exactness breathes a different air from the childlike love of Ugolino. S. John of the Cross had like S. Francis the stigmata, but the tale is told very differently. Yet in spite of his admirers S. John of the Cross was a true saint. 2 He was the most perfect embodiment of entire humility that an age of strange contrasts had produced. That he might every day of his life suffer for God : that he might not die as superior of his order : that he might die rather in disgrace, and humiliation, and contempt : these were his three con- stant prayers. And with that he said that "he who loves aught save God makes his soul incapable of union with Him and transformation into His likeness, for the vileness of the creature is even less capable of the glory 1 For the early Spanish Protestants see Menendez Pelayo Los Heterodoxos Espafioles, tomo ii. 2 F. Caspar, Representation^ e.g., pp. 82, 245, 274, 310. NATIONAL SAINTS 75 of the Creator than is darkness of light." It was a strange saying in the age of Charles V. and Philip II. His entire and absolute humility afforded a sharp con- trast to the pride of race and creed and valour which carried his nation into excesses of tyranny and persecu- tion, a contrast which the nation needed and which served to keep alive the fire of Divine Love in many hearts. The miracles which were so eagerly collected to do him honour, and on which the miserable Charles II., the last of the Spanish Hapsburgs, based his petition for the beatification, were not the true records of the man who went simply where he was told to go and worked and prayed as the spirit of God guided him in the way. 1 The chivalrous Spaniards knew their faults, and cherished the example that refuted them. But the influence of the great Spanish saints was due most of all to their characteristic sense of reality. Heaven and hell were to them the most real, the only real, facts. It was from this tremendous absorption in a world beyond their sight that they were ready to use, and to defend, any means, however terrible, to save a single soul. While they did not hesitate to inflict pain they were equally ready to suffer it. 2 They exacted submis- 1 S. John of the Cross was beatified on September 14, 1674, by Clement X. and canonized in 1726 by Benedict XIII. But the truest testimony to his worth is the words of S. Teresa, " que el Padre Fray Juan de la Cruz era una de las Almas mas puras y santas que Dios tenia en su iglesia, y que le avia infundido Su Divina Magestad grandes Tesoros de Luz, Pureza, y Sabiduria del Cielo." F. Caspar, op. Y., p. 59. 2 Thus, for example, Admiral Oquendo when he was dying of fever after the Armada's return raved continually for water. At 76 THE ENGLISH SAINTS sion and they were eager themselves to submit. 1 If the Spanish saints were not cruel, as those who do not know them have fancied, they were certainly in a marked degree austere, and they were severe with a severity which became harsh indeed when it touched themselves. Such severity, however, was hardly more than a veil over the abundant human interest of the greatest of Spanish saints, S. Teresa. 2 last when it was seen that he could not recover it was given him. He seized it, paused, and then poured it on the ground. " I offer it in memory of Christ's sufferings," he said, and he lay down to die. A spirit of intense austerity long dominated Spain. It still lingers in the provinces in the type nick-named apostolicos. 1 In 1576 Fray Luis de Leon (one of the biographers of S. Teresa) was set free from his five years' imprisonment in the dungeon of the Inquisition. The students flocked to his lecture-room expecting to hear an eloquent defence of his translation of the Song of Solomon or a protest against his treatment. His lecture began "We were saying the other day. . . ." Villanueva, Vida de Fray Luis de Leon, i. 240. 2 The best lives of S. Teresa are : I. Libra de Su Vida, her autobiography, printed by order of the Empress. It was written in 1562, twenty years before her death. It was examined and officially approved, and it has a preface by Luis de Leon. She says that she was ordered to write " the way of prayer, and the favours the Lord has shown me": she wished, but was not allowed to write her "many sins and worthless life." She says little of events and much of mental states. Of the forty short chapters, seventeen are taken up by a treatise on prayer and say nothing directly of her own experience. 2. Francisco Ribera, S.J., Vida de la madre J^eresa de Jesus. Salamanca, 1590. 3. Fray Diego de Yepes (confessor of Felipe II.), Vida virtudes y milagros de la bienaventurada virgen Teresa de Jesus. Madrid, 1599. 4. Juan de Jesus Maria, Compendium Vita B. Virg. Teresice. Romas, 1609. This life was studied by Paul V. before Teresa's canonization, March 12, 1622. 5. Fray Geronimo Gracidn, Virtudes y Funda- ciones de la madre Teresa de Jesus. Bruselas, 1611. 6. After this NATIONAL SAINTS 77 Her life was indeed a remarkable one, one which it is difficult to conceive outside Spain when the Middle Age was giving place to the ferment of the period of Reform. Teresa belonged in a great measure to the past. Her father was of a noble family, a man of solemn piety touched with sympathetic love. From the first the idea of Eternity was strong in her mind. " Siempre, siempre," she and her elder brother would say when they were children, trying to realize an eternity of bliss or pain. The romance of religion and its sacrifice appealed to her childish imagination, as was natural in such a family as hers. She and her brother as children determined to set out for the land of the Moors and beg to have their heads cut off. When this project failed they set themselves to build hermitages in the garden. Teresa loved solitude, almsgiving, prayer, and she looked back in later years to her child- hood as a state of holiness from which she fell. Her mother died when she was twelve years old, and in the first agony of her grief she besought the Blessed Virgin to be her mother, and it seemed to her that her prayer was heard. But her life was not to be wholly untroubled. She read the old romances and she thought that they led come lives in verse like that of Pablo Verdugo (Madrid, 1615), and books like La Amazona Cristiana by Bartolome Segura (1615). A good Life is that by Fray Juan de San Luis, Hisiorui de la Vida y Muerte . . . de Sta. Teresa de Jesus. Valencia, 1813-14. The most copious Life is contained in 680 pages of the Bollandist Ada SS., Tomus vii., Octobris, dies xv. and xvi. Lastly, there is the life by Gabnela Cunninghame Graham, 1894, a work of much industry, but utterly without religious sympathy or realization. 78 THE ENGLISH SAINTS her away from God : she listened to declarations of love, and seemed to have given up all thought of a religious life. Even when she was placed in a convent at Avila, though she was much beloved (" for the Lord gave me grace to please wherever I might be "), she still hated the idea of a nun's life, and she felt so hardened that " she could read through the whole Passion and shed no tear." An illness for a time caused her to be taken from the convent and placed in her married sister's house, and there she came under good influences and decided to take the veil, though " more through servile fear than love." Her health was always weak, and she suffered from fainting fits, which she regarded as a temptation to excuse herself from the hardships of religion. Her father refused permission to her to take vows before his death. She disobeyed, and immediately on making her profession was overcome by a gladness which never afterwards left her. She was nineteen years old. During the first year her health suffered so much that her father took her away for a year to undergo a cure. She found a book on prayer that helped her, but says that for twenty years she never found a confessor who understood her. She attained " the prayer of quietness and sometimes that of union." l She laments her lack of power of thought and imagination. She could not pray without a book before her. She bewails her lack of patience, the mercenary spirit of her worship stimulated only by fear and hope, and declares she had then little love of God. She laments the harm done her by half-educated and over-lenient confessors, and says that if she had cap. 4. NATIONAL SAINTS 79 died then her soul must have been lost, partly through their fault. After a dangerous illness, she suffered a religious relapse which she attributes to the fact that her convent was not cloistered. She recommends parents rather to marry their daughters however humbly than to place them in such houses. She was warned by a vision of Christ with severe countenance, as also by the sight of a great toad very swift of foot which she believed to be supernatural. For a year she could not really pray, and to ascribe this to humility was, she says, one of her greatest temptations. Nevertheless she con- tinued to receive great favours in prayer, and this tortured her with a sense of her ingratitude. For twenty years her prayers were interrupted by worldly thoughts and her enjoyment of the world by com- punction. She had to force herself to pray and would have gladly accepted any penance rather than this obligation : she dreaded the hour but at- tributes her salvation to her persistence. She had to learn that great lesson which no one expressed more clearly than she, quite early in her life, when she said " I am sure that great evils could be avoided if we clearly understood that what we have to do is not to be on our guard against men but to be on our guard against dis- pleasing God." Such was the interior life of S. Teresa, as her auto- biography reveals it. She might so far seem but one of the greatest of the mystics. But it was as a practical Reformer that this truly Spanish saint won at least an equal fame. She carried through a revival of thorough monasticism 8o THE ENGLISH SAINTS in the Carmelites, by the sheer force of her character, and in the face of the fiercest opposition. And her foundations were the wonder of her age. 1 Busied in ceaseless activities of organization and devotion she yet found time to be one of the most prolific of writers. 12 She combined in an extraordinary degree mortification with cheerfulness, 3 an astonishing thing in the Spaniards of her time. She was witty, gay, supremely natural, at the height of her self-sacrifice. Spain delighted to learn from her that the service of God gave a joyful heart. 4 The history of the attempt to obtain her re- 1 Luis de Leon (Letter to Prioress, Nuns Barefoot of Carmet) says, "The third wonder is that in the space of twenty years, which is about the time that has passed from the first foundation of the mother to that at which I write, she has filled Spain with monasteries in which more than a thousand religious serve God." 2 Her writings fill more than 1,000 small print double column of large 8vo. p^ges in the Biblioteca de Rivadeneyra. a. Method Visiting Convents of Nuns. /3. Book of her Life. 7. Her Reports. 5. Book of Constitutions, e. Book of Foundations. . Precepts of S. Teresa. >?. The Way of Perfection. 6. Concepts of the Love of God. t. The Mansions (of the Soul). K. A small collec- tion of verse, carols, and glosses. X. A collection of over 400 letters. 3 Mr. H. Butler Clarke, to whom I owe everything, here and elsewhere, that I know about Spain, compares, with discreet apologies, the character of " S. Teresa, and of her sisters nowa- days " to that of Pepita Jimenez in Juan Valera's charming study. "The same vigorous sanity and healthiness of mind appears in both, though one is half blinded by human love and the other by a spiritual passion." He notes that the fourth article of S. Teresa's Book of Precepts enjoins cheerfulness on her nuns. See also a very interesting paper by Louis Valentin on the 1890 edition of her letters in the Bulletin de Litte'rature Ecclesiastique 'bublie par Tinstitut catholique de Toulouse, Dec., 1901. 4 Speaking of her nuns Luis de Leon says : " Neither does labour weary them, nor the confinement of the cloister irk them nor sick- NATIONAL SAINTS 81 cognition as the Patron of Spain shows how thoroughly she represented, and was recognized to represent, the new ideals of national life which the end of the Crusade and the era of riches and power brought with them. 1 ness sadden them, nor does death affright or dismay them but rather rejoice and cheer. But above all that which is the greatest marvel is the good will (sabor), if we may so speak, the ease with which they do that which is the hardest. For mortification is their delight : and resignation a sport (juego} and the harshness of penance a pastime. And as though taking their solace and pleasure they actually carry out deeds that astonish nature, and they have turned the exercise of the heroic virtues to a pleasant diversion." It is most notable that Fray Luis de Leon, who wrote the above in a Preface to her autobiography, set forth the Spanish ideal in secular life in his famous La Perfecta Casada, a commentary on Proverbs cap. 31, addressed to Dona Maria Varela Osorio. Though treating of married life it is well-nigh impossible but that he had Teresa in his mind when writing some passages, particularly in the Introduction and in cap. XV. and XVI. (ed. Barcelona, 1884, pp. 97-103) when treating of the text. Fortitude et decor indumentum ejus, et ridebit in die novissimo. Os suum aperuit sapientiae et lex dementias in lingua ejus. A recent book {Studies in the Lives of the Saints, by Edward Hutton) which takes a somewhat ''precious" and patronizing view of the heroes of the Cross says of S. Catherine of Genoa, " like all the saints, she is not concerned either with joy itself or with the joyful." This, hardly true of S. Catherine, is quite untrue of S. Teresa, of whom also the writer says that " to prayer, with its terrible experiences and expressions, its illimitable deserts, its maddening thirsts, its visions and mirages, it is to this she directs herself and us." S. Teresa certainly did not find prayer terrible but perpetual joy. The saints indeed have more than any other characteristic that of " always rejoicing." 1 She was canonized May 12, 1622, with three other Spanish saints, S. Ignacio of Loyola, S. Francisco Xavier and S. Isidore of Seville. See Benedict XI V., De Canonizatiom, vol. xiii., pp. 228 sqq. About 30 years after her death, and before her canonization, began the movement to obtain for her the position of Patroness of Spain. 6 82 THE ENGLISH SAINTS If the fame of S. Francis Xavier belongs to the whole peninsula S. John of God 1 is typically a Portuguese saint, and where the adventurers of that hardy nation The movement gathered strength and was, of course, hotly pushed by the Carmelites at the time of the canonization (1622). In 1626 the Cortes petitioned in her favour and by papal brief of July 31, 1627, she was appointed to share the patronate with S. James. The matter called forth one of the hottest controversies of the age. The old-fashioned Spaniards were wild with indignation that the Son of Thunder who so often had appeared among them on his white horse, as at Clavijo, slaying the infidels should be degraded now that the crusade was complete. The chapter of Santiago de Compostela entered the field, Spain was divided into two camps, pamphlets poured from the press and sermons from the pulpit, and the contending parties did not scruple to review narrowly the lives of the rival claimants. Two most curious writings of the time by Ouevedo the great satirist have come down. I. Memorial por el P air onat o de Santiago. Madrid, 1628. 2. Su Espadapor Santiago, solo y unico patron de la Espanas, to be found in vol. ii., pp. 423-458, Obras de Quevedo. Ed. A. Fernandez Guerra. This was addressed to the King. Quevedo wrote also to the Pope. By Brief of Jan. 8, 1630, Santiago was restored to his position of sole Patron. Still more strange. The controversy after nearly two centuries was revived at the beginning of the XlXth. and in the midst of the Peninsular War (June 30, 1812) S. Teresa was solemnly declared Patron of Spain by the Cortes that made the famous Constitution of 1812. This act of the Cortes was revoked like all others by Fernando VII. on his restoration. See F. Merime'e Vie et CEuvres de Francisco de Quevedo. Paris, 1886. 1 For his life see Obras del Venerable Maestro Juan de Avila (1759), caps. 13, 14, 15, a contemporary account of him by the saint whose sermon caused his conversion. La Fuente, Hist. Eccl. de Espana, v. 297-8 : Gams, Kirchengeschichte i>on Spanien, iii. (2) 193, gives the following note : Franc de Castro, Miraculosa vida y santas obras del b. Juan de Dios. Granada, 1588, 1613 ; Burgos, 1624. Lateinisch in Ada Ss., 8 Mart I, p. 809-814-835. Aus Anlass seinor Seligsprechung erschien von Anton v. Govea, Bischof von Cyrene : Historia de la Vida, y muerte, y milagros del glorioso Patriarcha v Padre de Pobres San Juan de Dios fundador NATIONAL SAINTS 83 went they carried his memory with honour. Among the splendid churches which adorned the great city of Goa, and whose ruins now stand out, wreathed in luxuriant creepers, in the tropical jungle that covers much of what was once the Christian capital of the Indies, there was none finer than that which was dedi- cated in his name. Converted it is said by a single sermon (though his history disproves the tale), he turned the spirit of his race to the service of God. He too went to Africa, but only that he might succour and relieve the slaves. He tended the sick in hospitals, and he founded an order (the Order of Charity) for visiting the sick and poor. Shepherd, soldier, servant, chained slave, peddler of pious books, tortured as a lunatic, a beggar that he might support and nurse the poor, a preacher of conversion, a skilled physician of the soul, his was a life of active beneficence : and the Portuguese could carry out their distant ventures under no happier inspiration than that of his words " Labour without ceasing to do all the good works that are in your power, de la Orden de la Hospit alidad, Madrid, 1624, 4to., und 1632. Cadix, 1647. Erweiterte Ausgabe, Madr., 1669 ; daselbst, 1674. Lateinisch in Acta Sctor., Mart I, p. 835-858. H. Perdicaro, Vita di. s. Giovanni di Dios, Palerm., 1666, 4to. J. Girard, de Villethierry, Vie de s. Jean de Dieu, Instituteur et patriarche de Vordre des religietix de la Charite. Paris, 1691, 410. Wasser- burger, Petr in 1000 Singgesatzen verfasste Lebensbeschreibung Johannis de Deo. Wien, 1767, 8vo. Wilmet, Leben des heiligen Johann von Gott, Aus dem Franzos. Regensburg, 1862. I owe this bibliography to the kindness of the Rev. Wentworth Webster. The life in Baring- Gould's Lives of the Sainls follows Alban Butler's, frequently verbatim, and is drawn from F. de Castro. 62 84 THE ENGLISH SAINTS while time is still given you." He died in 1550.! He was a worthy rival of S. Francis Xavier. S. Francis was like S. Ignatius Loyola a true Basque. The great founder of the Society of Jesus had indeed all the characteristics of that sturdy people in their excellencies and their limitations. He had all the power of organization, the independence, the exclusive- ness, the reticence, the faculty for self-government in a combination of democracy with subordination, which are so strikingly marked in the Basque communities to this day. Still in the Basque country Ignacio is among the commonest names, and the life of the great organizer of the Catholic Reaction has made a profound im- pression on the people. But still S. Francis Xavier is, even to the Basques it would seem, more attractive. By the scattered farm- steads, under the great chestnuts and oaks, are many detached little chapels dedicated in his name, where mass is said on his festival. 2 Yet he belongs, like Ignacio, to a much wider world : and more than any other country Portugal has claimed him for her own. It is at Goa, one of the most wonderful examples of the perfect fitness of the religion of Christ for the peoples of the East, that his body rests, 3 suspended over 1 He was beatified Sept. 21, 1630, by Urban VIII. The Bollandist life was published in 1668 and he is then " B. Joannes de Deo Fund. Hospit" Alexander VIII. canonized him in 1690. 2 I am told that "a lady professing to be a member of his family has lately brought some relics from Goa and is attempting to make them the centre of a special cult." 3 An arm however was cut off in 1614 by the Pope's orders to be taken as a relic to Rome. A particularly devout lady took the opportunity to bite off a toe (some say it was earlier). This I think has not been traced. There are two toes missing now. It NATIONAL SAINTS 85 the altar in the chapel sacred to his memory, devoutly venerated by the simple Indians, who owe their happi- ness in the family of God to the abiding inspiration of his mission. There, in that great city of ruins set in the encroaching tropical forest, are the last and greatest memorials of the greatest of missionaries, gorgeous in their barbaric richness like the Church of Bom Jesus, or bare and simple like the little chapel of the Ecstasy. There, in the cathedral church, is the font in which he baptized hundreds of his converts: there are the splendid gate of the church of S. Francis, through which he often passed, and the ruins of the college and church of S. Paul, where he was when there came to him the overpowering consciousness of the Divine presence which made him cry " Domine sat est." The Portuguese indeed have made S. Francis for them the pattern saint. He embodied their splendid spirit of adventure, their determination and recklessness, their subordination of immediate to far distant fame. He was the pioneer of the great missionary conquests, the organizer of enterprise, the teacher of successful method : and, where temporal power decays, his work, in India at least, is permanent. 1 In Te Domine speravi, non confundar in tzternum. 2 should be observed that the furtive abstraction of relics even for the sake of devotion is sacrilege. Lucii Ferrari, Prompta Biblio- theca, vii., Veneratio Sanctorum, 69. 1 For his method of instruction see Epistola Indica, 1570, pp. 1-17 : for his extraordinary Japanese experiences see Epist. Japan., 1570, his own letters pp. 1-69. 2 S. Francis died December 2, 1552. Miracles, which he had always denied in his lifetime, were soon found after his death ; they were like his life itself miracles of love and faith. He was canonized on March 22, 1622, by Gregory XIII. A very useful 86 THE ENGLISH SAINTS So far we have dealt with real characters, with historical persons whose features legend may have touched but has not obliterated. Our own land may for the moment give us pause as she seems to sum up the qualities she admires, in the medieval choice of her patron Saint. When we name S. George, are we not at once in the midst of fable ? Gibbon, 1 in a famous and inimitable passage, tells that he was a Cappadocian of the fourth century who raised himself from obscure and servile origin by the talents of a parasite, that his patrons procured for him a contract to supply the imperial army with bacon, that " his employment was mean ; he rendered it infamous." He "saved his fortune at the expense of his honour," became a heretic and an archbishop, a persecutor who at last suffered the just vengeance of the people, and then by a strange transformation " assumed the mask of a martyr, a saint and a Christian hero." Thus, he tells us, " the infamous George of Cappadocia has been transformed into the renowned S. George of England, the patron of arms, of chivalry, and of the Garter." That is one picture of the English patron Saint. The other is that which we know from the medieval little summary of his life, works, and cult is Devoto de S. Francisco Xavier, milagroso Apostolo, Defensor e Patrono das Indias. Nova Goa, 1878. 1 Vol. ii., pp. 470 sqq. Professor Bury shows that Gibbon's identification is unsound, and that S. George really existed and was a martyr: the dragon-slaying myth was attached to others also. Professor G. S. Stokes marshalled the arguments for a his- torical and orthodox S. George in the Dictionary of Christian Bio- graphy. But cf. J. Friedrich in Sitzungsberichte . . . d. k. b. Akad. Munchen^ i899(ii), 159-203. NATIONAL SAINTS 87 legends of English monks and Italian artists. He was the son of noble Christian parents, and he was a tribune in the army in the time of Diocletian. Once on his way to join his legion he came to a city called Selene, where there was great trouble and alarm about, a dragon, and to avert its ravages, after the inhabitants had exhausted their supply of sheep as its bribe for not coming too near the city, they were forced to offer their children, who were chosen by lot, and at last the lot fell upon the King's daughter. The King offered all his treasures, and half his kingdom, to redeem her ; but he was reminded of his own edict which ordered the sacrifice chosen by lot. So the princess, clad in splendid robes, went forth to die. Then S. George met her as he rode. " Fear not," he said, " I will deliver you." " Noble youth," she answered, " stay not here lest you too perish with me ; fly I beseech you." But that would he not. " God forbid that I should fly ! I will lift up my hand against this loathsome thing, and will deliver thee through the power of Jesus Christ." So he charged the dragon, and pinned him to the earth with his lance Then the princess led the monster into the city bound with her girdle. Still the people were affrighted ; but S. George bade them " fear nothing ; only believe in God through whose might I have conquered this adversary, and be baptized, and I will destroy him before your eyes." So the King and twenty thousand were baptized in one day, and S. George slew the dragon. 1 Thus our fathers, in 1 I have told the tale, by his kind permission, as it has been retold lately by the Rev. J. L. Fish, Rector of S. Margaret Pattens, London. Milman, in noticing the objections to Gibbon's identifica- 88 THE ENGLISH SAINTS romance picturesque and impossible, thought of the Saint who had slain the dragon and rescued the prin- cess, the pattern of knighthood, fearless and pure, whom no danger and no reproach could touch, stand- ing, as he stands outside Or San Michele at Florence in the sculpture of Donatello, "a chivalrous figure, breathing cheerful and courageous youth," or as in that other statue, on the east wall of the church where Shakespeare lies buried, with his vizor lifted, stern, cold, watchful, ready to defend the right. 1 It was thus, no doubt, that the English warriors thought they saw him when they fought at Antioch, 2 and overthrew by his aid and that of S. Demetrius of Thessalonica, 3 the hosts of infidels ; so he appeared to Richard the Lion- heart. 4 And thus he passed, by the order of a council tion, says happily that " it is much more easy to say who S. George was not than who he was." Latin Christianity, ix. 81, note. See the letter of Ruskin in Fors Clavigera, vol. Hi., letter 26, and the description of Carpaccio's picture in S. Mark's Rest. 1 Among representations, expressing the same idea of chivalrous courage, the great window at S. Margaret's, Westminster, will not be forgotten. There is also a fine figure in a window in Malvern Priory Church. For a list see Archceologia, vol. xlix. (2), pp. 243- 300. 2 William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, ed. Stubbs, ii. 420. 3 S. Demetrius, whose icon is still among the most popular in the East, is represented like S. George as a young knight on horse- back. 4 In the Acta Sanctorum, April, torn, iii., p. 158, 117, there occurs this : " Ita tradit auctor quidam Ms. qui sub Henrico VIII. vixit, scripsitque commentarium cui hunc titulum indidit Institutio clarissimi Ordinis militaris a pr?enobili subligaculo nuncupati. Hie auctor declarat Richardum I. in bello propositum sacro Ordinis instituendi concepisse. Nam cum in Terra-sancta obsidio quasdam illi in longum traheretur, Tandem (inquit auctor iste) illabente per Divi Georgii, ut opinatum est, interventum spiritu, venit mentem NATIONAL SAINTS 89 at Oxford in 1220, into the English kalendar, as a saint whose day was especially to be observed, and by com- mand of Edward III. into the position of patron of the Order of the Garter, and so in 1349 of England itself. 1 Which story and these are far from being the only ones is the most guilty of obscuring the true S. George ? It is a question which might be pressed further. It is sufficient to answer that the George whom Englishmen made their patron saint had the qualities that they most admired, courage, devotion, loyalty, faith. And so he remains, mythical, legendary, quite apart from true history. But he represents an ideal which Englishmen set before them, in which there seemed to reach down to them the virtues of the Divine Christ, as they would have been seen had He lived on earth in their time. So He would have gone about redressing human wrong and treading underfoot, as a good knight, the dragon of cruelty and sin. Parallel to that of S. George is the position of S. James. Historical person, and Apostle, though he was, it was as a slayer of infidels, a warrior saint, that the Son of Thunder appealed to the nation and was given, and retained, the patronage of Spain. So we end our sketches of national saints. Two points seem significant in conclusion. First, it is important to remember that the unity of the saints is more signifi- cant, more lasting, than the variety. Nothing is vital ut quorumdam electorum militum cruribus coriaceam subfibulam, qualem ad manus tune solum habebat, indueret ; quo futuras gloriae memores, etc." 1 There are 193 churches dedicated in his name. See Miss Arnold- Forster's Studies in Church Dedications, ii. 464. go THE ENGLISH SAINTS but what is generally diffused among the national churches that unite in the one Holy Catholic Church. It is very true that to stifle national, even local, feeling in the Church is a policy disastrous to her true interest. " A religion which is not fed by home and local influences is always morbid and usually super- stitious ; a country with which its own Church does not identify itself goes its own way very much without the beneficial influence of the Church, and regards it as something outside, often even as an enemy. A time, we may hope, will come when it will be found possible for a Church to be in real communion without losing its proper and national place among its own people." 1 But none the less the unity is far more important, far more significant, than the variety. If this strong sense of the essential unity of the Church is preserved, there must fall away exaggeration, excesses, superstitions, which belong only to temporary, local, or even national interests. No part of the Catholic Church, no true " particular or national Church," may lack anything which is vital. It is of course true that the life of the Catholic Church is realized in the life of the particular church, but that realization would be impossible if anything were omitted which the general usage of the whole Church, " dispersed through the whole world," has continued to retain as essential. The " tendency to vary " has its dangers. The holiness of the individual life, or of the national ideal, is secure only as it is founded on the one eternal type which Christ the Son of Man has left for the example of mankind. 1 Life and Letters of Dr. Hort, i. 465. NATIONAL SAINTS 91 And, secondly, it may be asked, why should we look for our typical heroes of faith in the Middle Ages ? Why should we go back to an effete ecclesiasticism, to a narrow and ignorant view of the universe ? The answer will best be given in the words of a great bishop of our own day, who thrilled with every wave of modern feeling, and who had no sympathy, not the slightest, for anything strained, or unreal, or effete. Of the great workers, hermit, monk and mendicant of the Middle Age, he wrote these strong words : " They teach us, on a large scale, how God is pleased to use the devotion of sacrifice for the education of the world ; how calculated self-surrender calls out a response greater than all hope ; how social evils are met by a social organization." And " They bring before us with im- pressive force the efficacy of their inspiring principle. They fulfilled their work triumphantly. They vindi- cated great thoughts for our perpetual possession. They made clear by successive victories the reality of the spiritual, the foundation of freedom in obedience, the hallowing of humanity and nature in the poor man, Christ Jesus." 1 Such indeed are the lessons, set for the healing of the nations, that come to us from the typical lives of national saints. Here and there their methods are unsuited to our day, but only because they were so perfectly suited to their own. But their essential principle is an abiding possession, and it contains, under God, all promise for the future of mankind. 1 Westcott, Words of Faith and Hope, p. 55. LECTURE III THE SAINTS OF THE ENGLISH CONVERSION " Remember them that had the rule over you, which spake unto you the word of God ; and considering the issue of their life, imitate their faith." HEBREWS xiii. 7. IT should be possible through the lives of the saints most revered in any country to trace in some detail the influence of the Christian faith upon national character. The saints whom men have most reverenced have generally been those whom, with whatever shrinking and failure, they have been most eager to imitate. The form which Christianity has taken in different lands has been profoundly influenced by the special character- istics of the first preachers. This individual force, a fruitful cause of heresy and schism, has also been a splendid and energizing agency in the conversion of the nations. It is an influence which the Bible always recognizes and asserts. No appeal of S. Paul's is more familiar than that often repeated one to his own services and his own sacrifices, with the demand on his converts for imitation : " Be ye imitators of me, and mark them which so walk even as ye have us for an ensample." 1 1 Philippians iii., 17 [92 ] THE SAINTS OF THE ENGLISH CONVERSION 93 And the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews urges the disciples of the New Covenant to remember those who first ruled them in the name of Christ, and to imitate the spirit of their lives, and if need be the heroism of their fate. In the making of English Christianity we can trace four distinct lines of influence, each represented in a special type of character. We have the Gallican, the memory of the saints who had won Gaul for Christ ; the Welsh, as men came to call it, a distinctly foreign type, widely divergent from the English character ; the Roman, which began the Christian triumph ; the Scoto- Irish, which nobly laboured in the conversion of the North. These in turn we may consider. But first it may be asked, was there not an earlier influence ? Did the first Roman occupation bequeath no perma- nent memory of Christian heroism ? It was natural that the English when they were converted should desire to trace back the Gesta Dei in the land they had occupied to an earlier day. And so at the opening of the fourth century there meets us " the grand and touching scene J>1 of the martyrdom of S. Alban. The story certainly had grown before Bede wrote it down, 2 but it shows at least the English admiration for steadfast courage in confessing Christ. Alban, as men spoke 1 W. Bright, Early English Church History, p. 6. 2 Bede, Hist. EccL, i. 7. It is certain that as early as 429 Alban was revered as a martyr, and S. Germanus visited his relics at Verulamium. This was, according to either of the dates assigned, less than 150 years after the martyrdom. See Plummer, ii. 17 sqq. : Haverfield,^. Hist. Review,]\3\y, 1896, on Early British Christianity: Bishop Stubbs in Diet. Christian Biography. Zimmer's scepticism ( The Celtic Church in Britain and Ireland} is unconvincing. 94 THE ENGLISH SAINTS of him, was the first of a long line of heroes who gave up their lives for the love of Christ. The later tales give him for teacher one Amphibalus, of whom by the 1 2th century elaborate tales are told. But the story of Alban at the first is simple enough. He saved a Christian priest by whose life and teaching he was con- verted and in whose stead he gave himself up to the Roman governor. He refused to offer sacrifice " to devils," and was beheaded. Water dried up, or burst forth, according as the martyr prayed, and the miracles which followed him made persecution cease. In the tenth century he was among the most famous of the national saints. 1 So " among the roses of the martyrs brightly shines out Alban." Thus began William of Newburgh in the twelfth century to preach on the saint whom he claimed as a hero for English and Welsh alike, white from the remission of sins, red with the blood of martyrdom. Happy Britain if she could always pro- duce such sons I 2 Thus the medieval writers found in the legend of the first British martyr an argument for union between the races. Normans as well as English were ready to welcome into full brotherhood those who had given so notable a tribute to the supremacy of Christ. 3 But the story of Alban is hardly to be reckoned among the earliest influences on English Christianity : 1 See his name in the Latin and A. S. Lives, in Liebermann's Die Heiligen Englands, pp. 9, 10. 2 The sermon was printed by Hearne in his edition of William of Newburgh, vol. iii., pp. 874-902. 3 Full blown lives of S. Alban and S. Amphibalus (whose name no doubt comes from no better source than the cloak of Alban) are given in the Nova Legenda. THE SAINTS OF THE ENGLISH CONVERSION 95 and that of his companion, who was most probably simply his cloak, had certainly no influence at all. 1 It was in Gaul that the lives to which the preachers of Christ to the English first appealed for ensample had been lived. Some who spoke of them had seen and known them : of their work there was a continuous tradition and to their characters a continuous popular reverence. Among the special influences of holy lives which operated upon the English folk from the moment of their conversion perhaps the strongest was that of S. Martin of Tours. 2 No life could have been better fitted to impress such a people. 3 It was the life of a 1 On 5. Amphibalus see work by M. J. Loth, 1890 (cf. Bulletin des publications Hagiographiques de 1890 in Analecta Bollandiana, x. 1891). 2 For traces of the influence see Haddan and Stubbs, Councils, vol. i, p. 14, note b. The number of churches dedicated to him in England is over 160. See Arnold-Forster, Church Dedications, i. 434, etc. 3 The chief, and indeed the only original, authority for the life of S. Martin is Sulpicius Severus, who wrote a Life, Letters, and a Dialogue, all concerned with the life and fame of the saint, whom he knew intimately. There are versified lives by Venantius Fortunatus and Paulinus. Of Gregory of Tours M. Fustel de Coulanges said very happily (la Monarchie franquc, p. 5) " il dcrit en eVeque." He deals with facts rather than manners, and he deals with them for edification. But he was a scholar, he quoted his authorities, he endeavoured to see men and principles clearly. Thus his chapter on S. Martin in de gloria confessorum, cap. 4 sqq., his de miraculis S. Martini libri quatvor, and the short account in his historia Francorum all have a distinct value. The miracles were continuous to his time : as he dreamed he saw the multitude at the Saint's tomb and the Saint himself demanded why he did not tell the tale of the wonders that were new every day. (Migne, Patr. Lat., vol. Ixxi., p. 911. In his Liber de gloria confessorum (ibid., p. 832) he tells this tale in witness to the holiness of S. Martin : When the 96 THE ENGLISH SAINTS soldier who set Christ first in his heart, before all earthly loyalties : of a hermit, who even when compelled to enter the world still lived as an ascetic i 1 of a priest, who considered the dignity of the priesthood above all earthly rank : 2 of a bishop, of absolute self-forgetfulness and humility : 3 of a missionary, whose victories were among the greatest that the world has ever known. The simple story that fixed itself upon the imagination of Christendom was typical of his whole life. To him the beggar was ever the Christ, suffering in His members. 4 He could not believe it possible that his Lord was not still crowned with thorns, though He had, once for all, died on Calvary for the sins of men. 5 Saint was praying before the tomb of S. Gatien he cried with tears " bless me, thou man of God." Then a voice was heard, " Te etiam deprecor benedices mihi, serve Domini." He adds, " Admirabantur autem qui aderant eo tempore, et dicebant Eum habitare tune in Martino, Qui quondam Lazarum vocavit ex monumento." There are a number of later lives and studies of much interest : three, for different reasons, as typical of different kinds of interest, may be mentioned. They are La mission et le culte de S. Martin, Bulliot and Thiollier, Autun, 1892 : Life and Letters in the IV. Century, Glover, 1901. On Sulpicius Severus, a French translation of the Vita, with later history of the cult, Viotand Bourasse', Tours, 1893. See also Bernoulli, Die Heiligen der Meroivinger, 1900. 1 Sulpicius Severus, de vita S. Martini, c. 10, and c. 26. 2 Cf. ibid., cap. 20. 3 Cf. ibid., c. 25. Faricius, however, the biographer of S. Aldhelm (Opp. S. Aldh., ed. Giles, p. 369), says of S. Martin after he became bishop, "haud postea tantum valuit in virtutibus quantum prius valebat." His authority cannot count for much. 4 Sulpicius Severus, de vita S. Martini, cap. 3, when he tells how he divided his cloak with the beggar says he had nothing else to give, "jam enim reliqua in opus simile consumpserat." 5 " Ego Christum nisi in eo habitu formaqua qua passus est, nisi crucis stigmata praeferentem, venisse non credam." Ibid., c. 3. THE SAINTS OF THE ENGLISH CONVERSION 97 The extraordinary fascination which he exercised over men, the remarkable success of his great mis- sionary journeys, were no doubt due to some extent to the charm of his presence, that atmosphere of heavenly calm which his biographer says was visible in his face. 1 Besides this irresistible spiritual attraction, he had the power that belongs to a true man who is a man of the people : he was " un saint un peu democratique." 2 He added to his rigid orthodoxy a true charity. 3 These were characteristics which men remembered, and preached about. Thus he was held up as an example. And when the English came to worship with Augustine in the Roman church dedicated in his name at Canter- bury it was this character that they joined in revering and seeking to imitate. But above his personal virtues, it was his wonderful success as a missionary that inspired the enthusiasm of English Christians. It was as the relentless foe of heathenism, and the patient preacher to the pagans, that he was remembered and venerated. Everywhere he destroyed temples : 4 here at least he was contrasted with S. Augustine whom S. Gregory told to preserve and purify them. The 1 "Nemo unquam ilium vidit iratum, nemo commotum, nemo maerentum, nemo ridentem : unus idemque fuit semper, aelestem quodammodo laetitiam vultu pnuferens, extra naturam hominis videbatur. N unquam in illius ore nisi Christus, nunquam in illius corde nisi pietas, nisi pax, nisi misericordia inerat." Sulpicius Severus, Vila, c. 27. 2 So M. Boissier, quoted by Mr. Glover, Life and Letters in the Fourth Century, p. 282. I hardly think the likeness to S. Francis is so close as Mr. Glover considers it. 3 Sulpicius Severus, Chron., ii. 50 ; cf. Dialogues, iii. c. 11-13. 4 Sulpicius Severus, Vita, c. 13. Cf. A. Bertrand, La religion des Gaulois. 98 THE ENGLISH SAINTS popular enthusiasm which burst out at his death, and made holy the very oil used for lighting the lamps at his tomb, preserved in popular legend the course of his missionary tours. While the memorials of him were chiefly in stone, remarkable for those days, the tradi- tional remembrance of him in preaching, miracle, destruction of sacred trees and fanes, stamped itself in spots which legend identified with some particular action of his life. The people preserved his memory in Gaul even more than the classic literature that told his fame. 1 It was so in England. He came to rank as it were among the national saints. Another, though it would appear that his fame in England was later, must be mentioned beside him. S. Giles, the hermit, the abbat around whose monastery rose, on an arm of the Rhone, the town which gave a title to the great house of Toulouse, and whose devotion spread in the nth and I2th centuries over all Europe, might have been, like S. Martin, among the early influences upon the Christianity of our land. But Bede does not mention him : and it is probable that he was unknown till commerce and the Crusades and the interests of the Angevin Kings brought English- men to know his fame in Southern Gaul. When he came to be venerated in England it was as patron of cripples, as the saint of hospitals ; and so outside the walls, where sick folk were hurried out of sight, 2 if 1 " II s'est forme" autour du nom de Saint Martin, en dehors des litterateurs, une seconde dpopee, exclusivement populaire, brodee comme le poeme de conceptions fantastiques, de legendes qui depassent celles de Cesar et de Charlemagne." Bulliot and Thiollier, La mission et le cullc de S. Martin^ p. 6. 2 This seems the most natural explanation of what has caused much dispute. THE SAINTS OF THE ENGLISH CONVERSION gg any care was taken of them at all, his churches were built. A hermit in the valley of the Rhone who died towards the close of the seventh century, his very existence trembles on the verge of historic proof: his identification is beset with difficulties almost insoluble. 1 But the character that men gave of him, when his cult was popular, is in no doubt. He was one who loved solitude, and protected the beasts of the forest. A wounded hind pursued by the king's hounds fled to him for refuge, and when the king saw it lying by the saint's side as he knelt at prayer, he spared it and passed on his way honouring the man to whom God had given the trust of His creatures. In the details of his life the hagiologists borrowed from S. Martin : but still a characteristic impression was left, and it was to this that England dedicated her philanthropy and her medical science for many generations. 2 1 But see the discovery of his tomb at Nimes, Menwires de P Academic du Card 1867, pp. 108 sqq. Much the best account of the difficulties, and the most satisfactory historical identification, is found in the preface, by MM. Gaston Paris and Alphonse Bos, to their edition of the poetic Vie de S. Gilles (1881). %J The life in the Bollandist Acta SS., Sept., i. 289, is of not earlier date than the end of the 9th century. An interesting metrical life by Guillaume de Berneville (i2th century) was edited by MM. Paris and Bos in 1881. Their introduction is of great value. They thus sum up the historical evidence as to the saint's life. " yEgidius, sans doute Provencal et non Grec, obtint en 673 de Wamba la con- cession de la vallee Flavienne pour y batir un monastere ; il offrit ce monastere au siege apostolique en 685, et regut en exchange un privilegium du pape Benoit II. ; il tait mort avant 719, epoque ou les musulmans envahirent la Septimanie. Telles sont les seules donnees historiques que nous possedions sur ce personage : tout ce qui les depasse dans sa vie latine appartient au domaine de la fiction." 72 ioo THE ENGLISH SAINTS The influence of Giles and Martin was charac- teristically Gallican, and it was strong and impressive. Most nobly did the English revere the saint who was soldier and missionary. In him there was always before them the example of a stern simplicity, an absolute truthfulness, an absorbing missionary zeal. The influence of the Celtic saints was different. S. Martin, though the Pictish S. Ninian was his disciple, and though the two earliest church dedica- tions in Britain of which we have record are in his name, stood apart from the life of the Celtic Church. On it he had no direct influence. 1 The Celtic saints of whom the conquerors of England came to know were men of a different stamp. Among them, quite apart from those who directly assisted in the evangelization of England, we must dis- tinguish two classes S. Patrick with the saints of Ireland, and the saints of Cornwall and Wales. S. Patrick may be very briefly dismissed in regard to his direct influence on England, even by those who do not doubt his existence. 2 The stricter monastic rules 1 See Willis Bund, The Celtic Church in Wales, pp. 147 sqq. 2 See Plummer, Bede ii., 25, 26, but cf. ii. 346. Whitley Stokes, Tripartite Life of S. Patrick, 1887, is of course the main storehouse of knowledge, and cf. notably Professor Bury's very careful and convincing article on the value of Tirechan's Memoir of S. Patrick, in Engl. Hist. Rev., April 1902, with a further note October 1902. With Professor Bury's argument that it is not likely that the de- scription of Patrick's route is accurate may be compared the view of MM. Bulliot and Thiollier as to S. Martin's missionary journeys in the pays Eduen. M. A. Bertrand in his suggestive book La Religion des Gaulois, pp. 417 sqq., thinks the mission of S. Patrick legendary, and that there was no need of martyrs in Scotland or Irela.nd He thinks that Eastern missionaries came to Scotland and Ireland, and found the druid communities as centres of THE SAINTS OF THE ENGLISH CONYERSION 101 of the two Finnians and Columba 1 far more exactly represented the monastic ideal as it affected the English. His work was at the most not a great success. He was a great missionary, and his name was rightly cherished by those who succeeded to and accom- plished his mission. But there is a complete contrast between his shadowy claim and the certain facts about S. Martin. Nor can much be said for the possible in- fluence of the writings attributed to him. 2 They present a type of simple holiness, passionately devoted, with all the Celtic enthusiasm, to the love of God and the fear of God, and are notably non-miraculous. His char- acter, as the biographers depicted it, was one that was fitly reproduced in its chief points in that of S Columba. It is through the saint of lona alone that we can trace the influence of the Apostle of Ireland. 8 Nor can much preaching, that these depended on the chiefs of the clan, and that when these were converted the communities became Christian and the customs were preserved practically unaltered. He traces the history of the Culdees. Compare with this the view of Mr. Willis Bund in The Celtic Church in Wales. What was the effect of these Celtic communities reorganized as Christian? Giraldus Camb. (//. Cambr., ii. 4: vol. vi., p. 120) declares that the great monastic fraternities in Wales were the pest of the Church " per Hiberniam et Walliam." See also on the whole question Zimmer, The Celtic Church in Britain and Ireland (English translation 1902). 1 See Professor Bury, E. H. R. as above, p. 253. 2 On these see the very interesting introduction of Dr. C. H. H. Wright to his revised translation (Christian Classics Series, un- dated). 3 It is noteworthy that of the few dedications of English churches to S. Patrick some are perhaps mistaken and two are quite recent. The Church of Nuttall, Notts, is dedicated to him, a solitary example in the Midlands. See, and on S. Bridget also, Miss Arnold- Forster's Studies in Church Dedications, chapters 29 and 30. io2 THE ENGLISH SAINTS have been known in England of S. Brendan, whose soul S. Columba saw borne to heaven by angels. 1 S. Bridget, "the Mary of Ireland," the type of pure and impulsive Celtic womanhood, had more influence, if we may judge from church dedications. 2 When we come to the saints of Wales and Cornwall we are met at once by what seems decisive evidence of the exclusion of all influence from them on the Chris- tianity of the early English. We have first the famous refusal of the British bishops to help Augustine in the conversion of the English, 3 with its consequence in the undoubted fact that " not one Cumbrian, Welsh, or Cornish missionary to any non-Celtic nation is mentioned anywhere." 4 And secondly we have the statement of Aldhelm, four centuries later, that even then the priests of the Brythons beyond Severn would join in no religious or social act with the English, would cast any food of theirs to the dogs, and cleanse the cups they had drunk from with sand or ashes, and would refuse all kindly greetings and the kiss of pious brotherhood. 5 But it is impossible that the great institutions of Celtic Christianity should have been altogether without indirect influence on the Teutonic conquerors, who as time went on became more and more closely inter- 1 Adamnan, Vita Columbce, iii. u. 2 There are interesting- modern testimonies to S. Bride in Froude's Short Studies, i. 572, 573, to S. Brendan in Kingsley's The Hermits, 257-277. :; Bede, Hist. Eccl, ii. 2. 4 Haddan and Stubbs, Councils, i. 154. 5 Letter written by S. Aldhelm to the Cornish King Geran, in Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 271. THE SAINTS OF THE ENGLISH CONVERSION 103 mixed with the conquered. It has been argued that the monastic organization of these lands looked back to a dim past unknown to history, and that through the druids we are taken behind the corporation of Gaulish or Celtic priests mentioned by Caesar, Diodorus, and Strabo, to an ancient and very widespread social in- stitution. Of this the abbeys were the heritors. The Church adopted in her monastic houses the druid organization. The Irish, Scots, and Gallic abbeys were " heritieres des communautes druidiques de ces contrees." 1 Institutions which had endured so long could not have been without effect, through their system, through the lives they had trained, even on a people alien in race and in almost every custom. But there is scanty evidence indeed : and in the matter of influence it might seem that the Celtic customs acted by contraries. It is generally considered that the early Welsh lives underwent complete revision under the influence of English or foreign clergy, and that thus their evidence must be received with suspicion. It is asserted with vehemence that the Welsh sanctity was hereditary and professional, quite apart from moral qualities. 2 Without accepting this view in its extreme 1 See Religion des Gaulois, Annexe i. 2 Among the authorities for the lives and legends of the Welsh Saints, and the criticisms of them, should be cited W. J. Rees, Lives of the Cambro- British Saints, from Ancient Welsh and Latin MSS., 1853 : Liber Landavensis, edited by the same writer, 1840: Rice Rees, A n Essay on the Welsh Saints, 1836: Whitley Stokes, Anecdota Oxoniensia, part v., lives of Saints from the book of Whitmore : Whitley Stokes, on the Calendar of Oengus, Trans- actions of Royal Irish Academy, Irish MSS. Series, vol. i., 1880 : John Donavan, Banquet of Dun na-a-gedh, etc., 1842 : Zimmer, Celtic Church in Britain and Ireland: Taliesin Williams, Mo 104 THE ENGLISH SAINTS form, we may at least admit that during the period of the conversion few Welsh saints were recognized by the English, and that the influence, such as it was, acted not through individuals but through communities. The saint was really the head of the ecclesiastical settlement. Organization at least was strongly de- veloped. 1 S. Padarn, who went with S. David and S. Teilo to Jerusalem, had 847 monks : 2 and the power of the Celtic Church lay in its adaptation of the tribal system. When we come to individuals and analyse the lives, written originally in Latin and then translated into Welsh, which come to us in their present form from the nth or I2th century, to find the element of original fact or legend which remains, we are struck by some conspicuous points. The Welsh called many saints to whom the Latin Church would not allow the name : 3 and when the list is sifted and the lives of a selected MSS., Welsh MSS. Society, 1848: S. Baring-Gould, Address on The Celtic Saints, 1899, reprinted from the Journal of the Royal Institution of Cornwall ; and A Catalogue of Saints connected with Cornwall, reprinted from the same : W. C. Borlase, The Age of the Saints, 1893 : Willis Bund, The Celtic Church of Wales, 1897 : E. J. Newell, A History of the Welsh Church, 1895. A very good sketch of further materials is found in Mr. Borlase's book above mentioned. He states that "no other country whose population spoke the Celtic language is so devoid of materials from which to reconstruct her hagiology as Cornwall." 1 To the saints of the line of Cunedda (S. David, etc.) organi- zation of the Church in Wales is due, including the sees of Menevia, S. Asaph and Bangor. Rhys, Celtic Britain, p. 245. 2 See his life in W. J. Rees' Lives of Cambro- British Saints. 3 Mr. Willis Bund aptly quotes the Bollandists, Ada SS., March 13, II. 293. THE SAINTS OF THE ENGLISH CONVERSION 105 few are examined the standard of sanctity is still low. The idea that saintship meant consecration, holiness, is even in the Latin recension of the lives very im- perfectly apprehended. 1 To the English writers of the latter Middle Ages it may well have seemed that to speak of a Celtic saint was to use a contradiction in terms. But two significant facts emerge from the mass of legend. The Welsh saints had to fight a desperate battle for purity. The real struggle, for the Celts, was against sensual sin. The whole world around them seemed to be lying in wickedness. Even when the English were at the gates the Brythons could not stand up against them by reason of their crimes. 2 The Age of Saints, as the Welsh writers call it, was indubitably an age of sinners. 3 It is a time too of mystery and gloom, a ^ time when the Brythons were fighting inch by inch for their lands and their lives. The rhetoric of Gildas is not all 1 Mr. Willis Bund puts the case a little confusedly when he says " One result of being a saint by succession, or otherwise than from personal merit, was to render it unnecessary for the Celtic saint to do anything to maintain his saintly reputation." The fallacy of ambiguous terms however only disguises something which is really true, the imperfection of the Celtic standard. Mr. Rees in the preface to his Cambro- British Saints spoke of the lives he had collected as "legendary biographical accounts of several persons, who in the early age of the ancient British Church, obtained great eminence and distinction in Wales : and were called Saints on account of their withdrawing themselves from secular concerns, and devoting their time and attention to religious matters, and particularly to the building of churches and the founding of religious institutions." 2 See Gildas, Epistola, in Monumenta Historica Britannia, p. 16. 3 Mr. Newell has an admirable chapter on the subject in his History of the Welsh Church. io6 THE ENGLISH SAINTS rhetorical : the lives of the saints, late and legendary though they are, support the picture. Like light in the darkness came the legends of later days, speaking of the first organization of monks, who should labour with their hands, and when their labour in the fields was done must turn to read and write and pray. No vain speech must there be, no dainty eating, no wearing of fine clothes, or sleeping after cock-crow. Such rules, and behind them all a life of praise. Was it a tradition that lingered on when men wrote the life of the great Welsh saints ? It is a life of labour that they describe 1 as well as a life of prayer. And the labour as well as the prayer were set to stern practical ends. Men must fight for God indeed in those days of savagery and lust. The biographers looked back and saw that the struggle was over, and so the age seemed to them an Age of Saints. Gradually as men looked back into it great figures seemed to emerge from the darkness. David it appears had no special vogue among the saints till he was canonized by Pope Calixtus II. in H2O. 2 It was part of the absorption of the Welsh by the Catholic Church. Till that time he remained a local saint : and we are assured that in his case as in that of Celtic hagiology in general " piety had nothing to do with saints." What little is known of his life may be briefly summarized. The date of his death, 601, has some claim to be fact. There need be no doubt that he was bishop of Menevia, little that he .g. lives of S. Cadoc, S. David, S. Illtyd, etc., in Rees' Cambro- British Saints. 2 It appears that he only, and possibly Caradoc (ob. 1124) have been canonized by the Popes. THE SAINTS OF THE ENGLISH CONVERSION 107 presided over two British synods. 1 We may believe him to have wandered over Wales, preaching the Gospel, to have founded monasteries and inculcated a life of strenuous toil. His biographer Rhygyfarch collects legends ; but there is a basis of fact behind them which Geoffrey of Monmouth and Gerald de Barri lack. Whatever may be true of him, his fame certainly was of slow growth. Not a single church or chapel is dedicated to him in all North Wales. 2 Dedications indeed among the Celts afford evidence of a peculiar and important kind. They emphasize the local character of Celtic sanctity. Formal dedication in the later and strict sense was not the practice in Wales. 3 It was the custom rather for the churches to be named after the founder, the holy man who first built it and hallowed it by his prayers. The sanctity of the founder, and his dis- tinction as patron, were combined in the reverence of 1 Haddan and Stubbs, Councils, \. 117-118. It is a X-century MS. of the Annales Cambriae which names him as bishop of Moni Judtzorum. 2 Rice Rees, Welsh Saints, p. 45. He gives a list of 42 churches in the diocese of S. David's, 8 in Llandaff, 3 in Hereford. His name however ranks, in number of dedications, only after S. Mary and S. Michael. The dedications to S. Michael, so common in all mountainous districts (" to celebrate the victory of the Celtic monks over the powers of darkness" says Mr. Willis Bund, p. 331 an explanation which explains nothing) are the more ancient. But the history of the Welsh and Cornish dedications is most interesting. 3 Rice Rees, Welsh Saints, pp. 69, 70. " In other countries where the Roman Church has prevailed, many persons who were never canonized have been allowed the honour of sanctity in their immediate neighbourhood, and in this local character the saints of Wales must be considered." Much of the text of these pages of Mr. Rees is absorbed by Mr. Willis Bund in his book. io8 THE ENGLISH SAINTS later ages l In Cornwall conspicuously, as local anti- quaries seem conclusively to have proved, the saints were really the founders of the places and the churches which bear their names. The names that were honoured in Cornwall so far back as we can trace have a great history behind them, and they connect the church with the Celts of other lands. 2 So dimly we seem to see into this strange past, when Christian morals were slowly fighting their way, through Christian organiza- tion and Christian lives, against the strong influence of tribal custom. At first, and conspicuously during this dark time, " saintship among the Celts was a profession, a saint naanh was the head of the ecclesiastical settle- ment, quite irrespective of his moral character. Thus Peirio, abbat, who tumbled into a well when drunk and died of the consequences, was a saint : so was Cairnech, although he instigated a man to murder his own (Cair- nech's) brother, and blessed him for the deed." 3 1 This is probably a more correct way of describing what hap- pened than that which Mr. Borlase, The Age of the Saints, seems to accept from Rees, pp. 57, 6 1. 2 " The history of the early Church in Cornwall is very obscure. Considerations of race, of geographical relations and historical probability, would lead us to connect it with Ireland, Brittany, and Wales ; and such is the general inference from the legends of the Saints of the four regions : Irish hermits found homes in Cornwall ; the sons of Cornish princes appear among the Breton Saints ; a Cornish King becomes a monk at S. David's ; and in some cases the dedications of churches point to a common early history." (Bishop Stubbs, in Truro Diocesan Kalendar.} See also a most valuable and admirable (unsigned) paper on the Celtic Kalendar in the same Diocesan Kalendar tracing the history of the Cornish dedications and tabulating the parochial feasts. 3 Baring-Gould on The Celtic Saints (Royal Institution of Corn- wall}, p. 35. THE SAINTS OF THE ENGLISH CONVERSION 109 To alter all this was the first and greatest task before the Church to make sanctity mean consecration. The lives, legendary and traditional, afford the fullest evidence of this. The iteration with which the Chris- tian law is held up is an impressive witness of the cost at which the Christian character was won among the Celts. And then a second fact is conspicuous. It is that the strength of victory came to the Welsh from a passionate attachment to dogmatic religion. They did not learn to be moral through morality but through doctrine. The power of Christ's character came to them through the truth of His Person. The Celt " saturated himself with the doctrinal questions of the religion " he " had adopted." 1 The Age then may be summed up as one of moral and dogmatic teaching given under the greatest diffi- culties. The pettiest 2 and the greatest hindrances seem united against the Truth. 1 Borlase, The Age of the Saints, p. 30. 2 A characteristic story is the following : " One day fifty British bishops crossed over from Wales to visit the disciple of S. David. [S. Aedan, or Hugh.] They arrived in Lent, and were taken into the guest house, thoroughly exhausted by their journey. To them were brought fifty bannocks with leeks and whey for their dinner. But this did not please them, they demanded meat, pork or beef. The steward reported the matter to Aedan. ''Can this be per- mitted in Lent ?' he inquired dubiously. ' Of course they shall hvae it,' answered the bishop. So they were supplied with butchers' meat. Presently, before they departed, these bishops deemed it expedient to apologise and explain : * You see,' said they, ' that bullock you killed for us had been suckled on milk, and ate grass only, so that it was actually milk and vegetables in a condensed form. But we felt conscientious scruples about those biscuits, for they were full of weevils.'" Baring-Gould, Cornish Dedications (R.I.C.), p. 197. no THE ENGLISH SAINTS These facts, indirectly, had no doubt their influence on the English people. But on the English character there were stronger forces acting from the first days of the conversion. 1 And first of these must have been that of Augustine himself. The Apostle of the English has been thought 1 On the effect of English sanctity on the Celts an interesting parallel statement might be drawn up. For example The Marlyr- ology of Gorman (edited by Whitley Stokes, Henry Bradshaw Society, 1895), written somewhere between 1166 and 1174, a poetic record of the saints whom the Irish Church (or only the province of Armagh, as may be perhaps inferred from Dr. Stokes's preface, p. xix.) at the time of the English Conquest commemorated, is in- teresting in the number of English saints whom it includes. It is curious that there were comparatively few saints of Wales or of Brittany with whom this compiler was acquainted. Of these not more than five lived in Britain : three out of the whole list of twenty survive in our present Kalendar. But while Ireland in the twelfth century recognized like England her indebtedness to S. Alban, S. David and S. Martin of Tours, she welcomed into her martyrology a far larger number of purely English than of Celtic Saints. Fifty Anglo Saints were then commemorated in Ireland. (But, as in the other list, the names are probably often repeated.) Of these it has been shown that several are especially connected with Winchester and it has been suggested that the connection of S. Swithun's Win- chester with Glastonbury, where Irish monks were often resident, may have been the cause. See Stokes, as above, p. xlv., and Liber Vitce of New Minster {Hampshire Records Society], p. 49, note. All the famous English names are there, but no one since the Norman Conquest. Werburgh and Alphege, Cuthbert and Ed- ward the Martyr, Wilfrith and Dunstan, Aldhelm, Augustine, Bede, Winfrith, Etheldreda, Kenelm, Oswald and Oswin, Birinus, Hilda and Eadmund, are among them, names which English visitors, or it may be English slaves, as well as travelled Irish monks, had made familiar in Ireland. Here again we find that the virtue whicli the poetic martyrologist most prized, it is clear from the repeated epithet which he confers again and again upon saints of his own race, was chastity. The English saints came to the help of those whom they had conquered. THE SAINTS OF THE ENGLISH CONVERSION in to present no attractive figure of saintliness. A strict monastic life, and an unbending orthodoxy, do not meet with wide sympathy to-day. Perhaps the strength of each was never more conspicuously needed. The absolute sacrifice of personal interest, the undeviating consistency of adherence to the Truth when once it is known, or so far as it can be known, are standards which the world does not readily accept in an age of self-seeking and of rapid change. Augustine, as he appears to us in the records and memories we have of his work and character, gains something of his solemnity and beauty from his association with the great and holy Gregory, " our father," as one of our earliest Councils called him, 1 our teacher who sent to our forefathers the rule of regenerating grace. 2 " The seal of his apostleship," says Bede, " are we in the Lord." 3 It was he who had seen the Yorkshire lads in the market at Rome, who had bought English slaves himself to be the firstfruits of their nation to Christ, and who sent forth Augustine because, as he thought when he wrote to the Prankish Kings, the English nation desired earnestly to be converted to the Chris- tian faith. 4 But, though the memory of Gregory was always gratefully cherished in England, it was through the work of Augustine that he was remembered, and 1 Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 368. 2 So S. Aldhelm, de laude virginitatis, 55, quoted by Bright, Early English Church History, p. 37. 3 Hist. EccL, ii. i. Of the reverence always entertained for S. Gregory an excellent example is the famous early English Homily on his birthday (translated with notes by E. Elstob, 1709) which is full of interesting details. 1 Epist. vi. ind. xiv." num. 57. ii2 THE ENGLISH SAINTS the character of him who was sent seemed to take some of its colouring from the great man who sent him. Augustine, as Bede paints him, converted men at least as much by his life as by his preaching. Constant he was in prayer, vigil and fast, and with his companions "living in all respects conformably to what they taught and prepared to suffer any adversity and even to die for the truth which they preached." When the king was converted it was from Augustine that he learnt in no way to compel men to accept the faith. Fully conscious of the greatness of the task to which he was called, and of the outward wonders that men said that he worked, 1 he felt, it is clear, that it was of supreme im- portance that the nation whose conversion had been so wonderfully given into his hands should be taught in all matters great and small the full meaning and value of loyalty to the faith once delivered to the saints. This explains his questions to S. Gregory, of the authenticity of which there need be no doubt. They are concerned with high things, with seeming triviali- ties, and with moral questions in which it might well seem the missionary might already have been in- structed. 2 We have been well reminded that " there are many great missionary bishops of recent days who have had to give prolonged thought and study and prayer, in the interests of their people, to questions 1 But Gregory in his letter to him need not be understood to attribute to him any pride in the " miracles." 2 Professor W. E. Collins in his most interesting and suggestive book The Beginnings of English Christianity, pp. 72, 116, 121, 192, deals fully and learnedly with the question, and is convincing. THE SAINTS OF THE ENGLISH CONVERSION 113 which do not differ widely from those which were put by Augustine to Gregory." 1 And indeed it is part of Augustine's greatness that where moral or theological truth which are indeed inseparable were concerned, nothing was trivial in his eyes. He was determined to have no paltering with what was evil in paganism, and to set up a standard of purity and holiness which should remain for ever before the eyes of the English people. He saw that the strength of the Teutonic affinity to Christian morals was a characteristic to be developed and encouraged at every point. The natural purity, so wonderful to the non-Christian Roman, was to the missionary the greatest gift which the race brought with it when it entered the Church, and it was one which the power of the divine Christ should to the utmost raise, elevate, and supernaturally endow, for the enrichment of the life of all Christendom. That is the first and con- spicuous lesson which Augustine's life was set to teach the English peoples. Cherish and develop the purity of family life, for on it lies the salvation of nations : l< unto the pure all things are pure, but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure." But no less characteristic of Augustine's mission and of his personal influence was the insistence upon exactness of theological statement and of obedience to ecclesi- 3 Ibid., p. 72. Duchesne, Origines du culte chretien, p. 94, held that Theodore of Tarsus was really responsible for the interroga- tories and response, and this M. Bertrand, Religion des Gaulois considered to make the main argument of his book stronger. But now in consequence of Dr. Mommsen's article, Ncties Archiv, xvii. 387-396, he has changed his view (so in second edition). See Professor Collins's Appendix II., p. 192. 8 ii4 THE ENGLISH SAINTS astical custom. System, accuracy, rule, were needed to bring the nations to Christ : a discretion might be wisely allowed by which a Gallican or any other good usage might be preferred to the Roman in which S. Augustine had been brought up : but the universal custom of the continental churches must prevail over the unreasoning isolation of the Celts. The one side of Augustine's influence appears most prominently in his questions to S. Gregory and the Pope's answers, the other in his interview on the frontiers of the Hwiccas and the West Saxons, at Down Ampney near Cricklade and the head of Thames, 1 with the bishops of the West Welsh. 2 It was a critical meeting, because it was here more than anywhere else that it was decided whether Celtic cus- toms and Celtic saints should influence the Christianity of the Teutonic conquerors. Augustine was prepared to concede much, the tonsure, the use of a Celtic Liturgy, and other lesser things, it is probable : but on matters of more importance he was firm. The Brythons 1 1 1 is perhaps superfluous to note the place of meeting : but the dis- cussions on the subject have been so interesting that I cannot forbear to refer to Plummer, Bede, ii. 73, 74 : Browne, Augustine and his Companions, pp. 98 sqq.: Collins, Beginnings of English Christianity, pp. 87 sqq.; and to note that in the more recent continuance of the controversy the Bishop of Bristol, Proceedings of the Clifton Anti- quarian Club, vol. iv., pp. 264 sqq., has entirely proved his point (as against the very weak arguments finally summed up by the Rev. C. S. Taylor, Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire ArchcEological Society, vol. xxiv., pp. 159-171). 2 That they were West Welsh was suggested by Mr. Plummer, fol- lowed by Professor Collins and accepted by the Bishop of Bristol, Transactions, etc., as above. Dr. Zimmer, Celtic Church in Britain and Ireland, p. 59, seems still to think that they came from Wales. THE SAINTS OF THE ENGLISH CONVERSION 115 "preferred their own traditions before all the churches in the world which in Christ agree among themselves." 1 Augustine's final speech, as Bede gives it, sums up his position : " You go against our custom, or rather that of the Universal Church, 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 however contrary to our own." It was Catholicism as opposed to isolation. The same question, in regard to the noble missionaries of the North, occurred again at Whitby sixty years later : but while the Brythons of the West refused to help in converting the English the Scots of the North had already accomplished a noble work. But the principle was the same : and the legacy which Augustine left to the English people was that of union, communion with the whole Catholic Church. 2 And indirectly it is impossible to say how much English character may not owe to the failure of these meetings with the Welsh bishops. The lines on which English Christianity was drawn out, the influence brought to bear by priests and teachers, was that of the united Church and the harmonious theology of Christendom. There was nothing singular or distorted in the type which was developed in the English race. 1 Bede, ii. 2. Cf. Bright, Early English Church History, on the two interviews ; Pearson, Hist. EngL, i. 125, and Warren, Liturgy and Kitual of the Celtic Church, p. 76 (referred to by Bright). 2 Among recent work see S. Atigustin de Cantorbery, Premiere mission benedictine, by Louis LeVeque, O.S.B. Revue des Questions Historiques, t. Ixv., 1899, P- 353- 82 u6 THE ENGLISH SAINTS And that is the characteristic of the work of all the other missionaries who came to labour among the conquerors of Britain. Birinus, 1 for example, who preached to the most pagan of pagans, as Bede calls the West Saxons, was sent from Rome, and like Paulinus and Felix he was inspired with the wider interests and fuller hopes of the enlightened West. They all followed in the steps of him w r hom the Irish martyrology called " dear Augustinus, the wealthy bishop of the Saxons." 2 And so, it may fairly be said, did those who owed their original training to the Irish mission, Cedd and Chad and the others who had sat at the feet of Aidan or of Cuthbert : they put aside the local, separate, influences, and were merged in the wider unity which Augustine represented. But none the less the Irish missionaries are not to be forgotten. That some influence was exercised on the Christianity of England by the memory of the earliest missionaries of the North there can be no doubt. The memory of S. Ninian, for example, was preserved in full vigour till the records and traditions of him became stereotyped in the twelfth century by the work of Ailred of Rievaulx. 3 He was a Brython, 1 For Birinus see Bede, Hi., 7 : Nova Legenda, i. 118 sqq. (as in Surius). Mr. J. E. Field s S. Berin (1902) is a very full collection of history and legend. " I wonder that no one has placed Birinus in the position which Aidan is made to hold. He really was the 'apostle, 3 or first evangelist, of that great district of Wessex, extending from Devon- shire to Bedfordshire." Dr. Bright in a private letter quoted below. 2 Martyrology of Gorman (Henry Bradshaw Society, 1895), p. 104. 3 This was drawn up from earlier materials. Ailred mentions Bede and a liber de vita et miraculis barbaric scrip tus, and he also visited the district associated with S. Ninian's life. But his THE SAINTS OF THE ENGLISH CONVERSION 117 born (if Ailred was rightly informed) in Strathclyde, and he studied at Rome, probably under Pope Siricius (385-399). About 390 he returned to his native country, which was wild and barbarous, a strange contrast to the luxurious and still semi-pagan city he had left. Strathclyde was not wholly heathen, for Ninian's own father was a Christian, and he was warmly welcomed on his return. His great work was the conversion of the southern Picts, and, only second to that, the founda- tion of the church at Withern, dedicated to S. Martin, the friend and the pattern missionary in whose steps he had followed. His work was accomplished before the Romans left Britain. About a hundred and fifty years later it was continued by S. Kentigern (Mungo) who revived what had begun to decay, and founded schools of priests. Briefly, the influence of these missions must be looked for in the following ways : in a firm, wise, and tactful protest on behalf of purity of life, in a close intercourse with Gaul and with Ireland, in the introduction of Christian education, and in the dedica- tion of sculptured art to the worship of God. 1 These work is of little value. The English Chronicle mentions him, drawing its information from Bede. The life in the Nova Legenda, ii. 218 sqq., is an abridgement of the life of Ailred, and perhaps follows a MS. in the Burgundian Library at Brussels. See Forbes, Lives of S. Ninian and S. Kentigern, 1874. Irish Kalendars preserve his memory and a lost Irish life was used by the Bollandists. Acta Sanctorum, Sept. 16. Bede himself refers to tradition. See also Hardy, Catalogue of MSS., i. 44-46. 1 See on all the points the Lives of S. Ninian and S. Kentigern, passim, and the most interesting and suggestive lectures of the Bishop of Bristol, The Christian Church in these islands before the coming of Atigusline : lecture iii. is especially full of interest and value to the historian in regard to points often neglected. n8 THE ENGLISH SAINTS ideas, owing their initiation or their force no doubt largely to the inspiration of the great S. Martin, worked into the lives of the disciples of Ninian and Kentigern, were the legacy which the early missions of the North bequeathed to the later English Church. And Kenti- gern links these influences to the work of S. Columba, as Columba is the predecessor of Aidan and Cuthbert. There is no more beautiful tale of Christian fellowship than that which the twelfth century biographer made, there can be little doubt from some genuine traditions, of the meeting between Kentigern and Columba. 1 "And when the proper time came the holy father S. Columba went forth, and a great company of his disciples, and of others who desired to behold and look upon the face of so great a man, accompanied him. When he approached the place called Mellindenor, where the saint abode at that time, he divided all his people into three bands and sent forward a message to announce to the holy prelate his own arrival, and that of those who accompanied him. " The holy pontiff was glad when they said unto him these things concerning them, and calling together his clergy and people similarly in three bands, he went forth with spiritual songs to meet them. In the fore- front of the procession were placed the juniors in order of time ; in the second those more advanced in years ; in the third, with himself, walked the aged in length of days, white and hoary, venerable in countenance, gesture, and bearing, yea, even in grey hairs. And all sang, ' In the ways of the Lord how great is the glory 1 Jocelin's Life of S. Kentigern, {Lives, etc., pp. 229-230). See also Nova Legenda, p. 125. THE SAINTS OF THE ENGLISH CONVERSION ng of the Lord ;' and again they answered : 'The way of the just is made straight, and the path of the saints prepared.' On S. Columba's side they sang with tuneful voices, ' The saints shall go from strength to strength, until unto the God of gods appeareth every- one in Sion,' with the Alleluia. Meanwhile, some who had come with S. Columba asked him, saying, ' Hath S. Kentigern come in the first chorus of singers ?' The saint answered, ' Neither in the first nor in the second cometh the gentle saint.' And when they loudly asked how he knew this, he said, ' I see a fiery pillar in fashion as of a golden crown, set with sparkling gems, descending from heaven upon his head, and a light of heavenly brightness encircling him like a certain veil, and covering him, and again returning to the skies. Wherefore it is given to me to know by this sign that, like Aaron, he is the elect of God, and sanctified ; who, clothed with light as with a garment, and with a golden crown represented on his head, appeareth to me with the sign of sanctity.' When these two godlike men met, they mutually embraced and kissed each other, and having first satiated them- selves with the spiritual banquet of Divine words, they after that refreshed themselves with bodily food. But how great was the sweetness of Divine contemplation within these holy hearts is not for me to say, nor is it given to me, or to such as I am, to reveal the manna which is hidden, and, as I think, entirely unknown save unto them that taste it." 1 And so the two saints parted, never to meet again on earth. The story of their meeting is one of those bright reliefs that stand 1 Lives of S. Ninian and S. Kentigern, as above, p. 230. i2o THE ENGLISH SAINTS out from the dark background of wars and lusts on the picture of life in the Middle Ages. In days of cruelty and crime the heroes of the Church gave the salvation of Christ to the suffering souls among whom they were sent. If the northern English learnt something from Ninian and Kentigern, very different in degree was their debt to Columba. And of Columba there is happily not a little authentic record. 1 His work in Britain lasted from his arrival at lona in 563 till his death in 597 : and it was the repairing of waste places, and the laying of sure foundations. He was a great missionary, inspired, like all the Irish saints of his day, with the desire of travel 2 which was subordinated to the work of Christ. He was earnest in mortifying self and in upholding the Christian standard of purity, which the Celts found it so hard to attain to : and he had a keen zest for knowledge. From the day of his landing at lona, from the beginning of his building of monastery, church, and school, he kept each of these interests before him : and yet they were but one interest, a zeal for the conversion of the world to Christ. He was energetic as a founder of monasteries, active as an evangelist, stern as an enemy of false worship. His biographer 3 tells of meetings which show the strength of the druid 1 Though it is true that " the earliest record of him is sixty years posterior to his death and is already full of legendary matter" (Plummer, Bede, ii. 130) I do not think it can be doubted that both Adamnan and Bede preserve authentic facts. 2 " Natio Scotorum, quibus consuetude peregrinandi jam pyene in naturam conversa est." Vita S. Gall., Pertz, Mon. Hist. Germ., ii. 30. 3 Adamnan, Vita Cohunb.^ ii. xxxiv., xxxv. THE SAINTS OF THE ENGLISH CONVERSION 121 worship and the veneration of springs and water- courses. With gentleness and practical common-sense he washed in the spring that had been regarded as divine, and like S. Martin, blessed it for the use of Christian folk : but he sternly resisted the druid who had detained a poor girl in slavery, and he had no fear of the enchantments they pretended, or of the rough sea where he was safe in the hand of God. 1 His intense sympathy made him feel the distresses of his brothers when they were far away : Adamnan 2 tells a beautiful story of his prayers at the altar for Connac in the terrors of the sea, and of the strength of the faith with which he announced his safety. 3 But the most beautiful story of all as it is so often in the lives of these simple servants of God is the story of his death. Feeble with age, he sat by the roadside to rest, the last day that he walked out, and there came to him the old white horse of the monastery, which nestled its head on his breast, and seemed to weep as though it knew that he was going to depart. He looked round for the last time upon his island home, and spoke of the glory that God would give it. He wrote in the psalter he was copying, and ended with that verse of the xxxiv. psalm : " But they who seek the Lord shall want no manner of thing that is good." It was Saturday night, and he went to the chapel for the 1 Adamnan, Vita Columb., lib. ii., c. xi. 2 Ibid., ii. xcii. 3 With the life by Adamnan it is curious to compare the words of Mr. Willis Bund, in the climax of his paradox, that Columba's " real claim to sanctity rested on the fact that he was a chief of the northern branch of the great Irish tribe of Hy Niall." The Celtic Church of Wales, p. 464. 122 THE ENGLISH SAINTS evening mass (as Adamnan 1 still calls the night office) : then back to his cell, where he gave his last commands to the monks to live at peace, promising them, with a confidence such as Wulfstan showed five centuries later, his intercession before the throne of God. 2 When at midnight came the bell for matins, he rose and went first and alone to kneel before the altar, where one of the monks found him prostrate. As the brothers came round him he looked up with a smile, as though gladdened by an angelic vision, and, raising his hand to bless, so he passed to the Paradise of God. He was a man whom others rejoiced to follow. " Physically and intellectually he towered above his fellows. Of a tall and commanding appearance, powerful frame, broad face, close and curly hair, his gray eyes large and luminous, he looked the saint he was, joyful and radiant, with a love for everything beautiful in nature, animate and inanimate." 3 The influence of his work was conspicuously Celtic. Colurnba indeed was a Celt of the Celts, passionate in anger and in love, deeply attached to his native land, yet ready to leave it at a higher call, a poet of intensest fervour and a patron of letters and the leader of a Renaissance at once literary and Christian. Under him monasteries became great schools of learning : 1 Ibid., iii. xxx., " ad vespertinalem Dominicae noctis missam in- greditur ecclesiam." "The office which he attended was that commonly known as the mgilia nocturna" (Reeves). So Shake- speare's use in Romeo and Juliet, iv. i. There is nothing for Pro- testants to be frightened at in the word. 2 Ibid. Cf. W. Malmesbur., Gesta Pontificum (ed. Hamilton), pp. 278-279. 3 Magnus Maclean, The Literature of the Celts, p. 42. THE SAINTS OF THE ENGLISH CONVERSION 123 through him a literary language sprang up. His own biographer left " the most valuable monument of the early Celtic Church which has escaped the ravages of time." 1 The hero-worship which found miracles in all that he did, and ascribed to his power with God many wonders after his death, was the natural expression, among a superstitious people, of the intense love and reverence for a man of holiness, simple, natural, and human. Monks who followed in his steps were men whom even sinners came to love. And of his spiritual children were Cedd, and Aidan, and Cuthbert. So the first influences passed over the English character. The fierce, wild strength of the Teutonic con- querors saw a life set before them that had new ideals, a life in which strength was subservient to holiness, in which conquest led the way only to the service of man, in which every virtue natural to their race was blessed and transfigured. In that way the second generation of English converts drew to themselves the best thoughts and the best examples of Gaul and Wales and Scotland and of Rome itself. " Consider the issue of their life : imitate their faith." These were the words of the preachers of righteousness who grew up, from the seventh century onwards, to lead the English into the faith and unity of Christ. These were the examples of remembered lives, in their purity and devotion, which the clustering legends did not hide. When the Northumbrian thegn asked if the new teachers could solve the riddle of life, which was 1 Magnus Maclean, The Literature of the Celts, p. 77. See on Columba and Adamnan, pp. 40-78. 124 THE ENGLISH SAINTS as a bird that flew for a moment through the lighted hall and out again into the darkness, the answer that came most clearly was read in the lives of the men who preached Christ, as it was given later in the lives of those, monks or kings, women or patient sufferers, who ruled their doings by the law of the Cross. The English were then content and may we not be con- tent for once to follow them ? to read their theology not by the light of puzzling metaphysics, or of dogmatic definitions alone, valuable and necessary though they are, but in the deeds and triumphs of honest and struggling men. LECTURE IV THE ROYAL SAINTS " And kings shall be thy nursing fathers, and their queens thy nursing mothers ; they shall bow down to thee with their faces to the earth, and lick the dust of thy feet ; and thou shalt know that I am the Lord." ISAIAH xlix. 23. THOSE often-quoted words describe with a remarkable exactness the relations between Church and State in the early days of the English conversion. English Christianity grew up under the shadow of the throne. Kings rejoiced to hear and to follow the Gospel message. It was natural that those who began to write history should magnify their virtues and give opportunity for later hagiologists to rank many kings among the saints. Ethelred and Eadwine, plain men enough, acquired a sanctity from tradition ; and as centuries passed away other and stronger examples established something of a customary attribution. A special character of goodness was claimed for the English kings by a thirteenth century clerk who ad- dressed his poetic treatment of the life of Edward Con- fessor to Queen Eleanor of Provence, Henry III.'s wife. 1 1 La Estoire de Seint Edward le rei was probably written for Henry III.'s commemoration of the Confessor in his abbey of [ 125 ] 126 THE ENGLISH SAINTS " In the world there is not, (well I dare say it to you,) Country, realm, or empire, Where have been so many kings good And holy, as in the island of England, Who after their earthly reign Now reign kings in Heaven, Saints, martyrs, and confessors, Of whom many for God died ; Some, mighty and very bold, As were Arthur, Edmund, and Cnut, Who by strength and courage Increased their baronage : Others who were more wise, Peaceable and moderate, Who by good counsel and their intelligence Were powerful in their time, As were Oswald, Oswin, Edmund, Who to Heaven passed from the world ; Especially Edward the king Was such, of whom I must write." The courtly poet of Henry III.'s day had many forerunners. The English people have been thought, by unprejudiced observers, to show a " natural piety." 1 It was to be expected that this should be cherished by misfortune and should cling round the heroes of national resistance in days of struggle. Thus among the earliest popular canonizations are those of the Westminster. The lines quoted are p. 25 of Dr. Luard's edition (Rolls Series, 1858), and are translated, p. 179. 1 So F. Liebermann, Die Heiligen Englands, Hannover, 1889, speaks of " die innige Frommigkeit, die dem Gemiith des Eng- lischen Volkes eignet." THE ROYAL SAINTS 127 Kentish kings. From beyond the havoc of the Danish Wars men looked back to a golden age of Christian faith, which indeed had never existed, and collected early English traditions of the sanctity of a Royal House. We have early lives of S. Ethelred and S. Ethelbert and S. Mildred and S. Eadburgh, due to the ecclesiastical revival of the tenth century, and a curious list of the saints then especially venerated in England, and of their last resting-places. 1 Many of them were not formally canonized : but all had their places in popular reverence. Some had no authentic history : but none the less they were authentic saints. These earliest Christian memories naturally clustered round Kent. There it was that Christ had won His first conquests among the conquerors of Britain. " You are the first fruits, the very beginning of the salvation of the English ; in you is the root and foundation of our Catholic profession ; among you repose those who in their day were the brightest luminaries of our island, through whom the day-star of the truth has shone throughout the whole of Britain." So wrote Alcuin to the men of Kent. 2 The land of ^thelberht and Augustine was conspicuous in the number of its saints. So men thought : but their memory was at best shadowy, no more than one aspect of a general senti- ment of reverence for kingship. But greater than these Southern kings were those of the Northern realm. The first conversion of Eadwine by Paulinus left behind it a firm foundation, notably in Deira, the land about York : " then," says Bede, in pathetic con- 1 See Liebermann, op. tit. 2 Jaffe', Monumenta Alcuiniana, p. 370. 128 THE ENGLISH SAINTS trast to the later days, " so great was the fervour of faith and the desire for the laver of salvation." 1 There came the years of destruction : Eadwine's power was swept away : he himself died a death that came to be counted martyrdom : to preserve the life of the Christian Queen, Paulinus fled to the South : the new kings who had- " renounced and betrayed the sacra- ments of the heavenly kingdom in which they had been initiated" 2 were slain: and there remained not in all Bernicia church or altar or cross. But the evil memories were swept away when there arose the great King Oswald, the conqueror and the saint. 3 He seems, as Gibbon says of S. Louis, to have combined the virtues of "a king, a hero and a man." There is no tale told of him that does not show him good and brave. He was converted and baptized during his banishment among the Irish [Scots] monks, 4 having grown up "as a rose among thorns." 5 When the country was given over to the savageries of the heathen English and the Christian Welsh, Oswald came to save it, and he was cheered to his work by a dream, a vision of S. Columba, " beaming with angelic beauty, and his lofty stature seeming to touch the clouds." 6 " Be strong," he said, as the Lord to Joshua, " and play the man . . . the Lord hath granted me that 1 Bede, ii. 14. 2 MM; m '- l - 3 Besides Bede, the authorities for the life of S. Oswald are the life by Reginald, see Simeon of Durham, Rolls Series, i. 326. Vita S. Columba, i. 113. Nova Legenda, ii. 261 sqq. See Analecta Bollandiana, torn, v., for account of MS. at Liege, No. 256. 4 So Bede, iii. 3, and Adamnan's Vita Columbce, cap. i, but cf Simeon of Durham, i. 341. 5 Simeon of Durham, i. 18. 6 Adamnan, c. i. THE ROYAL SAINTS 129 thine enemies shall be put to flight." So was the battle of Heavenfield by Hexham won : and it was won by the might of the Cross. The king set up a wooden cross to be the standard of his men, 1 holding it with both hands till the soldiers made it fast in the earth, and then calling them all to kneel in prayer to God, Who knew that the war they fought was just, for the salvation of their land. An easy and happy victory- was the beginning of a short reign of eight years in which Oswald " took great pains to build up and enlarge the church of Christ." 3 He sent to the Irish monks by whom he had himself been taught and they sent him Aidan, the apostle of the North. The joint lives of the two give the most beautiful instance of fellow- work to be found among English saints. Oswald gave Aidan his see at Lindisfarne, and was near at hand to guard him in the rock fortress of Bamborough. Most humbly and freely, says Bede, did he take heed to the bishop's admonitions, and when Aidan preached the Word in the tongue of the Scots [Irish] which the thegns and ealdorrnen of the English did not know, Oswald, who had learned it during his long exile, would expound to them. 4 " A most beautiful sight " indeed, says the chronicler, it was when the counsellors on the sands of Holy Isle, or in the great court of the castle of the Northumbrian king, sat round in wonder 1 Description of the scene in Raine, Historians of York, I. xi. sqg. " Probably on the mound on which the chapel now stands Oswald set up the famous wooden cross." Cf. Alcuin, de pontifitibus et sanctis EccL Ebor. 2 Cf. Adamnan, cap. i. 3 Bede, iii. 3. 4 See ALlfric's Lives of Saints ', ed. Skeat, No. xxvi., p. 125. 9 130 THE ENGLISH SAINTS as their bishop and their king told them the good tidings of the kingdom of God. Many came after Aidan from lona 1 to preach and to baptize. Churches were built, the people joyfully flocked together to hear the Word, possessions and lands were given by the king's bounty 2 to build monasteries, the young English learnt from the Scots, and the monastic rule was adopted and obeyed. 3 In Wessex too he played a great part in the conversion. It was the West Saxon king Kynegils who gave him his daughter to wife, and "yielded to the admonition of blessed Oswald and the preaching of S. Berin." 4 It is told of Oswald 5 that, when a plague spread among his people, he with tears and lamentations laid to his misdeeds the sorrow and the blame. " O Lord, I have grieved and done wickedly : as for these sheep, what have they done ? Against me, O Lord, and against my house be the sword of Thy vengeance turned, if so mine have de- served this thing." And so it was : for the sickness came to him, and then God spared him, so men believed that he was told by angels for a martyr's death. As the days went on to the time when he knew that he must die, his alms increased. One Easter 1 Mr. Plummer, Bede^ ii. 127, has an interesting note, following Dr. Reeve's, explaining how the name lona arose, by mistake, from Hii. 2 For record of Oswald's generosity, see Alcuin's poem in Raine's Historians of York, i. 349 sqq. 3 Thus Bede, iii. 3. 4 Bede, iii. 7 ; cf. Field, S. Berin, p. 79. 5 By Reginald, a Durham monk, in ^letter to Henry, subprior of Durham, cap. 10. (Ed. Arnold, in Simeon of Durham.} The Nova Legenda incorporates this passage. THE ROYAL SAINTS 131 day he ordered the meat set before him at his table, where he sat with Aidan, to be given to the poor, and the bishop, delighted with an act after his own heart, stretched out his hand and clasped the king's. " May this hand never grow old," he cried : and so in later days it was believed to have come to pass. 1 For this it may be that men came to call him the " white- handed." - The end of his life came, as great kings loved to have it, and as so many of his race had fallen, in battle. But he did not fall in victory. Heathenism for the moment triumphed and Oswald and his warriors were slain at Maserfield. 3 Men remembered him as all through his life constantly at prayer, and it was told how when he was hemmed in by enemies and saw that his death was at hand, he prayed for the souls of his army : and it passed, Bede says, into a proverb, " ' Lord, have mercy on their souls,' said Oswald, as he fell to the ground." 4 Oswald became one of the most famous of all the English saints. The splendid Bewcastle cross was set up in memory of Alchfrith his nephew with a clear reference to the great victory in the strength of that holy sign. 5 Sixty-two churches are known to be dedi- 1 The hand was kept as a relic at Bamborough in the church. So Bede and Simeon of Durham. Reginald says it was stolen by a monk of Peterborough. 2 Nennius, c. 64. :5 Most probably Oswestry, Oswald's tree, where a church was built to his memory at Oswald's Cross. See Cap, 18 of Reginald for an account of Oswald's tree. 4 Bede, iii. 12. 5 See the Bishop of Bristol's convincing lectures on The Conver- sion of the Heptarchy, pp. 188-213. 92 132 THE ENGLISH SAINTS cated to him, 1 besides those in which his name is joined with other saints. Through them can be traced the historic course of his cult. A chapel marked the place where he set up his cross on the Heavenfield : a foolish modern Protestantism has neglected to pre- serve the dedication. Oswestry and Winwick both claim to be the death-place, and both named their churches after the saint. There are notable churches too in the north, such as Kirk Oswald and Oswald- kirk. Deira as well as Bernicia honoured him, and, through Osthryd, Mercia too : dedications show the progress of his fame. In Oxfordshire there is the pathetic, half ruinous, half dismantled, desecrated church at Widford, connected of old with the priory at Gloucester, and in Gloucestershire are Compton Abdale and Shipton Oliffe, close to each other, and, further away, Rockhampton. But the cult spread far. Bede already speaks of the saint's name being reverenced over sea. In Ireland he was known and honoured. At Bamberg, Prag, Zug, and many another distant town he was reverenced, churches were dedicated to him, and relics were claimed. Where the English missionaries spread through Frisia, along the Rhine, even in Styria and Carniola and in Italy, his name is still preserved and honoured : and as late as the fifteenth century his story was told in Icelandic saga. 2 Perhaps the finest tribute of all is that of the German poet who celebrates the marriage of Otto the Great, 1 See Miss Arnold- Forster's admirable Studies in Church Dedi- cations, ii. 311 sqq. 2 See Mr. Plummer's note, Bede, ii. 159-161. THE ROYAL SAINTS 133 and makes it the chief glory of his English bride that she was " born of the blessed stock Of Oswald King, whose praise the world now sings, For that for Christ he gave himself to death." 1 He left behind him a memory of joy. The Sarum collect for S. Oswald, as Bishop Lightfoot noted, 2 is too beautiful to be forgotten. " Omnipotens sempiterne Deus, Qui hujus diei jocundam sanctamque laetitiam in sancti servi Tui Oswaldi passione consecrasti : da cordibus nostris Tui timoris caritatisque augmentum, utcujus in terris sancti sanguinis effusionem celebramus, illius in cselo collata patrocinia sentiamus. Per Dominum nostrum." The day of his death was taken by good Christian men as one of gladsome and holy rejoicing. The northern thegns knew now that this earthly life was more than the passage of a bird from darkness through light into darkness again. 3 1 Pertz, Mon. Germ. Hist., iv. 320, 321. 2 Leaders of the Northern Church, p. 34 : Breviar. Sar. (Proctor and Wordsworth), iii. 589. 3 Cf. Bede, ii. 13. Much interest attaches to the history of the relics of King Oswald. (This is very fully dealt with by Mr. Plummer, Bede, ii. 157-8, in a note of splendid learning and con- ciseness. I have not thought it necessary here to repeat the refer- ences that he gives. The later history will be found in Raine's .V. Cuthbert, in the Rites of Durham (Surtees Society), and Low's Diocesan History of Durham?) The head, hands, and arms were hung upon stakes by order of the savage heathen Penda, but next year Osvviu recovered them, and buried the head at Lindisfarne, the hands and arms at Bamborough in a silver coffer. The head was taken by the monks in 875 from Lindisfarne, when they fled for fear of the Danes. They placed it with the relics of S. Cuthbert. So S. Cuthbert is constantly represented as holding the head in his hands. It was preserved for awhile at Chester le Street, then at Ripon, then at Durham, where it remained " inter brachia beatis- 134 THE ENGLISH SAINTS Oswald was happy in the successor to part of his kingdom. Deira, the land of York, called his nephew Oswine 1 to be its chief. " Comely and tall he was," says Bede, " pleasant in speech and courteous in manner, open of hand to all, whether noble or unnoble : whence it happened that all men loved him for his dignity of mind, and force, and character, and simi Cuthberti" till the translation in 1104. And when the grave was opened in 1828 the skull was still with the body of Cuthbert. And so again in 1899. Roman Catholic writers have asserted that these relics were stolen by members of their communion and are preserved by them. There seems to be no evidence for this. The arms it is more difficult to trace. One is said to have been stolen and taken to Peterborough, and thence to Ely. One is said to have been at Gloucester. One was claimed for Durham : which was it ? Simeon of Durham's informant, the old monk Swartebrand, had often seen it. Very likely the Peterborough thief was deceived. The body was buried first at Oswestry, it would seem, but Oswald's niece, Osthryd, Queen of the Mercians, removed it to Bardney, in Lindsey, where the jealous Mercian monks, characteristic in their tribal feeling, and in the intense self absorption of Lindsey men, would not at first receive it. It lay all night in the waggon under a tent, and a bright shining light warned the monks of the holiness of the saint, whereupon next day it was humbly and joyfully received into a shrine. In 909 Ethelflaed the lady of the Mercians removed it to the monastery she and her husband were building at Gloucester : and there it remains to-day, as do other precious relics of the early English Kings, in the cathedral church of S. Peter. (So the statement in the X. Century Lives, Anglo-Saxon and Latin, in Liebermann's Die Heiligcn Englands, pp. 9, 10.) Of the miracles of Oswald it is scarce necessary to speak. Every writer repeats them : a horse cured on the battlefield where he fell, a paralysed girl recovered at the same place, are among the earliest of a long list which Bede records and Alcuin delights in. (Bede, iii. 9, etc. Cf. Alcuin in Historians of York. i. 349 sqq.) 1 For Oswine see Life published by Surtees Society, 1838 : Nova Legenda, ii 268 sqq. Both are ultimately based on Bede. THE ROYAL SAINTS 135 from all other provinces even the greatest nobles flocked to be his thegns. Among his great qualities of valour, and moderation and, if I may so say, of special blessedness greatest of all, it is said, was his humility." 1 The example he gives brings us again into the com- pany of S. Aidan. King Oswine gave him a horse to use on his journeys as bishop, but Aidan very soon after gave it away, with all its royal trappings, to a poor man whom he met on the road. When Oswine heard of it he asked why no other could have been given rather than this which he had chosen especially for the bishop : Aidan answered, with strange harshness, "What say you, O King? Is that mare's foal more precious to you than the Son of God ?" Awhile the king stood over the fire : then he came to Aidan, whom he so well knew and loved, and fell at his feet saying, " Forgive me, for from henceforth I will never say more to you of this, or judge how much of my money you give to the children of God." Aidan burst into tears and said to his chaplain in his own tongue, which Oswine unlike Oswald and Oswiu could not understand, 2 that the king, so humble, could not live long, for the land was not worthy of such a ruler. And so it was. Oswiu, ruling in Bernicia, coveted the land of his nephew Oswine, and attacked him. Finding that his army was not strong enough to resist, Oswine disbanded it, praying God that he might choose aright in the difficult position. He then went with a single thegn to the house of the Eorl Hunwald who betrayed 1 Bede, iii. 14. 2 A psalter of his "liber Oswini regis" is in the B. Mus., "character- ibus Hibernicis vetustissimis." He cannot have been able to read it. 136 THE ENGLISH SAINTS him to Oswiu, who sent word for him to be slain. "Your king's will be done," said Oswine, "for it is God's," and signing himself with the holy sign on breast and mouth, he gave himself to death. 1 His relics, working wonders, remained in the Benedictine house at Tynemouth till the spoliation. 2 Oswald's death-day was August 5, 642, Oswine's August 20, 651. Within so short a time was the work of the two kings done. They had confirmed the Christianity of Northumbria. It remained for later sovereigns to bring the land into union w r ith the usages of the West. The fame of Oswald never decayed : Oswine's memory was revived by the monks of Tyne- mouth on the eve of the Norman Conquest. Men looked to them both, and their intercession, when evil was wrought in their land, and the good laws were set at naught. To-day they may both well be remem- bered for their simple, sincere, manly Christianity, strangely humble and yet brave beyond dispute. 3 Bede 1 Vita Osivini (Surtees Society), p. u. 2 In the Vita Oswini there is a strange story of his miraculous intervention which illustrates the terrible sins into which clerks sometimes fell in the XI. century. 3 Miss Arnold-Forster, Studies in Church Dedications, ii. 321, well writes of the consecration of the church of S. Oswine at Wylam-on-Tyne : "And thus after two centuries of neglect, S. Oswine is again remembered in the valley where once he was so famous. The old feeling of admiration for him is revived, but with a difference. In the Middle Ages he was venerated on account of the miracles that were said to have been done by the power of his name : now we put aside these miracles, and look back behind the unreal Oswine of the monkish tales to the humble-minded, manly king of Bede's plain narrative ; and none the less nay, rather all the more we find him worthy to be com- memorated." THE ROYAL SAINTS 137 did no better work than when he preserved the memory of these two noble kings. One noble parallel at least is to be found among later English sovereigns. Edmund king of the East English is still commemorated on many a screen, and in the dedication of many a church, 1 among the people for whose example he died. His life has been overlaid with legend and his memory with miracle. But facts emerge from the cloud of patriotic fancies which account for the reverence that has been paid for ages to the simple heroic king. Church history is full of these pictures of heroism, where kings and simple folk, brave women and young children, went fearlessly to death because they would not tarnish the purity of their faith. It may be many of the stories are largely mythical, but the religious consciousness comes forward to help us to separate the myth from fact. Did the men die for something worth dying for ? God, duty : there have never been lacking martyrs for these. And among them there is no clearer image than that of S. Edmund. King Edmund was contemporary with Alfred, 2 and 1 Sixty-one churches are dedicated to him, besides those in which his name is joined with other saints : see Arnold-Forster, Studies in Church Dedications, vol. ii. 300, 327. - For no English Saint is there more biographical material ; but most of it has no value higher than a possible tradition. In the English Chronicle and Asser his tale is briefly told. Abbo of Fleury adds to it considerably. Hardy, Descriptive Catalogue oj MSS., i. 526-538, gives a full list of MSS. lives ; butr/". Liebermann, Ungedruckte Anglo-No* mannische Gcschichtsquellen. The Passio by Abbo, the DC Miraculis of Geoffrey de Fontibus, and Abbat Samson's Opus de Miraculis S. Edm. are printed by Mr. T. Arnold in vol. i. of the Memorials of S. Edmund's Abbey (Rolls Series, 138 THE ENGLISH SAINTS Alfred's biographer tells the tale of his gallant struggle very briefly, for probably he knew little of what passed in East Anglia, cut off from Wessex by forest and marsh and by the conquests of the Danes. In the winter of 870 the Danes stayed at Thetford, and in that year " Edmund King of the East Angles fought against that same host a glorious fight. But alack the heathen won all too gloriously : and there was he slain and the most of his men with him," says Asser : and the English chronicle, which adds the names of the Danish chiefs, says that they slew the king 1 and brought all the land under and broke down all the minsters that ever they came to. But we have details of S. Edmund's life and death which have much more claim to be authentic. Towards the end of the tenth century, while the 1890). Langtoft (Rolls Series), i. 312 sqq., poetizes the story with some curious additions. The Noi>a Legenda Anglicr, pp. 573 688, contains a highly interesting composite life with a full collection of miracles. Lord Francis Hervey in his notes to Reyce's breviary of Siijfolk, 1618, pp. 272-285, analyses and criticizes the authorities very cleverly, but, as regards Abbo, I think, with unnecessary scepticism. In regard to the Nova Legenda we may note the MS. Tiberius addition to the life of S. Edmund, the account of the history of the Blood of Hayles. This may be compared with the Hayles Chronicle in the Harleian MS. 3725, and should be read by those who would supplement the meagre article on the subject by Mr. St. Clair Baddeley in the Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archceological Society, vol. xxiii., part 2. 1 fone cyning ofslogon. " This is quite compatible," says Mr. Plummer (Two Saxon Chronicles, ii. 86), "with Edmund's having fallen in battle." But the tale of Abbo is so little later that we may accept it. THE ROYAL SAINTS 139 great Dunstan still sat on the throne of S. Augustine, 1 Abbo a monk of Fleury, where the archbishop had himself spent years of exile, came to England as a guest of the primate, heard him tell the story of S. Edmund's life, and wrote it down for the monks of Ramsey. 2 Dunstan himself was separated only by fifty years from the. time of the martyr, and he had heard, as a lad, the story from the lips of an aged man who had borne the king's armour on the day of his death. It is a simple tale. Edmund was from a child a Christian. He was of old Saxon race, of those (as some interpreted the words of Abbo) 3 who still dwelt in the lands whence the invaders had come to Britain four centuries before. Ties were still close, and Edmund was chosen king of the East Angles, when he was scarcely more than a child. Legends crowd the history of his youth and give romantic stories of the way in which he won the crown : but it is not impossible that he was of foreign birth and elected to an English kingship. 4 He was a strong warrior, a 1 Three years before his death, says the English Sermon on S. Edmund, MS. Bodl. 343. 2 See Memorials of S. Edm. Abbey, i. 3, 4 : Memorials of Dunstan, 378-380. "' " Ex antiquorum Saxonum nobili prosapia oriundus." S. Boni- face used to say of the old Saxon and (he English " De uno sanguine et de uno osse sumus,'' Ep. 39 (Jaffd, Monnm. Mogunt., p. 107). See Hauck, Kirchengeschichle, I. 433. 4 Geoffrey de Fontibus tells a long tale of his predecessor OfFa, not to be confused he very carefully says with the great Offa the Mercian tyrant the East Anglian hatred of the Mercians long survived visiting the old home of his race and staying with Alchmund, King of the old Saxons. \Vhen he lay dying after his 140 THE ENGLISH SAINTS Christian of quiet faith. Men looked up to him for his courage, his fair face, and his fairer fame : he lived a simple life, as the kings of those times lived, a shepherd of his poor people, like the great Alfred his contemporary. He studied to protect his land, and he gave good heed to the making of just laws : he was just, the father of orphans, the protector of widows, kind to the simple and needy. So he lived in peace till there burst over his land a storm of invasion which swept away the armies, the civilization, the religion of the people. 1 The English Chronicle, and the record of Abbo, give in their story of this some of the earliest accounts of the fearful ravages of the heathen hordes. The burning of towns, the murder and w r orse of women and children, the torture of captured warriors, are features in what soon became a too familiar story. We are told too of the special features of the Danish warfare, which added to the terrors of the time. Lying at w r ait in their ships at the mouths of the little rivers they would land at nightfall and creep over the marshes to ravage some unprotected homestead, springing, says the chronicler, who well knew the force of his simile, like the wolf of the evening upon his prey. 2 To this picture of desolation later writers add many details, gleaned there is no reason to doubt from return, he charged his men to have Edmund for their king. The prophecy of a Roman matron, given entirely to piety, convinced King Alchmund, and he consented to his son's departure. Mem. S. Edm., i. 94-98. No names of E. Anglian kings are known between Ethelberht 794(?) whom Offa beheaded, and S. Edmund. 1 A fine folk- tale is told of how they came, of the Danish prisoner, the wicked forester and the faithful greyhound. 2 Abbo, in Mem. 5., Edm.) \. 10, 1 1. THE ROYAL SAINTS 141 memories that would not soon pass away and from authentic histories of other Danish incursions. 1 They burnt the houses of God, and they spared not the women consecrated to His service, and one monastic writer, to pile up the horror, brings into it a revolting story of Ebba, abbess of Coldingham, who had been dead at least a hundred years. 2 Edmund fought stoutly for his people, but step by step he was beaten back and hemmed in. Then at last, when he was to fight for life and freedom, the Danish chieftains offered to spare him if he would rule his people under them. It is doubtful even if they asked him to deny Christ : but it is certain (if Abbo's tale be accepted, and it comes on the evidence of Dunstan and the old East Anglian) that they would have spared his life if he would have admitted their overlordship and have continued to watch over his land, now under Danish sway. Very likely the curious reason- ing between him and his bishop in which the prelate would have him yield, is, as Abbo 3 tells it to us, a fiction ; but no doubt the arguments which the king is made to use are such as would be really present to his mind. " God is my witness that whether alive or dead nothing shall separate me from the love of Christ. By the unction of my crowning I am thrice pledged to the faith of the eternal Trinity. By the baptismal robe, by the apostolic sign of confirmation, and by the bishop's hallowing and the acclamation of the common people, I am thrice vowed to God, for the service of this realm. The heathen promises life : I care not for it : a kingdom 1 See Nova Legenda Anglian, ii. 580-2. - Ibid., ii. 582. 3 Abbo, in M,.m. S. Ediii.^ 11-12. 142 THE ENGLISH SAINTS that I have : riches, I do not need them. Shall I serve two masters, I who am pledged solely to the service of Jesus Christ ?" Then with that wonderful boldness which has saved many men at a crisis, Edmund declared that he would serve the Dane only if he would serve Christ. There was a last battle, or maybe a night surprise. Edmund was captured, bound to a tree, scourged, made a target for the Danish arrows. All through his agonies he called upon Christ ; and when at last the long torture did not stay his prayers, the heathen chieftain bade men strike off his head. " So," says Abbo, " on the twelfth day from the kalends of De- cember, as a sacrifice well pleasing to God, Edmund, tried as by fire, entered with the palm of victory and the crown of righteousness, king and martyr, among the senate the witan of the heavenly court." 1 Stripped of the tawdry trappings of legend it is a noble story. The intense reverence which the people felt for centuries for this last of the East Anglian kings was founded on a knowledge of how truly his martyrdom was for their sakes. His death, he thought, might save his people : he could not live to sanction the rule of oppressors. If he did not die for his faith, he died most certainly, as did S. Alphege of Canter- bury, for his duty. God had given him his people : he could not betray his trust. The simple words of Abbo are enshrined in the Sarum Breviary. A short life,' 2 a life merely of duty that became heroic ; and so the 1 Memorials of S. Edni. Abbey, i. 15-16. 2 Abbo says that he died in the 29th year of his age and the I5th of his reign. THE ROYAL SAINTS 143 king, in the prime of youth and strength, went cheer- fully to God. We cannot wonder that legends gathered round the story. Abbo compared the martyrdom to that of S. Sebastian, who was thus slain in the persecution of Diocletian, 1 and told how after death he was be- headed and his body left in a wood where Christians knew of it and when peace came sought to recover it. The body was easily found, but the head only when a voice was heard crying " Here, here, here," which guided them to where a great wolf sat holding the sacred relic between his paws. So they carried it with tears and hymns to God, the wolf following, and then going back to the forest without harming any man. For many years 2 it rested at Hoxon 3 : then a church was built at Beodricsworth 4 which came in later times to be called Bury S. Edmund's, for the custody of the body, which, men said, was like that of S. Cuthbert incorrupt, 5 and where now the head showed only a red 1 See S. Ambrose, Enarr. in Psalm 118, Num. 44. 2 On the divergence as to time see Mr. Arnold's preface, Memorials of S. Edm. Abbey, p. xxi. 3 Or at Sutton, Liebermann, Ungedruckte A. N. Gesch., p. 203. 4 Ethelweard, p. 513. Abbo, Memorials S. E. A., p. 19. 5 This was ascribed to his virginity, A ova Legenda, ii. 592. The curious correspondence in the Times during August and September 1901 as to the bones which were brought to England as the gift of Pope Leo XIII. to the Roman Catholic cathedral church in West- minster deserves mention. Its result was the proof, complete so far as proof in such a case could possibly be, that the gift described as the bones of S. Edmund, King and Martyr, could not be authentic. The letters of Dr. Montague Rhodes James and of Sir Ernest Clarke are worth preserving ; and a curious interest attaches to the letters of the Rev. J. B. Mackinlay, O.S.B., and the Rev. Dr. Francis A. Gasquet. It does not appear that the Roman 144 THE ENGLISH SAINTS line where it had been severed. His day was observed on November 20 with great veneration. 1 At first S. Edmund was honoured in his own district only ; and even two hundred years after his death he was regarded especially as the defender of East Anglia. 2 But soon he became notably the patron of seafaring men, 3 the fisher folk and traders of the East Coast and Catholic authorities have decided whether the bones, sent as those of S. Edmund, are his or those of another S. Edmund, or those of a person unknown. 1 See Whytford's Martiloge, p. 181. "In England the feast of Saint Edmund King and martyr, that by the King and tyrant Hungware and certain Danes that with him invaded the realm was taken and bound to a tree, scourged naked, and then shot full of arrows, and at the last headed." - So Liebermann, in his Introduction to Heremanni Mir. S. Eadmundi in his Ungedruckte anglo-normannische Geschichts- qucllen. Cf. 3. (L. 233) "nostro patrono." 4. (Martene 824 C.) " in dioecesi qua noster veneratur sanctus." 6. (Martene 826 C. 828 D.) Inhabitants of Bury S. Edmund's implore the saint's help against Sweyen's unjust imposts, and he helps them. 8. (L. p. 234). " Vorax invasio decennalis fuit Anglis detestanda confusio, preter fines Orientales, sancti Eadmundi protectione vigentes." I.e., Ed- mund protected E. Anglia during the Danish invasions. 53. (L. p. 264) a Norman from Herefordshire is brought "ad eundem piissimum protectorem nostrum [Eadmundum]" to be healed. 57. " Noster protector." 3 The following instance of S. Edmund being invoked at sea is given by Heremann. A certain knight, named Normann(us), was wearing round his neck a phylactery (amulet) brought from the monastery of Bury S. Edmund's. He was bringing it to Nor- mandy by command and for the use of Abbat Baldwin of Bury S. Edmund's, William I.'s physician. The ship, though a large one, carrying nearly 60 men, besides 36 beasts and 16 horses laden with merchandise, was in danger of shipwreck. Goods and horses were thrown overboard, but Normannus kept his charger. On the morning of the third day a beautiful figure appeared in vision to Normannus while he slept and commanded him to remember the THE ROYAL SAINTS 145 through them the seamen of the whole isle. Thus his fame was spread over Europe. Meanwhile miracles had long begun : men who tried to rob the shrine were fixed hand and foot by the power of the saint, in the most uncomfortable positions, and were by the bishop delivered to be hanged : an act which he sincerely repented. 1 A rude and powerful thegn demanding to see the relics was struck with madness, abandoned by his father and eaten of worms. And Abbo ends by saying that there are many more miracles he could tell of, but for fear of prolixity. He phylactery he was wearing and call on God. Then Normannus stood up, took the phylactery in his hands, and he and the governor of the ship prayed to God and St. Edmund. Then the sea became calm, to the joy of Normannus, who perceived the virtue of the name with which the phylactery was inscribed, though, being a layman, he did not know what it was he was carrying. " Gaudet Normannus jam suis salvatis rebus, qui si nescit, ut laicus, quid collo gestaverit, tamen ejus virtutem percipit, cujus insignitum nomine fuerit. Adest in mare martyr Eadmundus, prodest in eo periclitantibus, ut olim nautis tempestate quassatis beatus Nicholaus : clamantibus illis sanctum Nicholaum, apparet quidam dicens : 'Ecce adsum.'" Heremanni Mir. S. Eadmundi^ ^ 50. Liebermann, pp. 261-263. The MS. of Heremanni Mir. S. Eadmundi breaks off abruptly in the middle of an account of help rendered by the saint in the night of 1 6 and 17 May [1096] to people returning by ship to England from Rome. (Liebermann, Ungedruckte anglo-normannische Geschichtsquellen, p. 281, Here- manni Mir. S. Eadmundi, 67.) Liebermann notes how well known to English writers was the translation of S. Nicholas from Myra to Bari in 1087 by the Normans of South Italy. 1 Abbo, p. 22. " Canonica auctoritas prohibet ne quis epis- copus aut quilibet de clero delatoris fungatur officio, quoniam satis dedecet ministros vitae ccelestis assensum pnebere in mortem cujuslibet hominis," The passage is of considerable interest in regard to later conflicts about ecclesiastical jurisdiction. 10 146 THE ENGLISH SAINTS doubts not nor can any man of the blessedness of Edmund in the glory of God. Others were not so reticent. By the time the legend came into the hands of John of Tynemouth 1 wonders were multitudinous. The famous abbat Samson of Bury and he was not the first or the last had put forth a great book of miracles, which the later writer freely adapted and enlarged. In the centuries that had gone by the shrine of S. Edmund had become one of the glories of Eng- land, for he, with S. Cuthbert and S. Thomas of Canterbury, was one of the three most popular saints, and abroad as in England his fame was unfading. The Icelanders knew of him, and told in Saga, as they told of S. Thomas. 2 " In all the long line of royal saints there is scarce one who has enjoyed for so long an European veneration." 3 Those who mocked, and a sheriff who refused to allow to a criminous lady the benefit of clergy, 4 and turned up his nose (says John of Tynemouth) at the miracles came to a bad end. 5 During the later Danish raids the body was moved to London, and miracles " prevented its becoming a prey to the pious cupidity of the Londoners." 6 In IO95 7 it was solemnly translated to the new and 1 Nova Legenda, ii. 590, assigns a passage to Abbo which cer- tainly was not written by him. John of Tynemouth used his editorial powers very freely. Cf. the story of Leofstan in his telling and Abbo's. 2 Cf. Corpus Poeticum Boreale, ii. 339. 3 Lappenberg, Hist, of Anglo-Saxons, E. Trans., i. 306. 4 Hermann, in Memorials S. E. A., i. 31. 5 "Audita illius miracula contracta nare subsannabat," Nova Legenda, ii. 593. This is an editorial addition. 6 Mr. Arnold in Introduction, Memorials, etc., p. xiii. 7 April 29, Whytford Martiloge, p. 65. THE ROYAL SAINTS 147 splendid shrine of which the miracles became the brightest glory. Devils trembled : the dumb spake : Osgod Clapa, King Edward Confessor's staller, was ast upon the pavement of the Church by a demon's hand for his insolent pride in presence of the relics 1 : abusive and profane boys of high rank suffered severely: Robert de Curzon in the time of Rufus desiring to seize the manor of Southwold 2 the property of the abbey was driven back by a tremendous storm and his knights foolishly persisting were struck with madness, 3 and his son reviving it became a raving lunatic till he gave it up : a servant who lost the rents he had collected recovered them with great joy but this story, says Samson, is not verified. 4 So up to the end of the fourteenth century William Bishop of Norwich was checked in his illegal incursions by the power of the Saint, 5 and a chapel at Wainfleet owed its restoration to the intervention of the saint himself. What a pitiable change from the noble story of courage and steadfast faith to the credulity, and super- stition, and greediness, and perhaps fraud, of later days. It is a sad example of the results of the venera- 1 The story is given by Hermann, Mem. S. E. A., 54-6, and Samson, ibid., 135-136 : Nova Legenda, 609-10. See English Chronicle, Earle and Plummer, ii. 226-7. 2 Not South Waltham, as editors have conjectured. 3 This story is in Samson and in Nova Legenda, ii. 621, 637-8, with additions from other MSS. The date is given as 1087 by Bodleian MS. 240. 4 " Sed rei modum investigare non licuit, verum se sua sancti meritis recepisse palam omnibus nuntiavit. Hujus relationis nee verum supprimimus, nee pro veritate mendacium concinnamus." P. 186. 5 He, William Bateman, was bishop from 1344 to 1356. 102 148 THE ENGLISH SAINTS tion of saints. From a devotion it passed into a trade : and supported by every licence of the papal curia 1 it became part of a system which was tainted through and through. Yet the old true reverence, it cannot be doubted, still lingered, in spite of corruption ; and when men tell stories of miracles they always assume that the king himself was ever a patron of the right. If monks called on him to aid them in contests of mere acquisitiveness, or sick folk bemoaned themselves till his aid cured their trivial ailments, still Englishmen remembered Edmund as the soldier and true king, as shepherd of his people and martyr for the faith of Christ. Time passed, storms vexed state and church, and still the lesson of King Edmund's life was read to inspire those who sat on the throne of the old English kings. " Ore oyez; Cristiene gent, Vus qui en Dieu Omnipotent Auez e fey e esperance E de salvacium fiance." 2 There is one great man among our early kings whom soldiers and scholars, Christians and Positivists, have in modern days united to honour, and whose name in his own age was famous far and wide, who yet has never been admitted among canonized saints, Alfred the Truthteller. 3 There is much that is legendary about this great 1 Cf. Nova Legenda, ii. 573-5, bulls of Innocent IV., which in themselves are lofty and reverent : but the results were very different. 2 1 3th century Life of S. Edmund, B. Mus., Cotton MS. Domit. A. xi. f. i. The life was written by Denis Piramus to amuse Henry III. on a voyage. 3 The phrase is in the Chron. of S. Neot, Mon. Hist. Brit., p. 498. THE ROYAL SAINTS 149 hero. The story of his learning to read Latin when he had been so far illiterate up to his twelfth year has many difficulties, some of them due to the scholars w r ho have tried to investigate it, but it is just such a memory as Alfred might well have of his youth and tell to his friend and bishop Asser. 1 Perhaps he may himself have made two stories into one when he looked back on his childhood. 2 The tale of a vision of S. Cuthbert, 3 confused though it is, may very likely be the record of a dream which inspired the West Saxon king. To one who knew and loved the English saints there might well seem to come a promise of help and victory from the apostle of the Northumbrians. 4 These and other stories whether we accept them or not are evidence of the true character of the man. So the tale of the cakes would not be told of any but a kindly humorous person, or that of the adventure in the Danish camp " sub specie mimi " of one who was not alert and daring, or that of the golden bracelets hung up at the cross roads of any time when the king was not a lover 1 The subject has been investigated thoroughly by Mr. Plummer, Life and Times of Alfred, pp. 84 sqq., and by many great scholars, Dr. Stubbs, Mr. Freeman, the Bishop of Bristol and others. Professor W. E. Collins, London Quarterly Review, Jan., 1902, strangely regards it as one to be " rejected without hesitation." I cannot agree with those who repudiate Mr. Freeman's suggestion as impossible. 2 This view would remove the few difficulties left after Mr- Plummer's exhaustive treatment. 3 W. Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, i. 126. 4 Professor Earle, The Alfred Jewel, 1901, pp. 74, 177-180, regards the whole story as "a transparent fraud," and thinks that the figure on the famous icon is symbolical, " to represent the papal authority as the vicar and vicegerent of Christ." 150 THE ENGLISH SAINTS and a keeper of good peace. 1 Alfred indeed was a true English hero. He was a warrior of capacity almost unique for his times 2 : he was a lawgiver if not among the greatest yet among the most beneficent, an organizer of justice as he was an organizer of victory 3 ; he was a scholar with the real enthusiasm of a student 4 ; but most of all he was one who simply loved and followed Christ. Asser's Life has been taken as a portraiture too much idealized to truly represent a living character, and as rather " an Alfred of tradition than of history ' 5 ; but the idealization is only that of love and memory. Alfred was a true hero : and no life that has ever been worthily written of such an one fails to idealize. That is the secret of a true under- standing, no less than it is the clue to the medieval science of hagiology. "My will was to live worthily, as long as I lived, and after my life to leave to them that should come after my memory in good works'': so he added when he was translating Boethius. " And no man may do aught of good unless God work with 1 It is not necessary to go into the authenticity of Asser or the relation to it of the legends of S. Neot, for Mr. Plummer has finally settled the question relating to both in his Life and Times of Alfred. 2 See Professor Oman in Alfred the Great (Bowker), pp. 115-148, Rev. W. H. Simcox, Alfred's Year of Battles, English Historical Review, vol. i., p. 128 sqq. 3 Liebermann, Gesetze der Angelsachsen; Turk, The legal code of Alfred the Great; see also Plummer, pp. 121 sqq. ; Sir F. Pollock in Alfred the Great (Bowker), and Mr. F. Seebohm's recent Anglo- Saxon Law and Ciistom. 4 See Bishop of Bristol arid Professor Earle in Alfred the Great (as above), and Plummer, Lectures V. and VI. 5 Professor W. E. Collins in the London Quarterly Review, Jan., 1902, p. 81. THE ROYAL SAINTS 151 him. And yet no one should be idle and not attempt something in proportion to the powers which God gives him " : so he wrote when he was paraphrasing S. Augustine. They are true expressions of the prin- ciples that ruled his own life, and the lives of the English statesmen kings. He guided himself by the love of Christ : the little book of hours and of prayers and ejaculations that he made for himself was always in his bosom, 1 and so, as writes the northern chronicler who revived his fame for later days, " all alone strove he, by the help of Almighty God, like a skilful steers- man, so to sway the helm as to bring his ship, his own glorious and living soul, into the harbour and the calm and peace of Paradise." 2 " Alfred the King of the Anglo-Saxons," wrote Florence of Worcester, " the famous, the warlike, the victorious, the careful provider for the widow, the help- less, the orphan, and the poor ; the most skilled of Saxon poets, most dear to his own nation, courteous to all, most liberal ; endowed with prudence, fortitude, j ustice, and temperance ; most patient in the infirmity from which he continually suffered ; the most discern- ing investigator in executing justice, most watchful and devout in the service of God." 3 Verily, as Alfred him- self said, " no man may do aught of good unless God work with him"; and in the good king God gave a great gift to the English people. There may well be wonder that such a king did not take his place in the Kalendar, a forerunner of S. Louis 1 Asser, 107, 108, in. 2 Simeon of Durham, Hist.) sub ann. 887. 3 Florence of Worcester, Chron^ sub ann. 901. 152 THE ENGLISH SAINTS of France. Local veneration was paid to his name. In 1 1 12 his body (with that of Edward the Elder and his wife) was translated to a tomb at the foot of the high altar of the abbey of Hyde near the walls of the city of Winchester. The relics, it seems probable, were found in 1787, and scattered to the dust. 1 It seems possible that in some places his obit was observed ; 2 but all attempts to obtain formal canonization failed. Henry VI. applying to Pope Eugenius IV. in 1441 after referring to a previous request through the bishop of Enaghdun begged for the canonization of King Alfred through whom, both in his life and after his death, God, ever admirable in His saints, worked many miracles : 3 but the Pope did not consent. It is strange that he was not formally canonized. The explanation perhaps is that he was so hallowed in the people's reverence that no canonization was, in the earlier days, necessary. It was possibly so with S. Anselm. 4 But the archbishop obtained through the 1 See the account in a letter of Feb. 26, 1798 in A xiii. 309. Three coffins were found when the ruins of the abbey were destroyed, a small field being purchased by the county, " and in it they erected the new gaol or Bridewell," says the writer indignantly. 2 See A Menology of Enghwd and Wales, by R. Stanton, 1887, pref. p. xiii. The book contains some " who cannot be proved to have been publicly honoured as saints, but who were eminent for their zeal in the service of religion, as well as, either for their holy lives, as Kings Anna and Alfred, or for their edifying conversion, as Oswy and Edgar." This book needed a supplement of correc- tion in 1892. The menology of Whytford contains no mention of Alfred. 3 See Letters of Bekynton (Rolls Series), i. 118-19. 4 But I am inclined rather to think that the reason was that his cause never made any popular impression. Men could see what THE ROYAL SAINTS 153 ntercession of Henry VII. what was denied to the dng when Henry VI. asked for Alfred. In Alfred and Edmund there abide great memories for Englishmen. But this, the heroic witness, is but one aspect of saintly kingship. There was the tragic contrast between great place and great sorrow so patent in the lives of monarchs. And from the first recorded history of our land the pathos naturally embodied itself in stories of child-kingship, the guilt- less suffering of those called to great place in early youth. There the contrast which is the soul of pathos was pointed with relentless emphasis. 1 Two stories of early English kings long lingered in the memory of the people, the legend of S. Kenelm and the history of S. Edward. Among modern historians there is a conspiracy of silence about S. Kenelm. 2 A legend, which does not Becket meant : the question in dispute in Anselm's time was too subtle for them. fty) 1 1 There were several youthful king-martyrs who belonged to the period of the decay of Mercia and rise of Wessex. " Of these King-Martyrs, S. Ethelbert of East Anglia, slain by procurement of Offa, or his wife, has remained, notwithstanding the canonization of bishop Thomas of Cantilupe, the patron Saint of Hereford. S. Alchmund, King of Northumbria, who perished in the year 800, was honoured at Derby. S. Kenelm, of Mercia, whose cult became widely diffused, was the victim of a sister's machinations. S. Wistan, the last offshoot of the same royal house, was honoured in the abbey of Repton, in Derbyshire, and, after the translation of his relics in the reign of Canute, at Evesham." Edmund Bishop, English Hagiology, in Dublin Review, January, 1885, pp. 139-140. 2 Diet. Chr. Biog., Dr. Bright, Mr. Hunt, for example, do not mention him. Mr. Plummer has a note in his Two Saxon Chronicles, ii. 69, on the legend. It is given in Nova Legenda, ii. 1 10 sqq. 154 THE ENGLISH SAINTS seem to go back further than the eleventh century, tells of a child king of Mercia in the ninth, the son of Kenwulf, small in age but great in mind and in piety, as the Northern hagiologist writes. He was made king when his father died, but his sister sought his life by guile and force. Given to a protector who was to murder him, he was taken to a distant forest, but his staff blossoming into an ash-tree prevented the murder till he came to the vale of Clent. There his head was cut off, while he sang Te Deum till he came to the words " the white robed army of martyrs." A cow revealed to England, a dove to Rome, the cruel deed. Cardinals came to find the body : the shires of Gloucester and Worcester contended for its possession. The Gloucester men won by right of longer vigil : and at Winchcombe he was enshrined. Miracles followed ; the blind were healed, the sceptics con- vinced, and Kenelm took his place among the saintly kings of England, and brought great fame and riches to the abbey of his shrine. Lives w r ere written which enriched the legend with poetic embellishment : prayers and hymns 1 honoured the Mercian boy king. 1 The Bodleian MS. 285, from part of which the life in Nova Legcnda is adapted, ends with these verses, hitherto unprinted : " O Kenelme Martyr alme Merciorum gloria Rex sublimis tua nimis dulcis est memoria. Nam precellis fano mellis gratia dulcedinis Atque rosis speciosis flore pulchritudinis. Martyr aue qui per graue iuguli supplicium Deo pacis de te facis gratum sacrificium. Martyr inquam qui longinquam pacis petens patriam Huius uite sine lite linquis ydolatriam. Martyr clare deprecare illam tuam dominam Illam dignam ac beiiignam et iocundam feminam. THE ROYAL SAINTS 155 With Edward the West Saxon we come to more authentic history. The English Chronicle tells the story quite simply, and there is early confirmatory evidence 1 of the fact that he was at once regarded as a martyr, as " cruelly and unjustly put to death." 2 Judged by modern standards, Edward king of the West Saxons was not, in the restricted sense of the word at least, a saint. He was in no sense, so far as we can see, a martyr. But his short life and his tragic death touched the imagination of the people from the very first and even yet exist as a dim semi-superstitious memory in the district where he died. His story is one which in its chief features stands out clear and distinct. Illam dico que pudico uentre deum genuit Et nature uicto iure castitatem tenuit. Hanc insignis martyr dignis deprecare precibus Et tuorum meritorum interpella uocibus. Vt dignetur quod meretur culpas nostras pellere Et precare nos ditare claritatis munere. Vbi gratis cum beatis nos contingat socijs Eternorum canticorum perfrui negocijs." 1 The earliest (says Mr. Plummer, Two Saxon Chronicles, ii. 166) is the Vita Oswaldi {Historians of York, Raine, i. 449-450) : The life, of which five MSS. exist, with certain variations, which Sir T. D. Hardy thought possibly might be the work of Eadmer, is printed for the first time from MS. xcvi. of S. John Baptist College, Oxford, as an appendix to this lecture. See Hardy, Descriptive Catalogue, i. 579-582. The life in Nova Legenda, i. 349 sqq., is a much abbreviated version of that ascribed to Eadmer. William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, ed. Stubbs, i. 181-185. The Life in Bollandist Acta Sanctorum. See reference to Edward in Wulf- stan, Sammlung der ihm zugeschrieben Homilien (Napier), p. 1 60. 2 Plummer, Two Saxon Chronicles, ii. 166. Cf. the case of S. Alphege below, Lecture VI. 156 THE ENGLISH SAINTS Left, at the age of thirteen, on the death of his father the great king Edgar, with little guidance or help in a time of the bitterest disputes between secular and ecclesiastical parties, he was placed on the throne, in spite of the intrigues of his stepmother, by the strong arm of his remote kinsman, ^Elfhere, the Ealdorman of the Mercians, and the wise and unselfish support of the great archbishop Dunstan. His short reign of four years was marked by a reaction against the monastic party ; and yet the monastic writers do not the less regard him as saint and martyr. The later lives, in their skilful piecing together of record and tradition, speak of him as a boy of the highest promise who spurned the coarse vices of his age and kept mind and body pure and unstained for the service of God ; as prudent and industrious in his doings, gracious and lovely in his life. They dwell on his charity and his gifts to the poor during the bitter famine, it may be, of 976, of which the English Chronicler writes. His reign was probably peaceful and happy ; for of it there is practically no history. Of the foul murder by which it was ended the English Chronicler speaks with reticence. Florence of Wor- cester, who probably embodies a version of one of them which we have now lost, says with precision writing more than a century afterwards " Eadward king of the English was wickedly slain at Corfe's gate by his own servants acting under the command of his step- mother, Queen ^thelfryth." William of Malmesbury, who blends so much of legend and romance with his most sober records that THE ROYAL SAINTS 157 it is difficult to disentangle the one from the other, gives, in his Gesta Regum and his life of S. Dunstan, a tale which certainly owes something to his own imagination, but which in its actual account of the murder itself is, I cannot but think, the embodiment of a genuine tradition. This is the story which is most familiar to us how that the boy-king (he was scarcely seventeen) tired and hot with hunting, was induced by his wicked stepmother to drink the stirrup- cup (as later ages called it) and as he drank was stabbed from behind ; and falling from his horse, as he endeavoured to ride away, was dragged for some distance till life was extinct. One cannot help fancying that as he fell he uttered some sharp words of prayer that sank into the hearts of those who saw the cruel murder and aroused the passionate regret that was soon so powerfully expressed. It was a pitiful tale, whether it happened as William of Malmesbury tells it or no : and thus pitiful did the earliest English Chronicler (himself a contemporary) think it : " To the English race was no worse deed done than this was, since they first sought Britain. Men murdered him, but God him glorified. He was in life an earthly King; he is now, after death, a heavenly saint. Him his earthly kinsmen would not avenge; but his Heavenly Father has fully avenged him. The earthly murderers would his memory blot out on earth ; but the Avenger above has spread abroad his memory in the heavens and on earth. They who before would not to his living body bow, now humbly bend on their knees before his dead bones." Thus, at once so we find from all sources did the 158 THE ENGLISH SAINTS horror of the thing fill men with love of the dead and religious veneration for his memory. In the night after the murder, say the legends which the Bollandists preserve, a woman blind from her birth recovered her sight ; and miracles which we can scarcely fail to recognize as imaginary at once sprang up to win him the title of martyr. For it was to the miracles wrought by his body so Roger of Wendover states that he owes the name of martyr to which he had otherwise no claim. Buried at first with disrespectful haste at Wareham, his body was translated within a year with great cere- mony to Shaftesbury, whence in later times relics of him were taken to Leominster and to Abingdon. He was canonized, in the old fashion, by no formal decree but by popular reverence. His name was never placed in the Roman kalendar, but both the day of his death, the i8th of March, and the traditionary date of the translation preserved in the Sarum Breviary the 2Oth of June were observed in England. The collects and lections in the Sarum Missal and Breviary beauti- fully express a feeling which was attested all over the land by the building of churches as here in Oxford within a short distance from this church of S. Mary dedicated to the memory of the young King. So deeply did men ponder over " the inheritance of this poor child His little kingdom of a forced grave." It was a happy inspiration which made men, when they drew up the services of commemoration for the boy king, find a peculiar appropriateness in the fact that it often occurred in Lent. He who had used THE ROYAL SAINTS 159 Lent so wisely during his life had been taken away in the midst of the season of self-discipline that he might spend his Easter in Paradise. 1 They that sow in tears shall reap with ringing cries of joy. Life is a stern training : there is a future in the Divine thought of pity. It is something of this feeling which lingers in the later centuries : not the grandeur but the pathos of kingship brought sovereigns into the ranks of the saints. When Richard II. had his picture 2 painted with his patron saints, two English kings were set above him, with S. John Baptist, to watch over him in love, as he prayed. One was the fair-haired Edmund martyred by the Danes : the other, in robe of pure white, with hair and beard touched with the marks of years and sorrows, was the last of the old line of Cerdic, the saint and confessor whom the English looked back to so fondly when the stern hand of the Norman was laid upon the land. By the time that a French clerk set himself in the thirteenth century to idealize the good King Edward legend had gathered thickly around him. Ailred of Rievaulx a century before had told the story of the king's life, 8 deriving most of his life from that by Osbern of Clare, Prior of Westminster, and in his tale already the Confessor had become a centre of marvels. S. Peter prophesied his kingship and his virtues, and when he came to be king he gave up the " Danescot " because he saw a devil sitting on the top of the 1 See Sarum Breviary ; Edw. Rex et Mart., lectio vi. 2 The famous picture at Wilton House. 3 Migne, Patrol. Lat., vol. xcv., Paris, 1855. 160 THE ENGLISH SAINTS treasure, black and hideous, 1 and he lived a chaste life, full of charity to the sick like that of S. Francis of Assisi. The marvels that are told of Edward are fit, it seems, for him who would continue the apocryphal work of Bishop Mellitus at Westminster through whom Saint Peter in a gentle manner made present of a salmon to King Sebert. 2 The new abbey under good King Edward became renowned for its miracles of healing, especially of the blind : and to him it was given to see the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, and for love of him S. John Evangelist succoured pilgrims in their distress. But whatever Henry III. and his wife might think of him, Edward Confessor was no model for English kings. His virtues were those of a monk, not a states- man. He was a friend of good men ; he seriously endeavoured at least to begin the reform of the English Church by foreign influence which William the Conqueror went far towards accomplishing : he tried to deal justly and live at peace. But as a king he was weak and redeless : even the virgin life which was one of the marks of his sanctity would for the sake of England have been better laid aside when he married Earl Godwine's daughter. 3 For this last point 1 La Estoire, p. 52 : Vit un deable ser desus Le tresor, noir et hidus. Cf. W. H. Hutton, S. Thomas of Canterbury, pp. 38-39 (second edition). 2 La Estoire, p. 86. 3 The early if not absolutely contemporary biographers believed that his relations with his wife were like those of father and daughter. It is interesting to compare these lives with those in Pertz, Mon. Germ. Hist., iv. 679-695 and 787-828. S. Henry too worked what Pertz considers trivial miracles. For his married life see pp. 816, 817. THE ROYAL SAINTS 161 he has a contemporary parallel in the Emperor Henry II., but the Caesar was a greater sovereign as well as a truer saint. Yet with all his weaknesses Edward Confessor had an ideal, inadequately though he understood it, and that ideal was the life of the Lord Jesus. Thus the northern monk could write of him as "the father of his country, and another Solo- mon, that is a lover of peace, who protected his king- dom by peace rather than by arms. He had," he says, " a mind that subdued anger, despised avarice, and was entirely free from pride." 1 We do not wonder that the true English monk, a stout Godwine's man, and a servant of Queen Eadgyth, should speak the thoughts of his countrymen when he says that the good king's body, " before the altar of the blessed apostle Peter, washed by the tears of his country, was laid up in the sight of God." 2 Centuries passed, and the men who ruled England were stark men, and there was great awe, no love, of them ; but still unfading was the old belief in the sanctity of the English kings. Even Edward II., the idler and the agriculturist, was considered an eligible candidate for canonization by a people who resented the crimes by which he was deposed and slain. 3 But 1 Turgot, Life of S. Margaret^ cap. i. 2 Lives of JEdw. Conj., ed. Luard, p. 434. Whytford's Martiloge gives January 5 as his day (he died January 3, 1066), and October 13 as his translation. The observance of the latter day has been revived in Westminster Abbey since 1896 (A Commemoration^ etc., by J. Armitage Robinson, p. 15). 3 "It was debated by the people whether Edward II. had not merited the honour of sanctity," Bishop Stubbs, referring to Knighton, c. 2551. II 162 THE ENGLISH SAINTS the " debate" did not last long: his " elegant off- spring "* soon gave the people other things to think about. One later king there was who revived the forgotten memories of holiness. There came to sit upon the throne, in times of grievous stress, one whose first thought was always the service of the Divine Master. His services to learning, as a wise founder, were un- paralleled : and over all study he would have set the motto " to the glory of God." The beautiful simplicity of Henry VI. and the cruel tragedy, more than suspected, of his death, made him soon revered as a martyr. Yorkshire, always loyal to the house of Lancaster, developed a special veneration for the saintly king.' 2 York was the centre of the cult. Dean Andrews had been Henry's chaplain and it was probably by him that an image of the king was set up on the rood screen of the Minster. 3 In 1476 the altar of S. Saviour in the Minster was refounded by the Dean for the souls of Henry, his queen, and others. 4 Three years later Archbishop Laurence Booth was obliged by the government of Edward IV. to issue a monition 5 1 "Regaliter nupsit et prolem elegantem regni sui haeredem suscititavit," M. Malmesb., p. 135. 2 Cont. Croyland, p. 566. 3 Fabric Rolls of York Minster (Surtees Soc.), p. 82, show that it was there in 1473 : in 1516 a sum was paid for painting it, p. 97. 4 Ibid., pp. 301, 227. The altar had gone before 1500, when an altar is spoken of as "nuper Regis Henrice sexti." 5 The monition is of sufficient interest to be printed here verbatim (from Fabric Rolls^ etc., pp. 208 sgq.}. Monitio facta quod aliquis sive aliqui non venerentur statuam sive ymaginem Henrici nuper regis Anglia; de facto, et non de jure, etc. (Reg. Laur. Booth, 113, a). THE ROYAL SAINTS 163 against venerating any image or statue of the king. The document has a special interest because it gives for reason the rule that papal confirmation was required before the veneration of any saint. The Yorkshire Trevelyans preserve a parchment bede roll, dated 1462, which has a number of pages to Henry VI., part of such an office as the Franciscan drew up for Simon de Laurencius, etc., dilecto nobis in Christo magistro Willelmo Pote- man, legum doctori, ac nostrae curiae consistorialis Ebor. official! salutem, etc. Ex utriusque juris pagina, inter alia, didicimus quod non debemus aliquem defunctum tanquam Sanctum, quantum- cumque bonce vitae fuerit, publice venerari, aut eidem palam et publice offerre, donee idem defunctus ab Ecclesia et a Romano pontifice fuerit approbatus, ac ejusdem defuncti nomen in cathalogo Romani pontificis fuerit ascriptum ; si quis vel qui contrafacere pre- sumpserit vel presumpserint, secundum canonum instituta punietur et punientur, cum ecclesia militaris sepe fallit et fallitur. Nonnulli tamen nostrae Ebor. diocesios Christ! fideles, premissorum canonum scioli, ipsis canonibus spretis et neglectis, auctoritate propria, et auctoritate ecclesiae sive Romani pontificis minime suffulti, locum, ubi statua sive ymago Henrici sexti quondam de facto regis Anglias in Ecclesia nostra metropolitica Ebor. situabatur, venerari, et ibidem publice offerre presumpserunt, quamquam ipsius corpus universalis, et in vilipendium domini nostri Edwardi, Anglorum regis quarti, aliorumque Christ! fidelium exemplum perniciosum. Quare vobis firmiter injungendo mandamus quatenus moneatis omnibus et singulis decanis totius nostrae Ebor. diocesios, quatenus decani et eorum quilibet, omnes et singulos in ipsius sen ipsorum decanatu vel decanatibus moneat seu moneant cum effectu, quos eciam nos presentium tenore monemus quod ipsi et eorum singuli de cetero ab hujusmodi veneracione died loci in predicta nostra Ecclesia Metropolitica Ebor. se abstineant, sub pena juris. Intimantes omnibus et singulis Christ! fidelibus dictae nostrae diocesios si presens contra prius nostrum mandatum aliquid attemptare pre- sumpserint seu presumpserit aliquis eorumdem quod nos talker puniemus quod ceten exemplo preterriti consimilia perpetrare formidabunt. Data, etc., apud Scroby, 27 Oct., 1479 (Reg. 113,0- II 2 164 THE ENGLISH SAINTS Montfort. 1 Henry VII., whose great aim it was to connect himself hereditarily with the line of Henry VI. and attract to himself the romantic affection of the old Lancastrians, endeavoured to win the canonization of the murdered king : and evidence of his sanctity was collected. 2 But the attempt failed : partly it would 1 Trevelyan Papers, First Series, Camden Soc., pp. 53-60. Here ys a devoute prayer of Kyne Herre : " Gaude, princeps populorum Dux et decus Britanorum Rex Henricus nomine, etc., etc." And in the same volume is a MS. formerly belonging to the Pudsey family, of similar prayers, etc. See also Notes and Queries, 2nd Series, No. 26, June 28, 1856, p. 509, and cf. Canonization of S. Osmund. 2 Blakman de Virtutibus et Miraculis Henrici VI. in Hearne's Otterbourne et Whethamstede, vol. i., p. 287. " Prohemium. . . . Maxime quia sanctos Dei laudare, quorum in cathalogo istum puto regem eximium, ob sancta sua merita quoad vixit per eum exer- citata, merito computari, omnipotentis Dei laus est et gloria, ex cuius coelesti dono est, ut sancti sint. De prasnobili eius prosapia, quo modo scilicet ex nobilissimo sanguine et stirpe regia antiqua Anglias secundum carnem progenitus erat, et qualiter in duabus regionibus Anglias et Franciae, ut verus utriusque heres coronatus fuerat, tacere curavi, quasi manifesto et notu. . . ." From the following it would seem that he was preparing materials for possible canonization. He gives " Virtutum eius commendatio," and says "Timor Dni inerat ei. . . . O quanta diligentia placendi Deo in tarn sublimi et iuvenili persona est. Attendite reges et principes universi, juvenes et virgines et populi quique, et laudate Dfium in sanctis eius. . . ." He speaks of him as " Cultor Dei sedulus," and adds commendation of " Devota habitude eius in ecclesia. Pudicitia eius. Liberalitas eius. Humilitas regis. Labor et exercitium eius. Juramenta eius. Pietas et patientia eius." He says further that " Anima autem ipsius, ut pie credimus, ex miraculoru, ubi corpus eius humatur, diutina continuatione, cum Deo in ccelestibus vivente, ubi, post istins sceculi aerumnas, cum iustis in aeterno Dei con- tuitu feliciter gaudet, pro terreno et transitorio regno hoc patienter THE ROYAL SAINTS 165 seem because of the Tudor king's reluctance to pay the enormous fees demanded at Rome, 1 and partly no doubt through the difficulty of rinding sufficient miracles. 2 It is asserted by Hearne that Henry VIII. made the same endeavour, and that Catherine of Aragon prevented it. :i The characters of the kings of the next century could hardly be drawn within the circle of the saints. The Reformation gave for the time new ideals, and the Church till the seventeenth century ceased to look for examples of holiness in royal courts. But the memory amisso, aeternum jam possidens in aevum." Finally he speaks of ** Revelationes ei ostensae." 1 Hall, Chronicle, p. 304. "... these and other like offices of holynes caused GOD to work miracles for him in his life tyme, (as old menne saied). By reason whereof, Kyng Henry the seuenth, not without cause, sued to holy Bishop of Rome to haue him canonized, as other sainctes be : but the fees of canonizing of a King, wer of so great a quatitie at Rome (more then the canon- izing' of a Bushoppe or a prelate, although he satte in saincte Peters Cheire) that the saied King thought it more necessary to keep his money at home, for the profite of his realme and country, rather than to empouerish his kingdom, for the gaining of a newe holy day of Sainct Henry : remitting to GOD the judgement of his will and intent." But Bacon wittily suggested the following reason " because the Pope would put a difference betwenn a Saint and an innocent" Hearne, a legitimist of an extreme type, says "The Pope knew that Henry VI. was not king de iure but only de facto, and a poor creature." See Notes and Queries as above. ' 2 See Hearne's Otterbourne and Whethamstede, vol. i., for the attempt. See also Polydore Vergil's emphasis on the miracles : and the account by Dr. Gasquet of the passage in the Vatican MS. Transactions of R. Hist. Soc., N.S., xvi. 15. For Henry VI. 's own attitude towards miracles cf. Shakespeare's Henry VI. , Part II., act ii., sc. I. ;! Hearne, Otterbourne, i., pref., p. 1. i66 THE ENGLISH SAINTS of the just could not pass away : and as long as English history is written, and as the great triumphs of English architecture remain, men will remember Oswald and Edmund, and the two Edwards, martyr and confessor. The lives of early English kings had set before the people an ideal of service in high place which has never been abandoned, the forgetfulness of which in any sovereign has been bitterly resented, and which has endured in shining example of accomplishment to the beginning of the century that is now before us. Long may it survive ! The monarchy which cherishes such memories will remain a blessing to the land. APPENDIX TO LECTURE IV [MS. S. JOHN'S COLLEGE, 96] INCIPIT PASSIO SANCTI EADWARDI REGIS ET MARTIRIS INCLITVS REX EADVVARDVS ALTO ET NOBILISSIMO REGVM antiquorum stemate in brittannia oriundus fuit. Quodque his maius est ab ipso pueritie sue flore a sancto DVNSTANO cantuariensi archipresule christi regeneratus sacramentis morum honestate cepit pollere. Extitit autem pie memorie rege EDGARO nomine progenitus qui inter cunctos brittannie reges tarn in procinctu bellorum quam in dei rebus uelut lucifer radiis probitatis sue effulserat. Nam postquam monarchiam regni deo fauente prudenter adeptus est omnes insulas totius regionis in quibus ante eum diuersi reges principabantur suo imperio adauxit. Dein etiam ortantibus et docentibus predicto archipresule et sancto cetheluuoldo uuintoniensi episcopo multa sue patrie destituta ac exinanita monasteria de suo fecit restaurari nonnulla uero a funda- mentis edificari. Abbates quoque cum monachorum turbis sub discipline iugo regulariter uicturos in quibusdam dirigit in quibusdam autem sanctimonialium congregationes statuit feminarum conferens predia ac uillas ad uictum et uestitum eorum sufficienter. Taliter itaque rebus in domo dei dis- positis studens gloriosus rex ut fieret sancte matri ecclesie munimento exterius et ornamento interius inter cetera probitatum suarum insignia hoc ab eo decretum est ut de monachis in congregatione positis ipse tanquam pastor prouidus eos frequenter uisitando et consolando curam gereret et uxor ejus sanctimonialium conuenticula tanquam mater piissima procuraret ut uidelicet mas maribus et femina feminis absque ulla suspicione conuenientius subueniret. [ 167] 168 THE ENGLISH SAINTS Habebat etiam idem preclarus rex ex alia coniuge nomine aelftrid filium alterum cui nomen erat aethelredus. Set pre- dictus filius suus bone indolis adolescens eaduuardus nequa- quam lasciuie aut uoluptatibus illecebrose carnis mentem intendit set talem se in omnibus exhibere studuit ut deo super omnia in integritate mentis et corporis complaceret et ab hominibus pio diligeretur affectu. Uidens uero pater eius tantam in filio karissimo animi florere ingenuitatem gauisus super prudentia eius et industria hunc post se in solio iure hereditario inthronizandum paterno more instituit ac preordinauit. Interea compositis et subactis ut premisi- mus in pace et tranquillitate totius regni partibus memoratus rex piissimus EDGARVS ex hac subtractus est uita a domino ut credimus gaudia percepturus eterna anno dominice incarnationis nongentesimo quinquagesimo uicesimo septimo principatus autem sui anno sextodecimo mense iulio die octauo mensis eiusdem. Quo mortuo filius eius senior EADVVARDVS ex uoluntate patris ut prelibauimus a sancto DVNSTANO et quibusdam principibus ad regni gubernacula suscipienda eligitur. Set dum consecrationis eius tempore nonnulli patrie optimates resistere uoluissent sanctus DVN- STANVS in electione eius unanimiter perseuerans uexillum crucis sancte quod ex consuetudine pre se ferebatur arrep- tum in medio statuit eumque cum reliquis religiosis epis- copis in regem consecrauit. Quern etiam paterno affectu toto quo aduixit tempore dilexit quia eum ab annis puerilibus sibi in filium adoptauerat. Sanctus uero EADVVARDUS in regni solio sullimatus a rege regum domino in omni uia iusticie et ueritatis dirigebatur cuius et auxilio fretus magno animi ingenio et summa humilitate in dies crescebat. Nam in noviter adepto honore mox pristine probitati hec suarum incrementa uirtutum accumulauit iuuenum uidelicet et minus sapientum consilia postponere predicti archipresulis monitis mentem salubriter intendere et secundum consilium eius et aliorum religiosorum spectabiliumque uirorum sua iudicia in omnibus exercere. Paternarum quoque tradi- tionum emulator fortissimus effectus et tarn in militari APPENDIX TO LECTURE IV 169 uirtute quam in ecclesiasticis negotiis disponendis deuote et strenue intentus contra hostes et male agentes quadam crudelitate utebatur pie uiuentes uero et precipue in sacris ordinibus constitutes sollerti cura ueluti a patre piissimo didicerat ab omni infestatitione protegebat. Preterea etiam quendam cotidiane consuetudinis ritum agebat inopes alere pauperes recreare nudis 1 uestimenta largiri pro magno Antique lucro ea computans que in tali opere consumpsisset. Tune in anglorum populo magna ubique extitit iocunditas magna pacis constantia magna rerum opulentia quoniam rex eorum talibus in primo adhuc iuuentutis principiis deditus cunctis erat affabilis castitate laudabilis facie decorus et hilaris consilio et prudentia probatissimus. Sed totius bonitatis inimicus diabolus felicibus actibus inuidens et communia regni totius gaudia disturbare cupiens nouercam eius aelftrid in odium ipsius concitat cuius presumptuosa calliditas quam sit execrabilis ex euentu rei satis animaduerti potest. Nam inuidie zelo succensa cogitare cepit qualiter uirum dei a regno extirparet ut filius suus aethelredus liberius in regno substitueretur. Talia itaque ea diu in animo pertractante quibusdam principibus consiliariis suis secreta cordis sui aperiens consilium super hoc cum illis habuit orans et optestans ut ei una assensum preberent et quo ordine id fieri posset excogitarent. Qui protinus in nece illius omnes consenserunt et ut hoc quantotius perficerent fraudulenta machinatione meditabantur. Quid multa ? Confirmato ut supradiximus uenerabili uiro in regno cum iam tribus tantum annis et octo mensibus sceptro hereditario potiretur forte die quadam cum canibus et equitibus uenandi gratia in siluam accessit que iuxta uillam que dicitur Werham admodum grandis tune habebatur set nunc rara tantum spineta nucumque arbores neglecto situ campis late patentibus ibi cernuntur. Ubi cum aliquandiu incepto negotio insisteret reminiscens fratris sui adolescentis aethel- redi ad uisendum ilium ire disposuit quia eum puro et 1 MS. " nidis." 17 THE ENGLISH SAINTS sincere corde diligebat. Frater autem iuxta eandem siluam domus nouerce sue in qua predictus puer nutriebatur in loco qui ab incolis corph nuncupatur a uilla memorata tribus milibus distans ubi nunc castrum satis celeste con- structum est. Ad quam dum assumpto pauco secum comitatu proficisceretur ecce subito in medio uie spatio hominibus illius ludentium more hue illucque dispersi et uagantibus ipse absque ullo comite remansit. At ille ut erat solus ad domum illam quia iam eminus earn aspiciebat tanquam agnus mansuetissimus tendit neminem uerens aut pertimescens qui nee in minimis quidem aliquem se offen- disse recognoscebat. Cui dum approximaret nuntiatuin est impiissime regine a ministris suis illuc regem EADVVARDVM aduenire. Ilia autem plena iniqua cogitatione et dolo ad explenda nequitie sue desideria adipisci se tempus idoneum gaudens obuia mox cum satellitibus iniquitatis tanquam de aduentu eius congratulans procedit blande eum et amica- biliter salutat ad hospitium inuitat. Qui renuit set fratrem suum se uidere et alloqui uelle denuntiat cum ilia rursum ad alia se commenta transformans iubet absque dilatione sibi potum propinari scilicet ex occulto opperiens ut dum ille potum incaute degustaret opportunius quod cogitarat ex- pleret. Interim unus etiam qui et animo audatior et scelere immanior erat ficta dilectione inde traditoris domini factum imitans pacis ei libauit osculum ut uidelicet omnem sus- picionem auferens amoremque intimum ei demonstrans facilius suffocaret. Quod et factum est. Nam postquam poculum a pincerna suscipiens summo tenus ore attigit is qui osculum sibi intulerat ex aduerso insiliens cultello mox eius uiscera transfixit. Qui graui inflictus uulnere cum paululum inde diuertisset de equo cui insederat subito in terram exanimis ruit. Sicque carus dei occumbens pro terrenis mutuauit celestia pro corona caduca et momentanea diadema inmarcescibile percepit eterne felicitatis. Actum est autem hoc anno uerbi incarnati nongentesimo octogesimo primo quodque dictu nefas est quadragesimali tempore scilicet quintodecimo kalend. aprilis. Quod ut credimus APPENDIX TO LECTURE IV 171 ad cumulanda militis sui merita diuina -dispensatio sic preordinauit ut qui se annuo quadragesime ieiunio camera suam macerando aliisque bonis operibus inherendo secun- dum laudabilem christianorum ritum ad superuenturam dominice resurrectionis diem preparauerat in bono fine consummatus cum ipso fructu bonorum operum in celesti curia a christo susciperetur quia iuxta sententiam ipsius districti iudicis in quo quisque fine deprehensus fuerit in ipso diiudicandus erit. Predicta uero elftrid de equo ilium cecidisse audiens nequitie sue nondum rabie exsaturata rapi corpus eius quantotius iubet et in domicilium quoddam quod iuxta erat proici ne palam fieret quod fecerat. Cuius imperio ministri parentes nefandissimi ilico accurrunt pre- dictum sacrum corpus more beluino per pedes abstrahunt et in domicilium contemptibiliter ut iusserat proiectum uilibus stramentis cooperiunt. Erat autem in eadem domuncula mulier quedam a natiuitate ceca quam memorata regna in elemosina sua pascere solebat. Que dum sequenti nocte ibi cum sacro corpore sola pernoctasset ecce intempesta nocte gloria domini in eadem domo apparens immenso earn repleuit splendore. Unde predicta paupercula non modico perculsa terrore cum omnipotentis dei misericordiam atten- tius deprecaretur superna largiente gratia lumen diu disidera- tum meritis uiri dei recipere meruit. Quo in loco etiam postea a fidelibus in testimonium miraculi ob eius memoriam ecclesia fabricata est que usque ad tempora nostra per- durauit. Interea rumpente diluculo tenebras dum per mulierculam illam regina quod factum fuerat comperisset et earn quam a natiuitate lumine priuatam nouerat iam illuminatam uidisset angustiatur uultu et mente in diuersa mutatur metuens opus suum execrabile sic posse propalari si non attentius uiri dei corpus tolleretur. Imperat itaque celeriter satellitibus clanculo illud efferri et in locis abditis et palustribus ubi minus putaretur humo tegi ne ab aliquo amplius inueniri potuisset. Quibus iussa sine mora com- plentibus edictum quo nil inclementius proposuit ne quis de interitu eius gemeret aut omnino loqueretur se nimirum 172 THE ENGLISH SAINTS memoriam ems de terra omnino delere existimans. His ita peractis ad quandam sui iuris mansionem a predicto loco decem miliariis distantem que BERE uocatur continue secessit ut uidelicet quod fecerat sic dissimulando super hoc de ea suspitionem nemo haberet. Interea tantus dolor filium suum ethelredum de tam crudeli fratris sui morte inuasit ut consolationem a nemine recipere neque luctu neque lacrimis temperare potuisset. Unde mater eius in furorem accensa candelis quia aliud ad manus non habebat atrociter eum uerberauit ut ita ululatum eius per multa uerbera tandem compesceret. Hinc ut fertur postea toto uite sue tempore candelas ita exosas habuit ut uix eas aliquando coram se lucere permitteret. Post hec igitur transacto pene anno cum iam superne pietati emeri- tum martirem suum EADVVARDUM mundo innotescere quan- tique meriti apud se fuerit declarare complacuisset corpus eius uenerabile quibusdam fidelibus deuote querentibus reuelare dignatus est atque celesti inditio demonstrare. Nam circa locum ipsum ubi occultatum fuerat columna instar ignis desuper emissa apparuit que lucis sue radiis locum undique frequenter irradiare uisa est. Quod quidam uiri deuoti de uilla uicina Werham uidentes congregati in unum de memorato loco illud sustulerunt et in uillam suam deportauerunt. Fit interim concursus ingens et planctus omnium regias exequias prosequentium uox una ululantium. Heu inquiunt quid iam post hec solacii sperare poterimus ? Quis nos ab hostium incursionibus percusso tam dulcissimo pastore liberabit ? Periere gaudia nostra immo et patrie nostre pacis et concordie federa confusa sunt. Tune cum his gementium uocibus ad ecclesiam sancte dei genitricis MARIE corpus uenerabile perductum ad orientalem eius plagam officiosissime die iduum mensis februarii sepelierunt ubi lignea ecclesiola que postea a uiris religiosis fabricata est usque hodie demonstratur. Fons etiam in loco in quo prius iacuerat dulces et perspicuas aquas ex eo tempore usque hodie emanare cernitur nomenque eius a sancti uiri nomine adaptatum fons sancti EADVUARDI dicitur ubi infirmis APPENDIX TO LECTURE IV 173 multa cotidie ad laudem domini nostri ihesu christi prestan- tur beneficia. Interea fama uulgante per uniuersam anglorum patriam fraus et impietas regine manifestatur regis innocentis preconium extollitur uirtutum et meritorum eius insignia ubique predicantur. Audiens itaque quidam comes magnificus aelfere nomine sanctum corpus tarn pre- claro indicio inuentum immenso perfusus gaudio dominoque suo tanquam ad hue uiuo fidele obsequium prebere desiderans in digniorem locum illud transferre decreuit. Erat enim idem uir illustris magnam de crudeli eius interitu compassionem habens et nimis indigne ferens tarn pre- ciosam margaritam in tam uili loco obfuscari. Ad quod opus digne peragendum episcopos et abbates cum optimati- bus regni quoshabere potuit inuitat et ut in hoc sibi negotio consentiant et subueniant monet et precatur. Nuntium quo- que ad abbatissam Wlfridam in monasterio quod uuiltonia uocatur dirigit et ut ad peragendas tanti uiri exequias cum sibi commissis uirginibus conueniat denuntiat. Erat autem in eodem monasterio quedam uenerabilis uirgo soror ipsius sancti magna uite et morum honestate pollens EDGIT nuncu- pata que supradicti regis gloriosissimi EDGARI et eiusdem Wilfride nondum deo consecrate filia fuerat. Quibus mox cum summa diligentia et ueneratione conuenientibus epis- copis quoque cum abbatibus ut diximus congregatis pre- dictus aelfere exdorsata[m] non modicam uirorum ac mulierum multitudinem coadunauit et ad Werham ubi corpus uiri dei sepulture traditum fuerat cum magna deuo- tione peruenit. Quod protinus in conspectu totius populi detectum et a terra extractum ita ab omni corruptione illesum inuentum est ac si eodem die tumulatum fuisset. Uidentes autem hoc episcopi ceterique ordinis uiri in ymnis et laudibus omnipotentis dei misericordiam gloricauerunt qui emeriti martiris sui innocentiam tali indicio dignatus est demonstrare. Predicta uero uirgo soror ipsius accurrens corpus desideratissimum amplectitur sanctis fouet manibus oscula ingerit. Lacrimarum largis humectationibus faciem rigat turn gemitibus turn spiritual! gaudio de tanta fratris 174 THE ENGLISH SAINTS gloria rnentem nequit explere. Tune a uenerabilium uirorum manibus susceptum et feretro impositum cum magno cleri et plebis tripudio ad scephtoniam deducitur quia idem cenobium in honore sancte dei genitricis MARIE dedicatum admodum celebre habebatur. P'uerat enim a diue memorie aelfredo rege magnifico qui erat atauus ipsius sancti uiri decentissime ex ea occasione constructum quia idem rex filiam quandam habens aileuam nomine eamque sponso celesti desponsare cupiens monasticis disciplinis mancipatam in eadem ecclesia tradiderat pro cuius amore plurimis frequenter et largis muneribus illam nobilitauit. Nam inter reliqua donorum suorum insignia centum hidas terre ita quietas et liberas sicut ipse eas melius tenuerat in perpetuum possidendas ei condonauit quarum usque hodie uirgines inibi christo famulantes experiuntur beneficia. Interea cum undique uulgus utriusque sexus ad tarn insoli- tam rem ex diuersis locis confluxisset duo etiam pauperes tanta acerbitate morbi contracti ita ut uix per terrain manibus cruribusque repere possent inter ceteros aduenere dominum sanctumque EADVVARDUM pro sua incommoditate rogaturi. Qui feretro approximates cum ii qui sacrum corpus ferebant super eos pro recuperanda sospitate illud deportassent statim in conspectu populi sanitati restituti sunt. Quo uiso clamor populi in altum extollitur merita sancti EADUVARDI omnes in commune uenerantur. Regina quoque memorata interim audiens que per uirum sanctum nebant magnalia compuncta super iis que fecerat equo mox ascenso post eum pro commisso suo ueniam rogatura dis- posuit ire minime sibi diuina ui resistente concessum est. Nam dum in itinere cum suis equitaret satellitibus ecce miro quodam et inestimabili impedimento ita detinebatur ut equus super quern sedebat retrorsum potius quam in ante uersa uice intenderet. Quern freno constringere uolens cum interdum hac interdum uero iliac diuertendo neque minis neque uerberibus proficere potuisset animaduertit peccatis suis exigentibus sic se detineri. Unde ilico de equo in terra prosiliens tanquam ob maiorem reuerentiam pedes ire parat APPENDIX TO LECTURE IV 175 set iterum quod dictu mirabile est retorta nichilominus quod concupierat consequi ualuit ut uidelicet aperte clareret pro scelere quod in uirum del operata est hec sibi euenire. Interea productum uenerabile corpus ad memoratum ceno- bium et a uirginibus inibi deo seruientibus digne et lauda- biliter receptum in septentrionali parte are principalis cum magno honore duodecimo kalend. martii tumulatur ubi multa beneficia per eum infirmis post hec diuina largita est dementia. QUEDAM NAMQUE MATRONA IN REMOTIS ANGLIE PARtlbuS degens cum nimia debilitate grauaretur et cotidie pro sua incolumitate preces in conspectu piissimi opificis dei funderet nocte quadam ei sanctus EADVUARDVS in uisu astitit cui et talia dixisse fertur. Cum diluculo surrexeris ad locum ubi sepulture traditus sum ire ne differas quia illic noua calcia- menta infirmitati tue necessaria recipies. Erat enim ut ex coniectura colligere possumus in pedibus grauius collisa ideoque per calciamenta noua sanitas pedum designabatur. Euigilans autem mane cum somnium quod uiderat cuidam uicine sue retulisset ilia uisionis incredula fantasma esse asserebat. Interea uero cum momentis sancti predicta matrona parere dissimularet adest rursus ei uir sanctus in uisione dicens. Quare precepta mea respuens tantopere salutem tuam negligis ? Uade ergo ad sepulchrum meum et ibi liberaberis. Ilia autem resumptis uiribus dixit ad eum. Et quis es tu domine aut ubi sepulchrum tuum inueniam ? Cui ille ego inquit sum rex EADVUARDUS iniusta nuper nece peremptus et scephtonie in ecclesia beate dei genitricis MARIE sepultus. Mulier autem mane euigilans et quod uiderat secum reputans assumptis mox que in itinere necessaria fuerant ad monasterium tendit. Ibique tandem perueniens cum aliquandiu deum sanctumque EADVUARDVM humili corde exoraret sanitati restituta est. Preterea quoque ad tumbam uiri dei plurima frequenter patrata sunt miracula que negligentia scriptorum memorie litterarum minime tradita sunt. Uerum nos reticere maluimus quam de sancto uiro alia quam que fideliter scripta repperimus 176 THE ENGLISH SAINTS aut que fidelium relatione didicimus inconsiderate dicere- mus. 1 Vnde his omissis qualiter eius sacratissime reliquie de terra leuate sint paucis aperiemus. Igitur cum iam merita gloriosi martiris EDVUARDI miraculorum magnalibus que cotidie ad tumbam eius fiebant longe lateque declara- rentur et superne iam dispensationi ut eius sacre reliquie a terra leuarentur complacuisset cepit hoc quibusdam indiciis ipse sanctus manifestare et quo ordine id fieri debuissent uisionibus quibusdam demonstrare. Nam tumulus in quo requiescebat tanta in dies facilitate a terra eleuabatur ut liquido cunctis appareret eum a loco illo uelle transferri. Preterea quoque cuidam uiro religiose in uisione apparuit cui et dixit, vade ad cenobium quod famoso nomine scephtonia uocatur et ad uirginem ethelfredam que ceteris inibi deo famulantibus preest perfer mandata. Dices ergo ei quia in loco in quo nunc iaceo diutius esse nolo et ut hoc fratri meo absque aliqua dilatione denuntiet ex mea parte impera. Qui mane consurgens et diuinam quam uiderat uisionem intelligens ad abbatissam ut iussus fuerat concite tendit cuncta que ostensa sibi fuerant per ordinem ei retulit. At ilia super hoc omnipotenti deo gratias agens uniuersa protinus auribus regis ethelredi. exposuit set et sepulchri eius eleuationem cum summa deuotione innotuit. Audiens autem rex tantam fratris sui gloriam immenso perfunditur gaudio et libenter quidem si oportunitas daretur ad tale eius preconum conueniret libenter eleuationi eius interesse desideraret. Set quoniam uariis et grauibus hostium incur- sionibus circumquaque uallatus presentiam suam ad id peragendum minime exibere potuit nuntios ad reuerentis- simum Wilsinum sireburnensem episcopum et ad quendam magne sanctitatis presulem elfsinum nomine ceterosque uenerabilis uite uiros dirigit monens et imperans ut fratris sui corpus de terra eleuatum condigno loco reponerent. Qui secundum regium mandatum ad supradictum monas- terium cum innumerabili uirorum ac mulierum turba libenti animo conuenientes aperto cum summa ueneratione monu- 1 MS. " deceremus." APPENDIX TO LECTURE IV 177 mento tanta ex eo odoris flagrantia emanauit ut omnes qui aderant in paradisi deliciis se constitutes estimarent. Unde etiam in tantum tota ecclesia repleta est ut in modum nebule candentis appareret. Tune pontifices gloriosissimi deuote accedentes de tumulo sacras delicias sustulerunt et in locello ad hoc diligenter preparato eas componentes in sancta sanctorum cum aliis sanctorum reliquiis in spirituali diuine exultationis tripudio intulerunt. Eleuatum est itaque sacratissimum corpus eius anno uicesimo primo ex quo illic tumulatum fuerat qui erat annus ab incarnatione domini millesimus primus regnante eodem domino nostro ihesu christo qui cum patre et' spirit a sancto uiuit et gloriatur deus per omnia secula seculorum. AMEN. EXPLICIT PASSIO. INCIPIUNT MIRACULA INTERUENTU EIUSDEM PATRATA. PLVRIMA MIRACVLA PER SANCTVM EADWARDUM PAtrata sunt de quibus pauca huic nostro opuscule inserere curau- imus. Temporibus igitur regis gloriosissimi EADVUARDI qui fuerat supra memorati regis ethelredi films nepos uidelicet sancti EADWARDI erat in transmarinis partibus in pago uiro- mandensi uir quidam iohannes nomine degens qui cruciatu graui ita toto corpore contractus fuerat ut talis eius renibus coniunctis ad nulla penitus membrorum officia se erigere posset. Hie itaque in uisione nocturna admonitus est ut in angliam pergens ad monasterium scephtoniam in quo sanctus EADVUARDUS requiescebat tenderet quia illic sani- tatem recepturus esset. Quod dum uicinis et cognatis suis retulisset consilio et auxilio eorum fretus mare transiens ad cenobium memoratum post diuersa locorum diuerticula tandem peruenit. Ubi dum aliquanto tempore pro reddenda sibi sospitate deum sanctumque EADVUARDVM deprecaretur sanitati restitutus est. Qui etiam in eodem monasterio postea seruiens usque ad extremum uite sue tempus per- mansit de quo omnes pene ibi manentes qui eum uiderunt usque hodie testimonium perhibent. NEC MVLTO POST QVIDAM LEPROSVS AD MEMORIAM EIVS- dem sancti ueniens cum morationibus et uigiliis pro sua 12 178 THE ENGLISH SAINTS infirmitate diuinum inuocaret auxilium ab omni lepre spur- citia mundatus est. ALIVD ETIAM MIRACULVM POST REG iNTERiECTo aliquant! temporis spatio per eundem uirum uenerabilem contigit quod relatione spectabilium personarum que hoc uiderunt didicimus. Cum enim uir uenerabilis heremannus salesberi- ensis episcopus ecclesie quodam tempore episcopii sui paro- chias pia curiositate circuiret et ad memoratum cenobium scephtoniam uisitandi gratia diuertisset pauper quidam quern in elemosina sua pascere solitus erat in comitatu suo aduenit. Fuerat enim hec eiusdem gloriosi pontificis pia consuetude ut ubicumque more cotidiano iter arriperet cum eo semper nonnulli debiles et infirmi eius alimonia reficiendi ducerentur. Qui dum apud prefatum monasterium aliquandiu moram fecisset memoratus cecus ductu pueri a quo gressus eius dirigebatur ecclesiam oraturus intrauit. Vbi dum pro sua incommoditate omnipotentis dei pietatem deuote implorando orationis cursum usque in uesperum protraheret custodes in ecclesia diligentiam facientes eumque orationi deditum reperientes egredi ilium ortantur set ille nequaquam se egressurum immo misericordiam dei sanctique EADVUARDI illic sese expectaturum constanter profitetur. Quod illi audientes et fidem hominis adrnirantes eum moratione iacere permittunt puerum uero eius ad hospitium suum redire compellunt. Interea dum in Icco illo aliquandiu requiesceret primo ingenti perfusus frigore dein calore immenso corpore toto correptus lumen recepit. Quod dum mane diuulgatum fuisset ii quibus sanior mens inerat nequaquam facile ad credendum persuaded poterant donee illi qui eum prius nouerant interrogati sub testimonio ueritatis ilium ex multo tempore cecum fuisse affirmarent. Tune precepto episcopi in ecclesia uirgines inibi deo famulantes cum populorum concursionibus congregate in himnis et laudibus signis interim pulsantibus christo laudum preconia excoluerunt qui hec meritis sancti EADVUARDI operari dignatus est. Quidam itidem homo grauibus ob peccatorum suorum commissa ferri ligaminibus uinculatus dum post hec in APPENDIX TO LECTURE IV 179 eadem ecclesia tanto deuotius quanto acriori constringebatur dolore in conspectu maiestatis del preces funderet nleritis uiri del liberari meruit. Preterea quoque plurima per merita ipsius frequenter patrata sunt magnalia que litterarum apicibus minime tradita sunt. Uerum omnipotent! domino qui solus facit mirabilia melius ea commendantes ad eum finem orationis conuertamus. Subueniant itaque nobis piissime eterni regis miles EADUARDE tua sancta patrocinia nostreque irnperfectioni condescendens tuis piis depreca- tionibus optine apud misericordissimum iudicem ut nulla nos humane iactantie inflatio deiciat nulla nos libidinum inquinamenta a castissimis celestis sponsi amplexibus se- parant nulle uitiorum sordes actus nostros occupent set te opitulante semper ad celestia desideria sulleuemur ut quando- que tecum et cum omnibus sanctis perpetuis deliciis in celesti ierusalem perfrui mereamur prestante domino nostro ihesu christo qui cum eterno patre et amborum spiritu sancto uiuit et regnat deus per immortalia secula seculorum. AMEN. [The manuscript from which this Life of S. Edward is now printed for the first time is of the twelfth century. The Passw et miracula occupy from f. 39 to f. 46 of the 1 5 1 leaves of the whole book. With it are a life and miracles of S. Oswald the archbishop, attributed to Eadmer, the same of S. Mary Magdalen, Goscelin's De adventu S. Augustini, a letter to S. Anselm concerning the translation of S. Augustine, the miracles of S. Lethard, the canons of the Council of London 1138, and the letter of S. Bernard to Eugenius III. as to the rank of the sees of York and Winchester. These are all in the same twelfth century hand. In a later hand are three thirteenth century additions. The MS. was once the property of Simon Enyrton, vicar choral of the cathedral church of Wells. It is not known how it came in the library of S. John Baptist College at Oxford, but it was probably the gift of the founder, Sir Thomas White. The Life and Miracles vary considerably from those which are better known, but are evidently merely a recension from different sources. Other lives have been attributed to Eadmer, and it is possible that this may represent one stage of his work. It is 12 2 i8o THE ENGLISH SAINTS printed here as a typical medieval saint-life, containing all the characteristic features of hagiology. It is evidently written by one who was well acquainted with early English history. It lays stress on the moral virtues of the boy-king, and is especially emphatic on the .character of the step-mother and her part in the murder. The first miracles, as in most of the accounts, are described as occurring very soon after the martyrdom : while others, perhaps collected with a view to the canonization, are added of a later date and a less direct connection with the saint. The association with Shaftesbury is especially to be noted.] LECTURE V THE IDEAL OF MONK AND HERMIT " The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose." ISAIAH xxxv. i. ENGLAND in her early days owed more than can ever be estimated to the practical work of the monks and to the ideal of the monastic society. Out of the oppressive monotony of a life of daily bloodshed and danger, fine spirits passed into the calm of prayer and labour for others. The law of social life was sought in self- devotion, not in despotism or self-indulgence : the treasures of wisdom were to be hallowed by obedience to the law of Christ. 1 It is no part of the aim of these lectures to deal in any detail with the growth of Christianity in England. Characters come before us individually, not in special relation to the history of their age. And yet it must not be forgotten that " the music Of man's fair composition best accords When 'tis in concert not in single strains." 1 Cf. Bishop Westcott, Words of Faith and Hope, p. 9, on Saint Benedict, and the significant contrasts which were emphasized in his place of training and his first monastery. [ 181 ] 182 THE ENGLISH SAINTS Many of the great leaders of Christian effort in the early ages of the Church owed their strength to the fact that they acted together, that their work was inspired by the influence, the esprit de corps, of a religious society, of a monastic brotherhood. Such conspicuously was Aidan, the second great missionary to Northumbria. As an apostle he can hardly be set beside S. Augustine, 1 the apostle of England. In that respect he must yield to Paulinus 2 ; and Birinus and 1 I venture to quote here a private letter from the great Church historian who was so long our beloved teacher in Oxford, Dr. William Bright. It was written on S. Chad's day 1898 to Rev. C. J. Day ". ... I do not admit that, in regard to ' apostleship,' Augustine and Aidan are on a par. Aidan's work was more exten- sive and lasted longer than Augustine's, and his character is more beautiful and attractive. But he was not, properly speaking, ' apostle ' even of the Northumbrians, and he did nothing at all for any outside their borders. He was not their 'apostle' because he was not their first evangelist. The mischief done to historical proportion in this matter by Lightfoot's uncritical antithesis (prompted, no doubt, by the natural pietas of a bishop of Durham) has been incalculable." See Lightfoot's Leaders in the Northern Church. (This and the letter in the next note are, I find, to be given in Dr. Bright's Letters, ed. by B. J. Kidd, 1902, pp. 219, 220.) ' 2 " Paulinus did not fail, considering the short time that he had for missionary work. He obtained the national adhesion of Northumbria to Christianity : he laboured mainly, of course, in Deira or Yorkshire, but we find him catechizing and baptizing for weeks together in a remote valley of Northumberland I mean, of the county which we thus name. ' His labours,' says Canon Raine in his history of the Archbishoprick of York 'must have been prodigious,' and it is obvious that all this work could not possibly, as the ' Aidanolaters ' are pleased to assume, have been undone in the space of a single year, which intervened between the death of Edwin and the accession of Oswald. There are clear indications in Bede's language that there were permanent effects of Paulinus' work existing which Aidan found when he arrived : that he often, in THE IDEAL OF MONK AND HERMIT 183 Chad were perhaps greater than he in the direct work that they accomplished. But in beauty of character he was surpassed by no medieval saint. He combined the ideals of the missionary and the monk. In his settlement at Lindisfarne, the Holy Isle near to the palace of the Bernician Kings at Bamborough, he found a place of seclusion like that at lona from which he came, a home at which monks could be trained in learning, away from the distractions of the world, and a quiet resting-place after the long journeys which he took to preach the Gospel. The story of Aidan is coloured by the longing for a separate life among kindred spirits attuned to the same thoughts and studies and to the same rule of prayer, which found its outward setting most fitly at lona or Lindisfarne. " Pure saintliness," the " attraction of a simple self- devotion " are the features in his character on which one dwelt who was well fitted to appreciate what he himself so beautifully embodied. 1 He set, indeed, " a pattern of ministerial activity, of absolute con- 'spicuous unworldliness, of tenderness to the poor and weak, in boldness in behalf of right before the strong, of thoroughgoing intense resolution to carry out in life the moral teaching of Scripture." 2 short, had not to lay the foundation, but to build upon it." Letter from Dr. W. Bright, March 4, 1898. This view, which a close study of Bede fully justifies, was written in comment on such expressions of Dr. Lightfoot's as "The Roman mission, despite all the feverish energy of its chief, had proved a failure. A sponge had passed over Northumbria, and scarce a vestige of his work remained," Leaders in the Northern Church, p. 41. 1 W. Bright, Way marks in Church History, p. 316. 2 Ibid. 184 THE ENGLISH SAINTS Gentleness is his first characteristic. It is told of him as of S. Anselm that his first great call came to him through his pleading for patience and wise dis- cretion in the beginnings of missionary work. 1 And his, says Bede, was the greatest of all commendations of doctrine, for as he taught, he lived. He cared not to seek or love anything in this world, but everything he had he rejoiced to give away. He had that passion for souls which in the born missionary overpowers all reticence and reserve. As he went about on foot 2 through the little towns, along the broad Roman streets, or by the sheep-tracks over the moors, where- ever he saw folk, rich or poor, straightway he turned to them, urging them if they were still heathens to accept the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience, stirring them up if they were believers to works of charity and almsgiving and strengthening them in the faith. This absorption in his work of conversion was possible to him because he was, with his brethren of the monastery, clerk and lay, constant in the exercise of meditation, without which progress in the ways of God, now as then, seems not to be attained. He was 1 Bede, iii. 3. Cf. Lightfoot, op. tit., p. 44 and passim. Of many accounts of S. Aidan perhaps the best, the fullest, and the most sympathetic is that of W. Hunt, History of the English Church, 597-1066, pp. 77 sqq. 2 As a comment on the story of the King's gift which Aidan at once gave away, note Abp. Benson, Life^ ii. 147. "So Henson at the Congress held it a mark of saintliness in Aidan that he would not ride, because he was the Apostle of Christ, apparently in some sort of contrast with us and perhaps it may have been. But what would S. Aidan have done if he had had to attend four committees in a morning in London? It would not have been very saintly, but very agreeable to cut them because he would not ride to them." THE IDEAL OF MONK AND HERMIT 185 always reading and discussing the Scriptures with those among whom he was placed. From them he learnt " neither to flatter nor fear any flesh " ; to buy the freedom of those who, whether by law or kidnapped, had been sold into slavery, and to train them for the ministry ; to be merciful and tender to the poor, and to the miserable a father indeed. Marked out at first for his mission by the grace of discretion, when he came to it he was found to be adorned with every other excel- lence. Such is Bede's praise, and it represents the im- pression that he made on his age. The quietness and confidence of his life, no less than its activity, made men speak of his death-day when they commemorated it as "'Aidan's rest." Columba and Aidan gave to the Christianity of the north something of the Celtic enthusiasm and fire, but their greater offering was the insistence on work in combination, on the ideal of joint labour, which Irish monasticism at its best, and in its marvellous mis- sionary successes, so happily embodied. Aidan gathered round him a school of disciples, twelve boys whom he loved and trusted, and from whom came the apostles of the mid-English Chad and Cedd, Eata who became bishop of his own see, 1 and Wilfrith, all reckoned among the saints. Bede speaks of their success as certain, from their training, "for he was one of the disciples of Aidan . . . one of Aidan's twelve boys." 2 As Aidan is linked to Columba, so is Cuthbert to Aidan. Already in Aidan's lifetime men had taken his 1 For Eata, see Life in the volume published by the Surtees Society in 1838. 2 Bede, iii. 26, 28. i86 THE ENGLISH SAINTS acts of faith or foresight to be miracles of God. When Penda besieged Bamborough and tried to set fire to the walls, Aidan at Lindisfarne saw the smoke and flames leaping up and cried aloud " See, Lord, how great mischief Penda doth." The wind changed and the city was safe. 1 The very post against which he leant, by the church wall, as he was dying, seemed miraculously preserved. No wonder that it was a bright vision of angels bearing his soul to heaven which warned Cuthbert, as by night he was with the shepherds watching their flocks, and made him resolve to be a monk. 2 Aidan and Oswine, bishop arid king, who had worked together for Christ, were soon for- gotten 3 : but their work lived in their successors : and the greatest of these was Cuthbert. Cuthbert's character, perhaps because his life is so fully told by the first of our great historians, is the most fascinating of all those which the Church among the north English produced. Bright, buoyant, a strong brave lad, fond of all boyish sports, of wrestling and leaping, a champion and an orator among his fellows, 4 1 Modern parallels known to all are the change of wind just as the fire was approaching the Church of S. Giles's, Cripplegate, and the several occasions during the siege of the Legations at Peking when the wind changed just as it seemed certain to destroy the houses and barricades that separated the besieged from the Chinese troops. The parallel in each case is complete. 2 Bede, Vita Cuthberti, c. 4. 3 Vita Osw. (Surtees Soc.), p. 46. A priest knew nothing of Oswine and had not even heard the name of Aidan. 4 The story given by Bede, Vita Cuth., 2, is a very interesting example of the origin of many miraculous legends. In modern language Cuthbert " got water on the knee " from a strain in one of his sports, and as he continued to use the limb it grew worse till THE IDEAL OF MONK AND HERMIT 187 he gave his heart to God when he was still a boy, and trusted himself to Him Who ever giveth ear to the poor and delivereth him out of all his troubles. In the country round his home on the banks of the Tyne, Christianity had made but little way : the villagers, when a calamity came upon them, would mock at those who had taken away their old pagan worship while no one knew how to observe the new faith. 1 The moors were desolate : in a day's wandering no man might be met, no food found, save, as it seemed, by the help of God. 2 Cuthbert showed his passion for the life of a solitary before he gave himself to be trained at Melrose. There he was more diligent than all, in prayer and study, and in the work which S. Benedict's rule enjoined. Legend soon settled round these happy years of his youth. Men told how he conversed with angels, how he was caught up into the third heaven : but these tales do not mar the simplicity of the record of his quiet work, of his reading it is a typical instance in the Gospel of S. John with the aged abbat on his deathbed, before he passed into the joys of everlasting life. From his own deeply-rooted love of retirement he turned, when he rose to office in the house, to active preaching in the villages, " into high hills and far steads where priests bade but few bedes." 3 a stranger advised him to poultice it, whereupon it recovered. Cuthbert took his kind adviser for an angel : and Bede assures his readers that there were " angels on horseback." 1 Bede, Vita Cuth., 3. 2 See the story which Bede heard from Ingwald, to whom Cuthbert told it, and cf. also c. 9. 3 Metrical Life (Surtees Soc., 1891), p. 48. i88 THE ENGLISH SAINTS It was the custom in those days among the English, says Bede, when a clerk or priest came to a village, for all to flock around him to hear the Word. To Cuth- bert the country life was always homely and delightful. He had loved to tend sheep among the shepherds when he was a boy, though he had his own servant, his horse and his military equipment. Now, where others would not go for fear of the wild solitudes, among the rugged hills he wandered happily, staying weeks at a time among the poor folk and winning them to the ways of God. When the people came around him, "so great," says Bede, " was his skill in speaking, so intense his eagerness to make his words persuasive, 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 1 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 of penance." 2 In this work, blessing and being blessed, men and animals alike trusting him, 3 he passed many happy years, till he was called 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." 4 There he first set forth the rule of S. Bene- dict clearly to the brethren : and like most of those 1 Dr. Bright, Early English Church History, p. 217, quoting Bede adds " palam, in the sense of hiding nothing from him" 2 Vita Cuth., c. 9. 3 Cf. caps. 10 and 15. 4 Bede, H. Eccl. iv. 25. This from Lindisfarne Annals, Pertz M.H.G., xix. 504 should be 664 : but cf. Bright, op. tit., p. 273. THE IDEAL OF MONK AND HERMIT 189 who at different times endeavoured a monastic reforma- tion, he met with hard treatment 1 from the monks. Cheerfulness, patience, watchfulness, unceasing prayer, these carried him to success. It was his absolute devo- tion to God that gave him at last the love and the obedience of all. The strength of his soul was the weekly offering of the Sacrifice of the Lord's Body and Blood, which he could never finish without tears. 2 Thus Bede ends the picture of his life at Lindisfarne : " Whilst he was in regular course celebrating the mysteries of our Lord's Passion, he would himself imitate what he was doing, by offering himself to God in contrition of heart. And when he stood by at the Sursum Corda and Habemus ad Dominum it was rather his heart than his voice that was uplifted." True devotion made him a wise pastor. " He had an ardent zeal for righteousness, in reproving sinners ; yet in the spirit of meekness he was tender in pardoning those who repented : so that sometimes when his penitents were confessing their sins to him he himself would be the first to take compassion on their infirmi- ties by shedding tears." The whole record is one of extreme simplicity : even the added touches and the supposed miracles that Bede gives do not alter the impression of the earliest Life. Cuthbert was a man of God, in severity of life after the manner of Elijah or S. John Baptist, in gentleness like Anselm or Francis of Assisi. Gradually, moving to the little isle of Fame, he began to withdraw himself from the corporate life of the monks and to live alone, 1 " Vel animo vel corpori," Bede, Vita Cuth., c. 16. 2 Cf. Memorials of Dunstan, pp. 50, 379. igo THE ENGLISH SAINTS rarely holding converse with those that came to him, and this only by the window. At last he came never to open his window save only to give his blessing or for some absolute need. Still he knew how to console the mourner, to comfort the feeble minded, to succour the tempted. Faith and love he ever showed to be the safeguards of Christian life : with such support he could still at every time be joyful and glad : and those who came to him in doubt or for consolation always went away refreshed. At last he was drawn from his retreat, by the urgent prayers of King Ecgfrith, to be bishop : and a true successor of the Apostles he proved himself by every act of teaching and admonition, of charity and diligence and self-denial. The fruits of his mission were like those of the early days. At one place when he came to give confirmation tents were set up for church and for his shelter, and the people made huts of the forest trees to dwell in while for two days he ministered and preached. Everywhere his sane words and the soothing calmness of his touch wrought cures. It was this sense of living above the world that gave power to the warnings which came to him and which he imparted to others. In earlier years when he was at Fame some monks of Holy Isle had come to him on Christmas Day. They begged him to leave his cell and join them in the guest house. He consented. As they were at dinner, he said to them " I beseech you, brethren, let us live cautiously and watchfully lest perchance through carelessness or over-security we be led into temptations." They answered " Let us spend to-day in gladness, for it is the birthday of our Lord." " Let us do so," said he. Then while they were eating THE IDEAL OF MONK AND HERMIT 191 and telling old tales he began once more to warn. Again they protested, that there were enough days of vigil and fast, and that on this day they should rejoice with the angels and men of goodwill. Again he said " Good, let us so rejoice ": but again he found himself compelled to warn. And so they yielded and ended the day in prayer and watchfulness. Next day the monks heard that plague had broken out at Lindis- farne : and within a year almost the w r hole of that noble company of fathers and brothers had departed to the Lord. 1 Cuthbert told this tale of himself in a sermon at Carlisle, when the weight of impending calamity was again weighing upon him. The day before, as he had walked through the city, seeing the Roman remains, under guidance of the reeve, he had received a strange impression of sorrow, and, thinking of the war in which the King Ecgfrith was engaged in the distant North, had murmured " perhaps even at this moment the hazard of the fight is over." Therefore he now cried again " Watch, stand fast in the faith, quit yourselves like men." Next day came one escaped from the battle, and told how Ecgfrith had fallen on Nechtansmere with his thegns around him in death. It seemed not strange that he should know what God was doing else\vhere, when He was so close to his own heart. He returned \vhenever he could from the duties of his office to the solitude of Fame. There, amid the wrack of storm and the ceaseless lap of the ocean waves, Cuthbert grew to live more and more alone, with the wild eider-ducks, who would nestle in 1 Bede, Vita Cuth., c. 27. ig2 THE ENGLISH SAINTS his bosom, for his companions, tormented by strange visions of temptation, and knowing that he drew near to his end. It was on March 20, 651, that he died. For many weeks he had seen the end approach, and his stone coffin lay ready in his cell, with fine linen, the gift of many years before. To the last he was gentle and patient, and spoke of peace and humility and Christian concord : so before dawn, having received the Sacrament after matins, he lifted up his eyes, stretched forth his hands, and, his soul intent on the heavenly lands, he departed to the joys of the kingdom of heaven. Thus Bede ends the tale which he had learnt from one of Cuthbert's own monks. 1 It is a story which explains the abounding enthusiasm of generation after generation for the great saint of the North. Cuthbert had every- thing which the Northern folk admired, needed, and came at last to find characteristic of all that is best of the men of the old Northumbria. He was strong and energetic, full of buoyant gaiety, yet stern, self-contained, ascetic, distrustful of enthusiasm, shrewd in insight and foresight, and at the root a simple servant of Christ. 1 The first life is the anonymous one, written by a monk of Lin- disfarne, from which come practically all the facts we know of S. Cuthbert. It is printed in Bede, Opera Minora, ed. Stevenson, 259-284. In the same volume are the two lives by Bede himself, prose and verse, the former of which was submitted to the correc- tion of the Lindisfarne monks, from whom traditions had been gathered. An interesting English Metrical Life, c. 1450, was pub- lished by the Surtees Society 1891. Reginald of Durham, Libellus de Admirandis, etc. (Surtees Soc.), is one of the series of hagiological works inspired by Alfred of Rievaulx in the 12th century. Nova Legenda, i. 216 sqq., is a very interesting composite life. See also two lives in Surtees Soc., 1838. THE IDEAL OF MONK AND HERMIT 193 Beautiful stories clustered round his memory, miracles of loving kindness. Men turned back again and again, in the confident memory of his sanctity, to the psalm the monks of Lindisfarne were singing when the light of the candles flickered across from Fame and told that the saint was with his Saviour. Deus repulisti nos. " O God, Thou hast cast us out and scattered us abroad : Thou hast also been displeased : O turn Thee unto us again. O be Thou our help in trouble, for vain is the help of man." In all the years of distress that befell the North, the memory of Cuthbert was an abiding call to courage and hope. Round the bones of the saint, which were carried, according to his pathetic request, by the monks of Lindisfarne when they fled from the Danes, were gathered the relics of S. Oswald and of Bede the venerable and of many other holy men, when at last they found a shrine of matchless dignity in the great cathedral church of Durham. This was the last resting-place till the disso- lution and spoliation : and even after, and to this day, the bones of Cuthbert with the head of Oswald are laid in the great northern church. 1 1 But unhappily, not undisturbed. A full account of the history of the relics is to be found in the extremely interesting and valuable (though very quaint) Saint Cuthbert, by James Raine, 1828. Cf. with the indignant comment of Archbishop Benson on the ecclesi- astical ghouls of Canterbury the following pitiable sentence, Diet. Christian Biography, vol. i., p. 727. " The bones of Cuthbert, with the skull of Oswald, were reinterred [after the opening of the grave in 1827] . . . but the more interesting contents of the coffin were removed and are now exhibited to the public in the library of the Dean and Chapter of Durham." In 1899 it was decided again to examine the grave and " the human remains." The examination revealed the unhappy results of that undertaken in 1827. The 13 IQ4 THE ENGLISH SAINTS With the story of the Lindisfarne Gospels we may pass away from the holy memory of Cuthbert. It can- not be better told than in the words of one of the wisest and holiest of his successors. The book w r as Cuthbert's own, which the monks of Lindisfarne carried with them on their wanderings. "They set sail for Ireland; a storm arose ; the book fell overboard and was lost ; they were driven back to the English coast ; discon- solate they went in search of the precious volume ; for a long time they searched in vain ; but at length (so says the story) a miraculous revelation was vouchsafed to them, and following its directions they found the book on the sands, far above high-water mark, un- injured by the waves, nay, even more beautiful for the disaster." 2 A parable, we may well delight to think it, bones were now laid in proper order (" a rather solemn and impres- sive task " writes the Roman Catholic clergyman who was present) (Ushaw Magazine, July, 1899, p. 127) and placed in a new coffin, and so the " sacred relics were once more laid to rest." It is added that " within the coffin was placed a bottle containing a Church- man's Almanack for 1899 and a properly attested account of the recent investigations." Archceologia, Series II., vol. vii., pp. 1 1 sqq. 2 Lightfoot, Leaders in the Northern Church, pp. 76, 77. The book is in the British Museum MS. Cotton, Nero, D. iv., still marked with the stain of sea-water. Bishop Browne, Notes on the remains of the original Church of S. Peter Monkwearmouth and on some of the sculptured stones found in the restoration, p. 1 4, shows how on a fragment of stone at Monkwearmouth is the same design as the Lindisfarne gospels, and he adds " No one can turn over the pages of that marvellous volume in its home in the British Museum, noting the stains of saltwater from its immer- sion in the sea when the monks fled before the Danes with the body of S. Cuthbert, without feeling a special thrill when he comes to the last page and reads the record of those who wrote it, and beautified it, and made a case for it. ' Eadfrith, bishop of the Church of Lindisfarne, he this book wrote at first, for God, and THE IDEAL OF MONK AND HERMIT 195 of the preservation of truth handed down and imaged forth in the lives of good men. From Cuthbert we may naturally turn to one who filled a greater space in the active history of the time than he, and whose life was in every way a contrast to his. Wilfrith seems to recall in many a point the Celtic fervour and impetuosity, while Cuthbert is purely Teutonic. Wilfrith's life was long and romantic, a life of struggle and variety of lot. He had every natural gift. He was 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 cheerful- ness betokened a blessed mind. 1 A missionary, a true apostle in Frisia, in Sussex and in Wight, the friend and adviser of kings, at heart and most of all S. Wil- frith was a reformer, and the great aim of his life was to raise the churches in Britain by uniting them more closely to the churches abroad. Art, musical and architectural, as well as learning, were the handmaids of his work. Trained by Celtic missionaries, he saw as it were from within the weakness of their position : it \vas he who more than any other man brought England the fit union in custom with the Church oversea which was essential to the completeness of her work. His S. Cuthbert, and all the saints that are in the island. And Ethelwald, bishop of Lindisfarne, he put it together and enriched it as he well could. And Billfrith, the ancho-ite, he wrought in smith's work the ornaments that are on the outside, and he it ornamented with gold and with gems and with silver unalloyed overlaid.' " 1 Bright, Early English Church History^. 197, from Eddi, Vita Wilf., c. 3, 4. 132 196 THE ENGLISH SAINTS was a great life, a fascinating character. He left behind him a brilliant memory : but his influence, save in the one great success of his career was not permanent. Eddi 1 his friend and pupil was his enthusiastic bio- grapher and he was one of the very first Englishmen to write the life of an English saint. With the life of S. Cuthbert before him, he set himself to tell the story of long struggles for a great object, of a life very unlike that of the simple Northumbrian who was always more of a hermit than a statesman ; and he told it with unwavering fidelity to his hero. Wilfrith as a saint is rich in gifts, in buildings such as at York, and the noble basilica at Ripon and the great church at Hexham of which there are still remains to-day : he is rich also in good works of healing, which as Eddi tells them have hardly a touch of the miraculous that later biographers added. But most of all he is great as a missionary, as the pioneer of the great Northumbrian missionaries of the next generation. " The true nobility of his character shone out when he devoted his master mind to the poorest and the most neglected of the human family." 2 With the spiritual side of this mis- sionary spirit was combined the restless and inquisitive energy of the explorer. In Friesland he worked among 1 Life of S. Wilfrith in Historians of York (Raine), vol. i. 2 Dr. Bright writes most fully of Wilfrith : Mr. Raine in the Dictionary of Christian Biography also : and there is much of interest in the Bishop of Bristol's Theodore and Wilfrith : Mr. Plummer, Bede, ii. 315 sqq. has the most valuable series of notes on all that is connected with him. In Nova Legenda, ii. 425 sqq., is a comparatively unimportant life compiled from Eadmer and Bede. The Offices of S. Wilfrid (Ripon 1893) contain lections which may possibly be from the lost life by Peter of Blois. Their style is suggestive. THE IDEAL OF MONK AND HERMIT 197 the wildest of the old Teutonic kin i 1 after him, with all his success, preached those who seemed to make no impression at all : 2 it is a tale which is common to us among modern missions. But the zeal, religious and adventurous, was unabated. Bede tells of the interest with which the common origin of the Teutonic tribes was traced, and appealed to, as an argument for missionary enterprise. The Frisians, the Riigeners, the Huns, perhaps even the Avars, as well as the old Saxons, were among those whom the Brythons, as he says, would corruptly call " Garmans." 3 Among them the noble army of English missionaries laboured, among people " blinded by the darkness of unfaith," among pagans who observed hideous rites making of them " the new people of God." 4 In many strange wild places was the banner of the Lord set up by His soldiers, the men to one of whose leaders the Irish Annals give the happy name of " the rider of Christ." 5 With Wilfrith and his successors Christianity seized and appropriated the adventurous Teutonic spirit. There, century by century, we can trace the distinct influence upon the character of the nation of the con- secration, it may be called, of their instinct. The great missionaries were the ancestors of the great discoverers. With Wilfrith we pass from the great age of Northumbrian bishops. They had trained, besides the 1 The very fierceness of the reply of Adalgis to the offer of Ebroin for Wilfrith's head shows this. Eddi, Vita Wilf., 27. 2 Cf. Bede, v. 9. 3 Bede, v. 9 : in Oxford one cannot but be reminded of the story of an eminent Rector of Lincoln College, who wished the Carman theology in the Carman ocean. 4 It is Bede's phrase, v. 19. 5 Annals of Tighernach, quoted by Plummer, Bede, ii. 286. 198 THE' ENGLISH SAINTS leaders of missions oversea, many noble teachers of the English, such as those who brought the Midlands to Christ, and notably the great Chad, who first went with the true adventurous spirit to what till he came were " haunts of robbery and lairs of wild beasts rather than dwellings of men," and at last died of the plague caught in his " glorious " labours. Such were the high issues in active life to which the monastic training tuned the hearts of men. But almost as conspicuously, and more constantly, monasticism inculcated another, yet not antagonistic, ideal. " The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose." How often all over Europe have those beautiful and familiar words been quoted in grateful application to the monastic orders : and as the clouds of misrepresentation roll aw r ay we may repeat them nowhere so fitly as here in England, nowhere with more gratitude and reverence. The wilderness and the wastes become fruitful fields and the roses that blossom are the flowers of a pure and lofty character and all the glory of a blameless life. " A school of service to our Lord, in which we hope that we shall not be found to have ordained anything harsh, anything grievous i" 1 so wrote S. Benedict of his own great work. Still in her kalendar the English Church asks us to remember perhaps the brightest example of an English life trained in that school, the Venerable Bede. 2 1 See Hodgkin, Italy and her Invaders, iv. 497. 2 On the title Venerable see Bened. xiv., De Can. SS., lib. i., cap. 37, vol. ii., pp. 160-162. THE IDEAL OF MONK AND HERMIT 199 It was a high ideal : yet very simple and not outside the attainment of any man, by the grace of God. " A monk ought not to wish to be called holy before he is so ; but first to become what may truly be so called. Daily to fulfil in his actions the command- ments of God. To love chastity ; to hate no one ; to have no jealousy, no envy ; to dislike discord and to flee pride. To reverence his elders, to love his juniors, and in the love of Christ to pray for his enemies. To be at peace before the setting of the sun with those with whom he may have disagreed. And never to despair of God's mercy." So wrote S. Benedict in the sixth century : so lived Beda a century and a half later. Nowhere is the ideal of the monastic life more happily enshrined than in the beautiful life of the Venerable Bede. Beautiful we may well call it, scanty though our knowledge of its details be. 1 The late legends 2 which profess to explain the origin of the title Venerable 3 quaintly express the reverence with which his memory was regarded. He became blind, they say, before he died, and yet would go about preaching the word. One day the boy who led him when they were in a valley full of stones told him that a large crowd sat 1 The life of Bede in Xova Legenda, i. 107-112, is made up from the Morbus et Obitus by Cuthbert of Durham, William of Malmes- bury, Simeon of Durham, and the Golden Legend : Bede himself wrote a " little autobiography," H. E., v. 24. The modern accounts of value are that by Bishop Stubbs in the Dictionary of Christian Biography -, the life by Bishop Browne (1879) and the masterly preface by Mr. Plummer to his edition of the historical works 1896. 2 They are given by Horstman, Nova Legenda, i. in, from the Legenda Aurea, p. 833. 3 Cf. Bishop Browne, Bede, Appendix B. 2oo THE ENGLISH SAINTS eagerly and silently waiting for his sermon. He preached fervently and when he ended with the " per ssecula saeculorum " the stones cried out aloud " amen, venera- bilis pater": or, as others said, the angels exclaimed, "well hast thou said, O venerable father." Or again, as one of his disciples was w r riting a verse epitaph for his tomb and he thought how to make his second line run fitly and as he slept still sought the needful word, in the morning he saw that an angel had written venerable in the vacant space. Hac sunt in fossa Bedas venerabilis ossa. So it runs on the great stone in the Durham Galilee to-day. Later ages by an historic insight not far removed from inspiration have never abandoned the title. The monastic ideal was truly venerable ; and no man ever set it forth more fully than the Northumbrian Bede. It is first as a man of learning that he is memorable. All his life, from a young child he was a monk of Jarrow. 1 " I spent all my years in that monastery, ever intent upon the study of the Scriptures. Between the observance of the regular discipline and the daily care of chanting in the church, it was ever sweet to me to learn, to teach, or to write." 2 At the basis of his learning there was the love of God. It was supported by the monastic life, with its fixed hours, fixed rules of work and prayer. Fitly does William of Malmesbury 3 1 But see Plummer, Bede, i., p. xvi. Throughout constant refer- ence should be made to Mr. Plummer's investigation, exhaustive and sympathetic. 2 Bede, H. E., v. 24. 3 Gesta Regum, ed. Stubbs, i. 63-64. THE IDEAL OF MONK AND HERMIT 201 quote of him those words of the old Wisdom literature, " Wisdom will not enter into a soul that deviseth evil nor dwell in a body that is held in pledge by sin," 1 and say that he was a man of sane and unfretful faith. 2 Humble like a true scholar, 3 he is no less eminently wise. He might have written in his books, as did a doctor of our own an hundred years since, 4 the Pauline motto <>i\oTi/jii(T0ai rjavxd^etv. Yet he was a pioneer in literature ; and as our dear teacher of a few years ago, who seemed to us in his holiness and his simple charm so greatly to resemble him, wrote, " he was one of the most original personages in history." 5 He loved old national songs he was a verse writer indeed, and a poor one, himself 6 he delighted in tales of courage or of spiritual adventure, but most of all he sought simply to do, 7 and to tell, the truth. This it is that made him the great historian that he was. He " centred in him- self nearly all the knowledge of the day ": 8 there seems to be no subject that men had within their power to learn that he did not seek to know : and in his great work he wrote nothing that he had not known himself or learnt from those whom he could trust. 9 1 Wisdom i. 4. a " Fidei sanas et incuriosaa," op. cit., i. 63. 3 Plummer, Bede, i. Ixvi. 4 George Hutton, D.D. (1764-1817), Fellow of Magdalen College. 6 W. Bright, Early English Church History, p. 336. 6 Cuthbert, de obitu B. (Plummer, i. clxi.), who quotes five Eng- lish lines of his. 7 S. John iii. 21 ; cf. I S. John i. 6. 8 Bishop Stubbs, in Diet. Chrn. Biography, i. 301. 9 " Nearly every kingdom of England furnished him with materials for his History ; it was a London priest who searched the records at Rome for the monk of Jarrow : abbot Albanus transmitted to 2O2 THE ENGLISH SAINTS The greatest of modern historians singles out as the virtues which are most conspicuous in his work the graces of truthfulness and gentleness. It is quite clear that these gifts were as prominent in his life. Absolute sincerity. That means necessarily humility and simplicity. A life of fixed rule, lived in perfect charity with all men, in dutiful obedience, in strict self- restraint, with the mind fixed on God, is the fit school for those virtues. Life and work are seen to hang together : it is impossible as we say it of Bede to avoid a thought of contrast. In our day the tendency is, in vigorous energy for the cause, as it seems, of God and man, to forget the need for the cultivation of personal holiness. Yet it was one of our Lord's most often repeated warnings, that the greatest activity, the most energetic outward work of a religious kind, the most active philanthropy, are compatible with self- seeking and an evil heart. " Many will say to Me in that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Thy Name and by Thy Name cast out devils and by Thy Name do many mighty works ? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you : depart from Me, ye that work iniquity." 1 Good and enduring work can only be built on the rock of personal holiness. That was the principle which the monastic ideal held up in the face of the cruelties and confusion of the medieval world. It was a thought prominent in the him the details of the history of the Kentish church ; bishop Daniel, the patron of Boniface, supplied the West Saxon ; the monks of Lastingham, the depositories of the traditions of Cedd and Chad, reported how Mercia was converted ; Esi wrote from East Anglia, and Cynibert from Lindsey." Stubbs, as above. 1 S. Matt. vii. 22, 23. THE IDEAL OF MONK AND HERMIT 203 life of Bede. He is never weary of recording in his History how the goodness of the lives of those whom he commemorates gave force to their teaching. It is thus in his account of S. Augustine and his mission- aries. " Several believed and were baptized, admiring the simplicity of their innocent life and the sweetness of their heavenly doctrine." 1 So with S. Aidan, " it was the highest commendation of his doctrine with all men that he taught no otherwise than the life which he and his followers lived :" 2 with Fursey " by the ex- ample of his virtue and the power of his preaching he converted the unbelievers to Christ, and confirmed in the faith and love of Christ those who had already believed :" 3 with S. Cuthbert " he first showed in his own behaviour what he taught was to be performed by others " 4 : with Ecgberct of lona " being most devout in practising those things which he taught, he was willingly heard by all." It was part of Bede's absolute con- scientiousness that he could not bear the thought of men passing, in their work, outside the support of their own devotional experience. Thus to him and it is certainly the ideal of the English Church no work could be blessed when the first obligation was neg- lected. Common prayer was the strength of individual labour for the good of men. The one could not take the place of the other. There is a lesson in the tale which is told of him which we are all too ready to forget and which certainly those who have tried to learn know to be true, and thank God for. His brother monks, it is Alcuin his worthy disciple who tells the 1 Hist. Eccl., i. 26. - Ibid., iii. 5. 3 Ibid., iii. 19. 4 Ibid., iv. 28. 204 THE ENGLISH SAINTS tale knowing his weakness, and the many claims of work that pressed upon his time, urged him not always to attend the singing of the canonical hours in church. "I know," he answered, "that the angels are with us at those hours ; what if they find not me there among the brethren ? Will they not say, Where is Bede ? Why does he not come with the brethren to the prescribed prayers?" 1 It is easy to call such conscientious devotion to the strict meaning of an obligation formal and unnecessary. It is naturally irksome in an age like our own where the spirit of discipline and training and rule in religious matters is conspicuously lacking. But it is impossible to deny that such obedience is the natural soil on which a habit of absolute sincerity and truthfulness grows and thrives. It is not difficult to see that to Bede's strict rule of life we owe the simplicity and veracity the restraint, the fidelity to his authorities, the scrupulous accuracy of his personal record which are the most striking features of his historical work. It might be well to speak of how the ideal expressed in his life represented just the wants of the nation in his time, to say something of the value of his life, cloistered though it was, and his example. The facts are not far to seek ; and they need not here be collected. But no one who reads about him can fail to be struck by the fact that, simply by the weight of his personal character and his learning and in spite of every obstacle from time and space and barbarism, a poor monk living in the distant north exercised even during his life a profound influence over all the important men of his 1 Alcuin, Epp. 1 6, ed. Migne, Patr. Laf. THE IDEAL OF MONK AND HERMIT 205 day. It is indeed an old experience : to know any subject thoroughly, or rather to grasp intimately in mind and life, the principles which underlie any region of human interest and knowledge, does give, and that necessarily, an unique influence. Bede was almost an ideal historian : he had learnt the secret of human life at the feet of Christ. And this it was which made kings and bishops apply to him for advice and which made his advice when given of practical and enduring value. The contemplative and the active life are not so widely severed as men think. The thorough student,, torn as it were from his books, is often the man best fitted to grapple with the piercing problems of actual life. 1 Bede's famous letter to Ecgberht Archbishop of York is a most remarkable illustration of this fact. From his knowledge of men, a knowledge gained very largely from study rather than from life, he was able to advise, encourage, warn, with an authority and an insight which only love and truth can really bestow. We have a clue to the source of this influence and to the secret of the strength of the monastic ideal in the view which Bede takes, in his history, of the meaning and the unity of human life. As an historian, he sees life as one, and as a Christian he sees no sharp division in the grave. He is never content to say of a saint that " he died." S. Chad "joyfully beheld the day of his death or rather the day of the Lord, which till it came he had ever anxiously awaited." 2 Of the day of S. Cuthbert's death he says it was " rather the day of 1 There could be no better example than that modern " Leader in the Northern Church," Bishop Lightfoot, or his successor. 2 Hist. EccL, iv. 3. 2o6 THE ENGLISH SAINTS his entrance into that life which alone is to be called life." l And S. Gregory " departed to the true life which is in heaven."- How beautiful a commentary on this thought is that touching record of Bede's own end, with the finish of his commentary on the Gospel of the Beloved Disciple. His life ended like his history with devotion and peace. '* And now I beseech Thee, good Jesus, that to whom Thou hast granted sweetly to drink of the words of Thy wisdom, Thou wilt also vouch- safe that he may in due time come to Thee, the Fountain of all Wisdom, and always stand ever before Thy Face." 3 So he had ended his record of the Church history of the English race : when he came to die " he passed the day in gladness till the evening " and then when the last sen- tence of the Gospel was written and the boy had said " it is finished" he answered " Thou hast spoken truth : it is finished. Take my head in thy hands, for much it delights me to sit over against my holy place, where I was wont to pray. So that I too sitting may call upon my Father." 4 With his last breath he gave glory to Father Son and Holy Ghost and so passed peacefully to God. In his last days the beautiful Ascension antiphon had been on his lips, 5 a prayer for the comfort of those whom he left behind. 1 Hist. EccL, iv. 28. 2 Ibid., ii. i. 3 Plummer's edition, i. 360. 4 De obitu Bedtz, Plummer, i. clxiv. 5 " O rex glorias, Domine virtutum, Qui triumphator hodie super omnes caelos ascendisti, ne derelinquas nos orphanos, seu mitte promissum Patris, Spiritum Veritatis." No Magdalen man can forget how beautifully that antiphon still sounds in his college chapel. THE IDEAL OF MONK AND HERMIT 207 A scholar, musician, artist, 1 preacher, 2 a wise coun- sellor, a faithful loving heart, Bede showed what the monastic life and discipline could produce. Simplicity and devotion were his, the truest sources of strength. By the side of Bede we may place another name, that of a scholar and monk of Southern England, who came under different influences and led a more public life, but whose aims and ideals were the same Aldhelm, abbat of Malmesbury and Bishop of Sherborne. 3 Malmesbury, where the splendid abbey church still in part remains, was the centre of monastic culture for the borderlands between the Saxons and the Welsh. It was near there that Augustine met the British bishops ; it was there that Celtic influences from Ireland, rich in learning and art, were most prominent. There Aldhelm ruled as abbat from 675 to 705, the contemporary of the great bishops and great monks of the North, whose memory Bede has made immortal. His work as scholar, writer of verses, preacher, abbat, was much like that of other monks. And his earnest preaching of purity was the natural outcome of Christian 1 Bede clearly appreciated the great artistic work of Benedict Biscop. Cf. inter alia Bishop Browne's interesting paper on M onkwearmouth . 2 A sermon of his is translated by Bishop Browne in his Bede, chapter ix. 3 On S. Aldhelm Bede is brief: William of Malmesbury, Gesta Pontificum, pp. 330 sqq.^ is most full, and much more valuable than the Life by Faricius, Acta SS., May (25), vi. 84 : the last named is epitomized in Nova Legenda, i. 38 sqq. : see also Leo Bonhoff, Ald- helm von Malmesbury (1894), a careful investigation. I have also had the advantage of reading in proof the Bishop of Bristol's most interesting and valuable ^S 1 . Aldhelm (lectures delivered in his cathedral church). 208 THE ENGLISH SAINTS training under Celtic teachers. But one tale of him, at least, is especially characteristic. He would sit on the bridge, as the people came out from mass to loiter gossiping on their way home, and sing them sacred lays, teaching them their faith, as it were, in chance verses, and enlisting in God's service the national love of music and song. It was Alfred, himself a singer, who preserved this tale. Aldhelm visited Rome, and played there an impor- tant part, before he was called to be bishop of the new- formed see of Sherborne. He feared to take upon him the bishop's duties, to command rebels with authority, to comfort the humble with gentleness. 1 But he yielded at last, and the bishops took him for colleague, the clerks for father, the laity for guardian. To Berhtwald, Archbishop of Canterbury, he was a wise adviser and a teacher of sound principles. 2 As bishop he laboured with unwearied zeal, as truly a " servus servorum Dei "; 3 active was he in visiting his whole diocese, and indefatigable in preaching, strict in fasting as in his youth. He died, when engaged on one of his episcopal journeys, in the wooden church of Doulting in Somerset : and when men had prayed for his soul, and miracles of healing had been wrought, he was carried with deep reverence by easy stages to Malmesbury : 4 and at each place a stone cross was set up in memory of the holy dead. 1 Such appears to be William of Malmesbury's view of the duties of the episcopal office. Gesta Pontificum (Rolls Series), p. 375. 2 Ibid., p. 376. 3 Ibid., p. 381. 4 The Bishop of Bristol in his S. Aldhelm traces the journey with that delightful combination of historical, antiquarian, and artistic learning in which he is unique. THE IDEAL OF MONK AND HERMIT 209 Aldhelm was remembered, not only for the miracles which men, in the years that followed, naturally attri- buted to him, so that he became famous even among the conquering Normans, 1 but as a writer of eloquence and also, it must be admitted, of considerable violence. His history is of interest in our subject as showing, in instances which it is unnecessary here to repeat, the continued association between England and Ireland, evidenced at first by the creation of the Malmesbury house, as well as by the resort of Irish students to the school of Archbishop Theodore at Canterbury, 2 and also as an example of the strong influence of the monastic life and the monastic ideal upon the society of the English folk. It was from the tradition, and the following, of men such as Aldhelm that kings and statesmen learnt, like Alfred, to give half their income and half their time to God. As the days went on, as the Norman came with his clear sense of rule, much that has been typical of English monasticism, and much too that even in the early days saints had reprobated, that Bede himself had condemned, passed away. But the characteristic fruits of monasticism continued to be shown in the training of statesmen and missionaries and of active as well as contemplative servants of God. As the twelfth century, prolific in great men, left its mark deep on the history of the land, in union of peoples, in constitution and laws, much that was influential on men's lives, and that showed the influence of earlier days, came forward into view. 1 Gesta Pontificum^ p. 423. 2 On their treatment of these lectures, and its results, see the Bishop of Bristol's comment in his S. Aldhelm. 2io THE ENGLISH SAINTS It would be impossible in any record of English saints to pass by the founder of the one English monastic order, a man characteristically English in his thought, and whose work never had influence outside his own land. There is much of very special interest in his story. Gilbert of Sempringham, 1 the son of a Lincolnshire knight, was a man of genius ; for he designed an order which should combine the training of men and women for the religious life, a revival of what had not been seen in England for centuries. He was a man, like all the great founders of medieval monasticism, of the deepest sincerity and of a remarkable simplicity. Trained under Robert Bloet, and afterwards by the great bishop and statesman, Alexander of Lincoln, he had greatness thrust upon him, a greatness which a shrewd man like Henry II. clearly recognized. He did not escape the difficulties of his time or his profession, least of all the perils among false brethren ; but his faith and courage brought him through them all, and when he died he left a flourishing order behind him, which did much for the great revival of religion in the thirteenth century. He himself saw the building of thirteen houses of his order, nine for men and women in separate dwellings, and four for canons alone, besides many hospitals for the aged and the infirm. His con- temporary, William of Newburgh, at once the most 1 See Nova Legenda, \. 470 sqq. : Will. Newburgh in (Rolls Series) Chrons. of Stephen, etc., i. 54. The life in J. H. Newman's Lives of the Saints, 1844, was written by D. B. Dalgairns. An excellent life has recently (1901) been written by Miss Rose Graham : see also Trans. R. Hist. Soc., N.S., vol. xiii. THE IDEAL OF MONK AND HERMIT 211 impartial and the most critical writer of the day, says, " In my judgment, in the rule of women he holds the palm among all whom we have known." Haverholme Priory was the first house built. The rule was adapted, partly from the Cistercian, partly from the lighter rule of the Augustinian canons ; but there were many special orders as to the management of the nuns, their journeys, their worship, their confessions, their sicknesses and death. Special troubles from which the founder suffered were the incursions of gossiping women, such as Agnes de Vescy, who would beset the house of Walton with her women and dogs, and stay for many days a lady so great that only the king could relieve the nuns of so unwelcome or lengthy a visitor. Gilbert was a simple Lincolnshire gentleman, strong and patient, strict and simple, no babbler, labouring more than all his brethren. He lived to be over a hundred, and died with the thought of charity, always nearest to his heart, still on his lips. " He hath dispersed abroad and given to the poor. That is thy duty," he said to those who stood by. It was a meet lesson from the life of the characteristically English monk : education, the joint training of women and men for the service of God, hospital work among sick and poor. The influence which he left behind him, and which was greatly extended in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, passed on in later days into the general current of philanthropic effort. But it was given just when it had been needed. It showed that Englishmen could anticipate, and in some sort amplify, the work that was to win world-wide fame under S. Francis and S. Dominic. 142 212 THE ENGLISH SAINTS And side by side with Gilbert whose personality is visible only in his work, may be set another figure of whom the most vivid record is preserved. S. Hugh of Avalon, 1 Bishop of Lincoln, is in many respects the most attractive of the medieval Saints of England. He was not an Englishman, but no one among the many foreigners who have made England their home became more English in thought and sym- pathy. For the rights of the Church of Lincoln, 2 not only those which were claimed for the Church Universal, he steadfastly contended, and his contention was an event of significance in the history of the liberties of his adopted country. But in politics, so far as they did not closely touch his duties as monk or bishop, he took no part. He lived, in high place, and among en- grossing labours which he never neglected, the detached life. He was the true son of the wild Chartreuse, remote from all earthly disquieting, set almost upon the clouds and nigh to heaven. 3 Hugh was the monk, with all the monk's simple gaiety of heart and all the monk's intuitive knowledge of character. 4 1 For S. Hugh see List of MSS. in Hardy, Descriptive Catalogue, ii. 542-550 : Magna Vita S. Hugonis, ed. Dimock, 1864 : Opera Girald. Cambr., vol. vii., ed. Freeman : Metrical Life, ed. Dimock, 1860 : Nova Legenda, ii. 41-52, an abridgment of the Magna Vita : modern lives by G. G. Perry, 1879, an( * H. Thurston, 1898. The last is a painstaking annotated translation from the French Carthusian life, disfigured by a quaint animus against the Ecclesia Anglicana such as shows itself in adding to the quoted reference to the parish priest of Witham (1876) the words " lege clergyman." 2 So his dispute with Richard I. as to sending troops to serve abroad, Magna Vita, pp. 248-250. 3 Magna Vita, p. 23. 4 So M. Huysmans in En Route very acutely writes. THE IDEAL OF MONK AND HERMIT 213 All this we may learn from an authentic and con- temporary biography, a book which was written by a close intimate of the Saint, his friend and chaplain, who, living on the edge of the rolling Cotswold land 1 in his old age set himself to record the beautiful life which had been the inspiration of his youth, since the days when they had been monks at the Chartreuse to- gether. 2 The great life of S. Hugh is one of the most bright and fresh of all the bright saint-lives of the Middle Ages. Throughout it, at every point, there is the sense of contact with a real servant of Christ, an absolutely sincere and simple disciple, strong therefore in the whole armour of God. A simple ascetic, who had lived by the strictest of all monastic rules, and who " carried the whole human race in his heart," as a baron of Maurienne told Henry II., " and loved all men with the love of perfect charity," 3 he yet knew human nature as few others knew it, and from the first he understood the character of the fierce Angevin kings before whom all others but Thomas Becket trembled. When he first saw Henry II. he told him that he " did not despair of him and that he knew 7 how his many occupations interfered with the health of his soul " 4 : and at once he \vas received into the favour of the shrewd sovereign who knew a man when he saw him. From him alone would he endure reproof: Hugh alone could make that rhinoceros serve him, as his biographer 1 Adam, once abbat of Eynsham, whom Mr. Dimock shows to have been the biographer, had in his old ag'e the manor of Great Rollright for his sustenance. Dimock, Preface, p. xli. 2 Magna Vita, lib. i., c. 13. 3 Ibid., ii. i. 4 Ibid., ii. 6. 214 THE ENGLISH SAINTS quaintly says 1 . When he was in danger of shipwreck, so the story was told, the King cried " Ah ! if my Car- thusian Hugh were now awake or saying the divine offices God would not so long forget me." 2 The tales told of his plain speaking to Henry and to his son Richard are plain evidence of the influence of an honest fearless man. " If the rest of the bishops were such as he," said Richard, " no king or baron would dare lift up his neck against them." 3 To John, in whom he saw none of the good impulses which struggled with the passions of his father and brother, he pointed his warnings by reference to the sculptures of the Last Judgment on the porch of the abbey church at Fontevrault. This plain straightforwardness struck the timid ecclesiastics of his day with surprise. They were surprised at his sharp words to negligent servants, at the slaps and buffets with which he sent them to their work, at the skill with which he tamed the tongue of a garrulous woman, who professed to have a spirit of divination, and made it the excuse for incessant conversation. 4 Rough he undoubtedly was, as when he bit off two pieces of the bone of S. Mary Magdalen preserved at Fecamp. " Why," he said to the monks, astonished, 1 Magna Vita, ii. 7. 2 Ibid., ii. 7. 3 Cf. Magna Vita, iii. 10 ; v. 5, etc., the famous stories of Hugh's reminding Henry of his humble ancestry and of his shaking- Richard's coat till he gave him the kiss. It was characteristic of Hugh that, unable to see Richard on his deathbed, he went at great risk through the " unlawed " country to console his widow and attend his funeral. 4 Ibid.) iii. 13 ; v. 8. THE IDEAL OF MONK AND HERMIT 215 fearful, raging, " when I have but now handled with my unworthy fingers and consumed the Body of the Saint of Saints, may I not thus take to my charge the members of His Saints P" 1 So when he lay on his deathbed and Hubert Walter, Archbishop of Canterbury, suggested that he should ask pardon for having so often provoked his spiritual father and primate, he replied that far from regretting it, he was sorry that he had not done so oftener, and that if God spared his life he would cer- tainly provoke him more often by speaking his mind plainly. 2 It was of a piece with his lifelong protest against insincerity, his refusal to call vice by any other name, that he ordered the removal of the body of Fair Rosamund from the Nun's Church at Godstow. 3 The life of S. Hugh, who came as a foreigner among a people whose dialect he could hardly understand, who lived throughout with the strictness of a Carthusian, so far as it was possible to do so outside the cloister, who never flattered or feared, made a profound impression on Englishmen. Twenty years after his death he was formally canonized : he had been canonized in popular reverence from the moment of his death. 4 The influence which the biographies must have done much to cherish 1 Mr. Froude in his charming Short Studies told this story as if S. Hugh disbelieved in relics : our only authority (Magna Vita, v. 14) tells it among the many instances of his zeal in acquiring relics. 2 Magna Vita, v. 16. 3 Leland represents him to have said " Take out the body of this harlot lest the Christian religion should grow into contempt." See the long note in Hearne's William of I\'ewburgh,\Q\. iii.,pp. 730.9^. 4 He died November 16, 1200: the letters announcing bull of canonization were dated Feb. 17, 1220. Roger of Wendover, iv. 64, gives the date of the bull. 216 THE ENGLISH SAINTS was that of a thorough healthy, candid life. When he was building his church at Witham he carried a hod and laboured with the rest. He was a man of abrupt sincerity and unstifled humour. He showed that it was possible to live by strict rule and yet to be no outcast from the thoughts and hearts of men. He never dis- guised his own difficulties and temptations 1 and he had a horror of any personal claim to sanctity or special grace. But he lived solely to do the work of God. Men learnt in the remembrance of him that a monk could live unspotted in the world, that conversion to God did not mean sanctimoniousness or cant, or the recitation of shibboleths, but the sincerity of a humble life. They did not wonder that such a man was shown to be in sympathy with all the works of God. Though he would seem on his journeys or in the fine castles and rich manors of his see to notice no outward thing and to nourish his thoughts solely by the constant reading of the Holy Scriptures, the wild creatures of God's Hand knew him for their friend. At the Chartreuse " the little birds and wood-mice which are commonly called squirrels," says Giraldus Cambrensis, 2 " were domesticated and tamed by him to such an extent, that they would leave their woods, and regularly at supper time would come and share his meal with him, not only getting on his table but eating out of his hand and his plate and making themselves entirely his companions." At Witham a goose was constantly in his cell ; at Stow, on the manor of the Bishop of Lincoln, where the great church still preserves stories of the older fabric 1 E.g., Magna Vita, i. 9 ; ii. 2. 2 Works, vii. 91. THE IDEAL OF MONK AND HERMIT 217 which was burnt by the Danes, a large swan attached itself to him and was his constant companion. Stories such as these, common enough in the lives of those who are gentle and fearless, seemed miraculous to his contemporaries : but they knew that the miracle was only in the love of God which had so filled the soul ot His servant that all creatures were his friends. When he came to his death it was this beautiful simplicity and humility that were most prominent. Up to the last he heard and joined in the offices. When he was laid to die, like a monk, on cinders, it was the hour of com- pline, and the words of the ninety-first Psalm sank into the hearts of those who lifted him from his bed. " He shall call upon Me and I will hear him : Yea, I am with him in trouble ; I will deliver him and bring him to honour." And he passed away as the monks round him were singing Nunc Dimittis. He seemed to his contemporaries to be the just man made perfect. Happily the bones of S. Hugh still rest in their coffin under the pavement of the Angel Choir of the Cathedral Church of which he was the inspiration. His chaplain speaks bitterly of "the thievish propensities of evil doers " : l these have not been gratified at Lincoln. The reverence which caused his canonization had its natural fruits. Whatever he may himself have thought of miracles, some were soon attributed to him. 2 But the life which his chaplain wrote shows plainly enough that even then it was the strength and sympathy of his character that made men think such deeds the natural 1 Magna Vita, v. 16. ' 2 The report of them is, in part, in Harl. MS. 526, ff. 57-69, but see Thurston, op. cit. 218 THE ENGLISH SAINTS outflowing of a heart to whose love God must surely give power. When men wondered as he tended the lepers he had said " these afflicted ones are flowers of paradise. They are pearls in the coronet of the eternal King, waiting for the coming of their Lord, \vho will change their forlorn bodies into the likeness of His own glory." He had cared too for the bodies of those whose souls had passed away. He would often turn aside to bury the dead, counting it a duty of honour which he would not willingly delegate to others. So his memory endures, the memory of a simple and straightforward character, sturdy and independent, con- spicuous in love for j ustice and mercy. 1 The monk in him was a man who worked for others with his whole heart. If in Hugh of Avalon there was contrast to the cloistered life there was in other famous figures of his time a greater contrast still. The hermit saints must not be forgotten when we try to trace the moulding of English national character. Their influence was unique. They were not, like the bishops, great lords whose holiness must shine through the entanglements of spiritual state and worldly busi- ness, or the monks whose ordered round of services might make but faint echoes on the world outside, or friars who lived among the poor as poorer still and ministered in the crowded centres of population as preachers of righteousness and love. The anchorite and the hermit 2 lived a solitary life, with no active 1 I may be allowed to refer to Justice and Mercy , by H. C. Beeching, Canon of Westminster, preached in Westminster Abbey, Sunday afternoon, November 16, 1902. 2 " Though these terms are often used synonymously, a distinction should be made between them. The anchoret or recluse, male or THE IDEAL OF MONK AND HERMIT 219 duties towards others, but visible, even if it were only through a thin lancet opening, to all who would come and look upon him, and willing to converse (though it might be, like S. Godric, only by signs) with those who came. Obvious in the rigour of his asceticism, his contempt of the world and of comfort, his mastery over all the sins of the flesh to which men were most prone, he might be seen standing in the freezing lake at midnight ; his food was known for what it was, of the scantiest ; his raiment was visible in all its imper- fection ; men could measure the scant proportions of his cell. As for those who were behind high walls, who could tell that their life was so holy as a monk's should be ? When friars went in and out among the vile, who could tell if they touched pitch and were not denied ? But about the hermit there could be no doubt. Men could see and hear and judge him for themselves. It was thus that those who gave them- selves, in this way so strange to the gregarious Teuton, wholly to God, were loved and venerated with a special wonder. No small part of the glory of Cuthbert be- longed not to the missionary or the bishop, but to the lonely anchorite on Fame. And at the end of the seventh century Gtithlac, 1 the Mercian noble, won a fame that was almost as great as his. female, was immured in a cell or anchorage, often built near some monastery or church ; the hermit was free to leave his cell, which was usually placed in a more or less lonely spot, and wander whither he would. The distinction however was not clearly observed in these early times, and Guthlac is called a hermit and an anchoret indifferently." Hunt, English Church 597-1066, p. 229. 1 For Guthlac see Bede, Plummer's edition, ii. 342, ii. xxxvi : Nova Legenda, ii. 1-13, from the early life by Felix (in Acta SS. t 220 THE ENGLISH SAINTS His was a remarkable life. He was one of mien so gracious and kindly, says his earliest biographer, that he drew all men's hearts to him. 1 Weary of a life of inaction, when he was a young man, he formed a sort of brigand company, with which he began violently to rage against the hostile peoples doubtless the Brythons to attack their towns, destroy their forts, and win the glory of inestimable fame. After many wild years he was suddenly touched with the thought of the vanity of all things, and with impetuous eager- ness left his freebooters and set himself to learn hymns and sacred lore, and to live a life of strict asceticism, with the monks of Repton. When he heard in the daily legends of the lives of solitaries he became emulous to imitate them, and he sought the deepest retirement in the fens, which even five centuries later were more than a hundred miles long, 2 and found the loneliest spot at Crowland, and thus he entered on his new life under the protection of S. Bartholomew, on whose day he first came to the isle. 3 With him when he returned finally to settle there he took two boys. At first he led a life of almost complete isolation, April, ii. 38). The life by Felix is printed from the Harleian MS. by Mr. W. de Gray Birch in Memorials of S. Guthlac, Wisbech, 1 88 1. Dictionary of Christian Biography: Hunt, EngL Ch., pp. 229-230 : Bright, Early English Church History, 353, 395 : Kingsley, Hermits, a very sketchy chapter : Hardy, Descriptive Catalogue, i. 404-410: see also Plummer, Two A. S. Chrons., ii. 37. 1 Cf. Nova Legenda, ii. i, 2, with Goodwin, Anglo-Saxon Life of Guthlac (a translation of Felix), p. 15. 2 W. Malm., Gesta Pontif., p. 321. 3 If this was the second visit, as the D. Chr. Biog. thinks certain and Dr. Bright doubtful, the two are made into one by the Nova Legenda. THE IDEAL OF MONK AND HERMIT 221 solitary prayer, conversing with God, but tormented by strange visions of devastating Brythons (the natural expression doubtless of the remorse he felt for his past ravages) and of grim spirits amid sulphurous flames. 1 His severe fasts told upon his health, till he began to see that it was the devil who tempted him to unwise austerities. 2 But before long the fame of his extra- ordinary life grew and men came from all quarters to talk with him. He was ordained priest so that he was able to minister to those who lived in the fens around him. A venerable priest, perhaps from Bardney, would often visit him, and it was through what he saw and would tell that in later years the memories of the hermit's life were preserved. At last there came to be quite a settlement in the lonely fen, farms and some- thing like settled cultivation and a harvest, huts and a church. But to the end it was, in spite of distractions and the delight which his visitors had in a sort of sanctified gossip, a solitary life that Guthlac led. He would only see strangers at stated times ; for the rest of the hours he lived with the wild creatures around 1 The illustrations of the spirits in the Harleian MS., reproduced by Mr. W. Birch, are the delightful creatures of a horrid nightmare. They are described in unpleasant detail by Felix (Memorials, p. 25). ~ Nova Legenda, ii. 3. " Erat enim diabolice persuasionis in- tentio ut ille prorsus a comestione cessaret sibique mortis exitium diuturnitate jejunii provocaret. Si enim jejunium regulam modestie et discretionis excedit, subito languet corpus, deficit spiritus, aufer- tur orationi affectus, operation! effectus, caligat contemplations effectus. Et intelligens Guthlacus diabolice temptationis astutiam, invocata Christi virtute psallebat : Exurgat deus et dissipentur in- iniici eius, et fugiant, qui oderunt eum, a facie ejus." Cf. Vita S> Gutklaci in Birch's Memorials, pp. 23-24. 222 THE ENGLISH SAINTS him and with God. He won like S. Cuthbert the con- fidence of birds and animals, and fishes would eat from his hand. "Who hath led his life after God's will," he said, " the wild beasts and birds become friendly with him, and to the man who will live away from the world the angels draw nigh ;" and " Have you never read that to him who is joined to God in a pure spirit all things join themselves in God ?" So the swallows nestled in his arms and the wild birds knew him as a friend. 1 Such was the man who first touched the imagination of the English with the romance of a purely hermit life. His earliest biographer found in him much akin to Cuthbert, and he came to fill something of the place in the veneration of the Midland folk that the hermit- bishop filled in Northumbria. And the hermit passed, \vith him, into the popular religious life of England. As late as the thirteenth century S. Robert of Knares- borough won a place of great fame among the saints of Yorkshire 2 for simple life of holiness, seclusion, and charity : " When he was comen to his chapelle In deep devotion for to dwelle Poor men that were penniless He sent them food of fish and flesh." 3 The characteristic interest of the hermit-life and the characteristic expression that it was of the nature of the English folk, lies no doubt in its breezy, out-of-door 1 Felix, in Memorials, pp. 5-37. 2 See Mejiwrials of Fountains (Surtees, Society 1863). He was never formally canonized but the church of Pannall near Knares- borough is dedicated to him. See Arnold-Forster, Church Dedica- tions, ii. 1 20. 3 Mr. Baring-Gould has sketched his career very happily in his Lives of the Saints, September 24. THE IDEAL OF MONK AND HERMIT 223 atmosphere. But the life among birds and beasts, not for the sake of their destruction, but for that feeling of companionship which God has placed in all animals, was at its best a Christlike life. Men sought to imitate the ways of Him without whose knowledge not a sparrow falls to the ground. When life among men was reckless and savage, among the beasts there was a life which could at once be natural and full of beauty. The hermits were first men who loved an out-of-door life: then they were apostles of gentleness and humanity. In the background the sense of adventure and peril : in the front the passionate insistence on a life of purity, simplicity, and humble following of Christ. There is another famous example. In the life of no English saint is the adventurous aspect so strangely a prelude to the life of devotion as in that of S. Godric, pirate and anchorite. 1 He was born about the time when England passed under the rule of the Normans. In his youth he was a great traveller. Rustic and unlearned 2 he became a merchant, and often fared oversea. He went to Scotland, Flanders, Denmark, even to Rome and Jerusalem, combining it would seem trade, piety, and pilgrimage. All this while he had 1 William of Newburgh, ii. 20 - The life of Godric by Mr. T. A. Archer in the Dictionary of National Biography is marked by his extraordinary accuracy and width of erudition, and gives a full list of authorities. He is how- ever in error in ascribing the Surtees edition of Reginald to Raine ; it was edited by Mr. Stevenson and published in 1847, not 1845. See also a note of Mr. Archer's in the Engl. Hist. Rev., July, 1902. The Life of S. Godric by Reginald is published by Surtees Soc., 1847 : that in Nova Legenda, i. 475 sqq., is "abridged from the anonymous life in MS. Harl. 322 which forms the basis of Reginald's more detailed life." 224 THE ENGLISH SAINTS worn, says one who came to know him well, " a monk's heart beneath a layman's clothes ": and to S. James of Compostella he went as a true pilgrim. He had loved to visit Holy Island and Fame in memory of the dear S. Cuthbert 1 ; and gradually the desire for a solitary life like his settled down upon his heart. At first he lived near Carlisle. Then he moved to the lonely valley of the upper Wear, where the river rushes swiftly over the jagged stones and the glittering frag- ments of fluor spar, and where wolves then had their lairs. There he lived with an aged English hermit. On the death of his companion he again crossed the sea, and in the Holy Land bathed in the Jordan and wor- shipped at the sepulchre of the Lord. On his return he sought first the valley of the Esk, not far from Hilda's famous house ; and after that he was door- keeper at the splendid church of S. Giles in Durham, and then served also in the cathedral. At last he heard two shepherds speak of Finchale on the Wear not far away 2 : for there it came to him as a revelation that he should dwell. There he settled, built himself a chapel, living at first with his kindred and afterwards alone. His life of austerity was said to be almost beyond what man can endure. 3 It was a life of con- templation, broken by occasional visits from those who would learn from him and with whom he would gladly speak. In extreme old age he sent messages to Arch- 1 Reginald (Surtees Soc.), pp. 31-32. 2 It is now, or was when I saw it last, almost exactly as when S. Godric came to it. Cf. the description in Reginald, and in William of Newburgh ii. 20. 3 Cf. the terrible stories of his food and his vermin Nova Legenda i. 479- THE IDEAL OF MONK AND HERMIT 225 bishop Becket and foresaw his misfortunes. At all great festivals the house of Durham would send over a priest to say Mass for him : and as he grew to extreme age he would often speak of his past life as well as beg spiritual counsel. It was far from the ideal of the anchorite to be useless. He cut down trees, made a garden and an orchard, and grafted apples upon the wild stocks. His woodland life found him friends among the animals. A stag that was destroying his young shoots he bound and led gently away : and he as easily rid himself of a whole herd. He sheltered a stag from its pursuers, for he " would not be a traitor to his guest," he said. The many stories told of him all show him, after he gave up his seafaring life, to have been a man of extreme simplicity, grievously vexed by tempta- tions of the flesh, but of extraordinary determination in all things that touched his conscience. The country folk laughed at him, tried to make him join in their drinking bouts, set snares for him, were not far from planning his death : the marauding Scots killed his cow, broke into his chapel, tied him up and threatened him : devils, he thought, were constantly tempting him : and the waters of the Wear in spite often made his hermitage an unapproachable island. But the old pirate was hardy to the last, though crippled by deadly disease, and it was with a flash of his old adventurous spirit and a memory of the strange perils of his youth that he answered a noble knight who visited him in his last sickness. He must say quickly all that was on his mind, he told him, for soon was he to pass the borders of the great sea. 1 The wondering respect that men 1 Reginald, Libellus (Surtees Soc.), p. 317. 15 226 THE ENGLISH SAINTS paid to his memory was due no doubt partly to the romantic interest of his life, its stirring scenes followed by its sixty years of solitude, and partly to the great age to which he attained, for he died when he was over an hundred. 1 He was a vivid picture, to the imagination of the English folk, of adventurous experience quenched in extreme asceticism. He seemed to have brought the great ascetic Saint back to earth again : " S. John Baptist whom he more especially loved," says William of New- burgh, " often visited, informed and strengthened him." Pious monks as w T ell as inquisitive lay folk went to see him as he lay before his little altar in the last days of his life, and heard him murmur again and again the familiar words of the Gloria Patri. To the last there lingered on his venerable face "a surprising dignity and an unique grace." 2 From such men the English people, with their materialistic outlook, had much to learn. It was this influence indeed, seen in monk and hermit alike, which did much to mould the English ideal of public service, a life of principle and of rule, looking to high aims, never to selfish ends. The unselfish devotion of the saints set its mark on the thought and work of England's sons. 1 See Mr. Archer's argument in D.!\'.B., amply supported by the details of his last years and sicknesses which betoken extreme old age. 2 W. Newb. as above. LECTURE VI THE STATESMEN SAINTS "For our citizenship is in Heaven." PHILIPPIANS iii. 20. IN the Church of Christ every duty of man is sacred and transfigured. Earthly duties are the reflection of the heavenly. Work for God involves of necessity strenuous work for man. In the Middle Ages, with their strivings for unity and for definition, there was a great part to be played by ecclesiastics as statesmen. Now that the mists of misrepresentation have cleared away, we do not deny that it was an honest part, a noble part. No men did more for the welding together of the races on English soil than the priests who made the main work of their lives the service of the State. The list begins with a name as great as any that follow. With regard to the statesmanship of Dunstan we are now in no more doubt than we are of his religious ideal. 1 We know that he was the strong and wise 1 The vindication of S. Dunstan is due to Bishop Stubbs, whose masterly edition of the Memorials (Rolls Series, 1874) was the foundation of our new interest in the great saint and statesman. See also Mr. Hunt's article in the Dictionary of National Biography and his History of the English Church before the Norman Conquest, [ 227 ] 152 228 THE ENGLISH SAINTS counsellor of a great king, the last of the great monarchs of Alfred's house. The laws of Edgar, securing even-handed justice for poor as well as rich, the great police system which he organized, the equal rights secured to Englishman and Dane, all speak eloquently of the constructive fellow-work of king and archbishop. No less impressive are the Church laws at a time when Church and State together drew up laws for both aspects of the national life. They show an earnest desire for religious reformation and for the equality of men in the things of God, and an eagerness to profit by foreign models from which English insularity had so much to learn. The fiction that Dunstan was a persecutor of the married clergy has no foundation : but he has the glory of being the vindicator of the purity of marriage even in the king's court, a fit work indeed for a great minister of the crown. All this we know from contemporary evidence: and we have the very words in which he declared to the king the duties of his office. The words of the king, laid upon Christ's altar, 1 were those which are given in Latin in the pontifical of Egbert of York, 2 and the king uses in his oath still. But to them Dunstan added words, which are also preserved, and may very well be those of his sermon at the Coronation " The Christian king who keeps these engagements, earns for himself worldly honour, and the eternal God pp. 326-368. There is very much of interest connected with Dunstan and his work in the anonymous life of S. Oswald of York (Histor. York, i. 399 sgq.}. 1 Memorials, p. 355. 2 See Stubbs's Select Charters, p. 62, THE STATESMEN SAINTS 229 also is merciful to him, both in the present life and in the eternal life that never ends. Bat if he violate that which was promised to God, then shall it forthwith right soon grow worse among his people, and in the end it all turns to the worst, unless he in his life first amend it. Ah ! dear lord, take diligent heed to thyself by all means ; often call to mind this, that thou wilt at God's doom have to produce and lead forth the flock of which thou hast been made shepherd in this life, then give account how thou heldedst that which Christ afore purchased by His blood. The right of a hal- lowed king is that he judge no man unrighteously and that he defend and protect widows and step- children and serf-folk . . . and that he have old and wise and sober men for counsellers, and set righteous men for stewards, for whatsoever they do unrighteously by his fault he must render account of it all on Dooms- day." 1 Well did the English folk see in him a true guide in troubled times 2 and wish him the " triumphal crown of justice." There can be little doubt that it was for his political work as well as for his holy life that men honoured him in later days. He was a saint, constant in prayers and vigils, diligent in the pious work of teaching and preaching, fervent like the blessed Martin at the mass with eyes and hands ever lifted up to heaven and full of devout tears in the performance of sacred offices 3 : but there were many other bishops as holy. There was no other statesman so great, and it was the knowledge of his greatness which gave such 1 The Anglo-Saxon is printed from MS. Cotton, Cleopatra B. 13, f. 56, in the Memorials, pp. 356-357. ~ See Epistola ad Dunstanuni, Memorials, p. 372. 3 Memorials, p. 50. 230 THE ENGLISH SAINTS power to the records of his life that were written within a few years of his death and dedicated the one to Arch- bishop yElfric, the other to Archbishop Jilfeah. Truly " he was canonized in popular regard almost from the day he died. He was the favourite saint of the Mother Church of England for more than a century and a half, during which there were numbered among his centuries, the scholar Elfric, the martyr Elphege, Lanfranc the statesman, and Anselm the doctor and confessor ; his glory was at last eclipsed, but it was by no less a hero than Thomas Becket. The memory of his greatness was permanent, or the belief in his miracles would have been impossible." 1 Amid the remembrance of the tales which the aged saint had told to the children of his palace, stories of God's blessings to him and of His merciful preservation oftentimes in danger, stories of temptation and of meditations and dreams, are mingled tales of wonder and miracles, in their first form easily explainable but to grow in later years into the kind of miracles that do not happen. Yet the chief characteristic at least of the earliest biography of all is indubitably its plain truthfulness, its touch of personal impression and personal remem- brance. Dunstan, we feel, was not only a great man but a man to be loved. His long hours of prayer, the intense earnestness of his preaching, the visits at night to the sacred scenes of the first Christian mission to the English, the beautiful story of his last com- munion and his peaceful end with the words "the Lord is gracious and merciful : He hath given meat unto them that fear Him," were memories long pre- 1 Stubbs, Introduction to Memorials, p. ix. THE STATESMEN SAINTS 231 served in the land which knew him as a strong ruler and the companion of a strong king. The name of the good man, who tried to teach the English folk by training up learned clerks, of the great ruler who kept the Danes at bay, was cherished by those who knew the dignity and sweetness of his religious life. Loyalty, untarnished honour, humanity, a hallowing reverence for God, these were the marks of true statesmanship which Englishmen looked for and which they found in Dunstan and in Alfred. It seemed meet that it should be no Pope but a king who should order his mass day to be observed throughout the land. 1 The life of Dunstan makes one fact plain. It can hardly be said with truth that the medieval conception of sanctity involved an abnegation of political respon- sibility, though such a statement has often been made. It was quite clearly understood that the duty to God involved a duty to the neighbour, and that this implied also some recognition of duty in regard to the political as well as the religious aspect of the national life. But it is unquestionable that the great majority of the lives with which we have been concerned are illustrations of the feeling that the Church should not be concerned with politics as such, and that the main, if not the whole, duty of man was to preserve the spiritual life amid the pressure of other interests. The life in God is the true life : to that all other claims must be sub- ordinated. So the medieval thinkers would say. But some of them would rise to the higher conception of 1 Cnut and his Witan in 988 gave this order, which has been spoken of not strictly correctly as " the canonization of S. Dunstan. 7 See Thorpe, Ancient Laws, ii. 370. 232 THE ENGLISH SAINTS the unity of all life, of all duty, in God Who made and guided the world. If it was best to leave the world and be alone with God, or to devote the life to His service in succouring the souls and bodies of men Whom He had made in His image, if S. Cuthbert and S. Martin were types of character of permanent attractiveness, there was also growing throughout the history of medieval England a strong sense of the power of lives lived in the public eye but devoted to a principle which elevated them above their surroundings. With the re-introduction of England into European politics after the Norman Con- quest this feeling became emphasized. The English saints before the Norman days were mainly missionaries, monks, or hermits, or kings who had the interests of at least one of these. Afterwards there was a new de- velopment. It was due to new interests, new questions, new education, new men. What the new questions and interests were is perhaps a point of minor impor- tance. It is for us rather to trace how the men met them and dealt with them. The questions were, in various forms, aspects of the problem of the relations between Church and State. As presented by the Norman and Angevin kings, the State appeared to Christian thinkers as a material rather than a moral or intellectual or religious force. Thus they were championing the cause of religious liberty and intellectual freedom when they stood forth against the demands of the kings. The contest con- cerning investitures had a far-reaching consequence behind it. Was the State to control every exercise of human activity ? Was every power to be used only THE STATESMEN SAINTS 233 under its control ? Were the limits of freedom, not only in action but in thought, to be controlled by the State ? When the Emperors, and the English kings who imitated them, claimed to bestow the signs of spiritual authority, it was implied, consciously or un- consciously, that all freedom of the human soul, all approach from man to God, even all relations between God and man, could be enjoyed only through the sanction of the Sovereign State. Hobbes had his forerunners in practice in Henry of Franconia, Caesar and Augustus, and Henry the Clerk, King of the English and Duke of the Normans. To meet the new problem new men arose. In England we are met for the first time clearly by the figure of the political saint. Dunstan was a saintly statesman who was confronted by no question of diver- gent principle. Anselm was a saint whom the difficulty confronted and profoundly affected the current of his life. Thomas Becket was one whom it transformed as a statesman and as a man. With the Norman Conquest England reached, under different conditions, the posi- tion with which Frankish chroniclers four centuries before were familiar. 1 The saint became a prominent figure in the political world. 1 " Ce qu'il y a surtoutde remarquable chez les saints du sixieme et du septieme siecle, c'est qu'ils n'etaient pas de solitaires. Us n'ont pas vecu en reclus et loin du monde. Us furent, au contraire, sauf quelques exceptions, fort meles a la vie du monde. On peut compter que plus de la moitie' de ces saints sortaient des plus grandes families, ont e"td Sieve's a la cour des rois, et ont exerce" des fonctions civiles. Beaucoup ont 6t6 comtes avant d'etre eVeques. II en est meme plusieurs qui, en devenant eveques, n'ont pas cessd d'etre assidus au palais des rois. Plusieurs se signalerent comme administrateurs et hommes d'dtat. Ainsi une vie de saint n'est pas 234 THE ENGLISH SAINTS There are two great names which come before us among the English archbishops when we turn to consider the relations between Church and State. In character, life, work, there were profound differences between them. Briefly, Anselm was a saint whom his holiness made into a statesman, Becket a statesman whom the keenness of his political insight helped to make into a saint. But the principle in each case, as it seemed to the men of the Middle Ages, was the same. Christ is Righteousness. He who contends for righteousness contends for Christ. The history of an English martyr first emphasized this lesson for Englishmen. The martyrdom of S. Alphege (yElfeah) was recog- nized at once in England as giving him place among the saints. It was on the igth of April, 1012, that he was barbarously murdered at Greenwich by the drunken Danes, because he would not buy his liberty at the cost of privation and suffering to his tenants. The next day he was buried in London at S. Paul's with great reverence, and in 1033 Canute, to show both his sympathy with English national feeling and his separation from the ill deeds of his old heathen kin, joined in the solemn translation of the body to Canterbury. But his formal canonization was delayed. Was he really a martyr ? He had refused to gather a ransom 1 du tout la vie d'un moine ; c'estpresque toujours la vie d'un homme qui s'est occupe' des affaires publiques et a 6t en relations inces- santes avec les rois et les grands de la terre." Fustel de Coulanges, La Monarchic franque, ed. 1888, pp. 11-12. 1 He uolde heom nan feoh be haten : A. S. Chron. 1012. Cf. Thietmar, in Pertz, A/on. Hist. Germ., iii. 849. The story is given THE STATESMEN SAINTS 235 and drunken Danes had killed him with the skulls and bones that were over from their feast : one on whom the day before he had laid hands in confirmation, with "an impious piety" had ended his sufferings with his battle-axe. Lanfranc debated the question with Anselm. The English custom of local canonization was one which he could not wholly overcome, yet could not, with his obedience to system, wholly approve. " The English make some of them they venerate into saints : when I try to discover what manner of men they were, I am not clear as to their sanctity. Alphege is reckoned not only saint but martyr : yet he died not for confessing Christ, but for refusing to ransom his life for money." Anselm's answer is characteristic of him : and it vindicates the true religious feeling of the English race. They had seen to the core of the matter. They saw above formal systems to the reality of the obligation of Christ. Anselm compared Alphege to S. John Baptist, 1 who died " not for refusing to deny Christ but for refusing to keep back the truth." Christ he said " is Truth and Righteousness : he who dies for Truth and Righteousness dies for Christ : and whoso dies for Christ is by the witness of the Church esteemed a martyr." It is a great and terrible sin to deny Christ: Alphege refused to commit the far lesser sin of laying a burden on his people. " Much rather then he would in the A. S. Chron.: in Florence of Worcester, i. 165: Osbern's Life of S. Alphege, Anglia Sacra, ii. 122: Nova Legenda, i. 381 sqq., abridges life by Osbern in Bollandist Ada SS., Apr., II., p. 628. 1 Perhaps he had in mind Bede, Opera, xi. 327, who uses exactly the same argument, that S. John Baptist because he died for the truth died for Christ. Cf. also the MS. sermon at Corpus Christi College quoted by Mr. Plummer, Bede, ii. 164. 236 THE ENGLISH SAINTS not have denied Christ." 1 He who dies for righteous- ness dies for Christ : it was a lesson which many English saints were to make emphatic in the years of oppression. It was the justification of decided political action on the part of Churchmen in times of stress. S. Anselm himself was to be a great example. 2 William Rufus thought that when an archbishop became his man he was bound to him hand and foot : on him especially as a liege man was the duty of implicit obedience imperative. Henry I., less brutal in practice, was equally convinced in theory. By the hand-grip, and even more by the gift of ring and staff, the ecclesi- astic became the King's vassal not only in things temporal but in things spiritual also. That is the signi- ficance of Anselm's long struggle. The story needs no re-telling. 3 He was not an Englishman, he was a 1 The arguments are in Eadmer, De Vita et Conversation S. Anselmij ed. Rule, Rolls Series, pp. 350-352. See Rigg, S. Anselm of Canterbury, pp. 50-52 ; Church, S. Anselm (ed. 1895), p. 100. 2 Cf. the letter of Herbert (? of Bosham) to Gregory abbat of Malmesbury (Materials for hist, of Becket, vol. v., pp. 337-8), who compares S. Alphege with S. Anselm. 3 For Anselm, see especially Eadmer's Historia Novorum, Vita S. Anselmi et qucedam miracula ejus, and de Vita et conversatione, all in Mr. Rule's Edition Rolls Series, 1884. The life in Nova Legenda, i. 51 sqq., is from Eadmer as printed in Bollandist Acta SS., Apr., II. 863. The miracula by Eadmer are given in Lieber- mann (Ungedruckte Geschichtsquellen^ pp. 301 sqq.}. Martin Rule, on Eadmer 's elaboration of the first four books of the Historia Novorum (Cambridge Antiquarian Society Communications, vol. vi.), argues that Eadmer wrote as a corrector, rival and critic of William of Malmesbury and that neither William nor Eadmer pos- sessed authentic documentary evidence of the terms of the settle- ment between Henry and Anselm. But this does not affect the main question of principle or its decision. Mr. Rule notes the THE STATESMEN SAINTS 237 thinker, a sensitive pietist, a man of the character which Englishmen never appreciated sympathetically. The beauty of his personal character, one of the most saintly and simple that the Middle Ages produced, left little mark : but the boldness of his fight for principle was not forgotten. The principle was a clear one. The Church alone has the right and the duty to deal with men's souls : all power to help, or console, or guide, comes to her from God alone. The brotherhood of the faithful is the Body of Christ. Outside it there are powers which may claim to dictate new standards that are not the standards of Christ, in politics, in commerce, in learning, in all common intercourse of man and man. They may claim also to control the free expression of the soul of Christian men in thought, and prayer, and worship. Such claims can never be sub- mitted to by the brothers of Jesus Christ, the Church of the Living God. All rights of spiritual and moral and industrial combination were involved in Anselm's resistance to the demands of the State that investiture should come from the king: and of the leaders of intellectual freedom, scientific, philosophical, religious, he was the champion. It was a mere accident, as we can see now, that this involved a claim for obedience to the Roman Pope as opposed to the English king. What it really meant was the impossibility that the liberty of the human soul should be restrained in fetters of man's riveting. It was the same thought which lay at the root of his reticence of Eadmer's references to the reigning Sovereign and his advisers, as contrasted with the freedom of utterance after their death (pp. 250, 251, 280, 281). 238 THE ENGLISH SAINTS philosophical theology and of his practical action. Man in all things, in natural virtue, in holiness which is above nature, is beholden to God. 1 Christ came to ransom man from the power of Satan and to translate him to the glorious liberty of the children of God. 2 The free human spirit, liberated by the Incarnate Son, could not in the things of the soul be in bondage to any ordinance of carnal man. It was centuries before Englishmen came to appreciate the struggle of his life. It was significant that it was not till the Renaissance that he was canonized. But meanwhile Dante with the prescience of the poet and prophet had placed him in the circling garland of those who surround the Divine Reason. 3 "It is his right place" -in the beautiful words of a w r ise saint of the last generation " in the noble company of the strong and meek, who have not been afraid of the mightiest and have not dis- dained to work for and with the lowliest : capable of the highest things ; content, as living before Him with whom there is neither high nor low, to minister in the humblest." 4 How great a contrast was he who next withstood the king for the Church's sake ! The career, the character, the fame of S. Thomas of Canterbury 5 have formed an inexhaustible subject for 1 This is the teaching of his Tractatus de Concordia Prcc- scienticB, etc. 2 This is the teaching of his Cur Deus Homo. 3 Paradiso, c. xii. 4 Dean Church, S. Anselm, p. 355. 5 I do not understand why Miss Norgate, herself perhaps our first authority on the age of the Angevins, should revert to the form " a Becket," for which I believe that there is no early authority. Mr. Freeman used to say that he believed that there was a sort of THE STATESMEN SAINTS 239 historical writers from his own day to our own. Besides the special biographies or martyrologies which issued from monastic cells within a century of the archbishop's murder, there is hardly a chronicler of the age who is silent as to his fame. 1 Gerald de Barri, Gervase of Canterbury, William of Newburgh, Ralph of Dissay, Dean of S. Paul's, and many another witnessed to the interest called out by the life of which French and English biographers had endeavoured to collect every detail. Modern writers, with their minute investiga- tions, give us occasion to reconsider the verdict of history. There can be no question that of all the English Churchmen of the middle ages Thomas Becket, in life and after death, was by far the most popular. Indeed, it may be doubted if there ever has been an Englishman soldier, sailor, statesman, or priest who has filled so large a space in the affections of his countrymen for so many centuries. If this sounds exaggerated when we think of some of our heroes, an acquaintance with the books written and the churches built between 1170 and 1538 will supply a sufficient proof. Simon de Montfort was soon for- gotten ; Elizabeth was never really popular, nor was Oliver Cromwell. Pitt's great fame did not last long except in one class of the community. It is too soon tendency among illiterate people to add " a " after every saint called Thomas, and add that his old nurse would talk of " St. Thomas a Didymus " ! 1 A list of the original authorities, with some account of each, is given in S. Thomas of Canterbury by W. H. Hutton, 2nd edition, 1899. The life in the Nova Legenda, ii. 373 sqq., is from the Quad- rilogus. Professor W. E. Collins has published an admirable Lecture on Thomas Becket, 1902. 240 THE ENGLISH SAINTS to speak of Gladstone or of the heroic memory of Gordon. Nelson stands nearest in all these centuries to Becket as a hero of the English people. Within three years of his death the clamorous affec- tion of Englishmen had made the Pope declare him a canonized saint. 1 For the next hundred years the chronicles of nearly every country in Europe told of his fame and the honour paid to his shrine : even distant Iceland had its own story of his life and death, which entered into the hearts of the people, and did some- thing to mould the relations between Church and State in that northern land. In England a new military order took him for its patron saint, 2 and the great city of London claimed to be peculiarly under his protec- tion. There are not less than eighty-four churches certainly dedicated to him in our land; most probably the number is considerably above that, and it exceeds, I believe, any other dedication except that to the Mother of our Lord. 3 Every relic of him became 1 Letter of Alexander 1 1 1. to the Chapter of Canterbury, Materials for the history of Abp. Becket, Rolls Series, vii. 545. 2 In 1190, on the capture of Acre, a military order was founded in honour of S. Thomas, and he was often called Acrensis as Patron of the order. 3 There are or were sixty-three churches in England known to be dedicated to S. Thomas Becket, two in Wales, and nine monasteries, etc. Besides these, there are forty-one churches in England dedicated to S. Thomas, of which twenty-one are dedi- cated to S. Thomas the Martyr. Almost certainly these latter are named after Becket, and very probably several of the former. These figures are derived from a list drawn up by Miss Quiller Couch after an investigation under the direction of Mr. Falconer Madan. Miss Arnold-Forster, Church Dedications, gives 70 to S. Thomas of Canterbury, besides which 36 ascribed to S. Thomas Apostle are possibly S. Thomas the Martyr. He also appears THE STATESMEN SAINTS 241 precious beyond the richest jewels. At Sens they pre- serve his chasuble and stole ; there are other vestments of his, I believe, at Stonyhurst. His death became one of the commonest subjects for pictures or frescoes on the walls of churches, of which several, such as the extremely interesting fifteenth-century fresco at Picker- ing in Yorkshire, 1 still exist. But the chiefest memorials remained, of course, in the place where he laid down his life. His tomb at Canterbury became the most famous place of pilgrimage in England. The Cathedral Church indeed is practically a memorial to him, nearly all of it, through one chance or another, having been built or rebuilt after his death, and largely through the riches which the pilgrims brought to his shrine. Of the magnificence of the shrine just before the spoilers scattered its treasures we have the accounts of two eye-witnesses. One, a Venetian, who visited England in the time of Henry VII., speaks of its in- comparable richness as far beyond anything he had ever seen. 2 The other, the keenest of sightseers, the scholar, theologian, humanist, who was so much at home among the English folk, Erasmus, has left us in the form of a dialogue a vivid description of what he saw in 1524. 3 All this has long passed away. But perhaps the greatest memcrial of all is one which will last as long three times in double dedications. Besides this, almost every church had a " S. Thomas altar." At S. Lawrence, Reading, this altar was made as late as 1 502. 1 See Baigent, Journal oj 'Archaeological Society, vol. x. (1855). ' 2 Venetian Relation of England (Camden Society). 3 Erasmus, Colloquia, pp. 331 sqq., ed. Elzevir. 16 242 THE ENGLISH SAINTS as men read books. It is hardly too much to say that the memory of S. Thomas was one of the foundations of English literature, for it gave us Chaucer's Canter- bury Tales, Chaucer was a man who had seen much and read much, and he had a great knowledge of humanity and a great sympathy; nowhere, when he sat down to garner his impressions, could he find a better setting for his studies of human nature and human life than in an English April among the crowds that journeyed to the shrine of S. Thomas : " And specially from every schires ende Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende, The holy blisful martir for to seeke That them hath holpen whan that they were sicke." Indeed it would hardly be an exaggeration to say that for four centuries English life in its picturesque and its religious aspects centred round the memory of the great Englishman who laid down his life in the cathedral of Canterbury on December 29, 1170. Why was this ? A brief sketch of his life must be the first part of our answer. Thomas Becket was born in 1118. His father, Gilbert Becket, was sheriff of London. He had come over from Rouen with other Normans after the Con- quest, married a damsel of " burgher birth " from Caen, and risen to prosperity as a merchant, Thomas was a bright child, of whose boyhood many stories were told a child whom many people noticed, and whom his good mother trained from his earliest years " to fear the Lord and to invoke the Blessed Virgin as the guide of his paths and the patroness of his life and to lay his THE STATESMEN SAINTS 243 trust, after Christ, upon her." 1 He was taught at the priory of Merton in Surrey ; then he worked in an office in London ; 2 then, through friends of his father's, he won admission to the school very like the theo- logical colleges that some of our bishops have attached to their houses to-day of Archbishop Theobald at Canterbury. There he delighted the good archbishop, and when he was only in deacon's orders he rose to high preferment. He studied, too, at Bologna and Auxerre. Theobald had much to do with the peace- able accession of Henry II. in 1154, and the new king made Becket his chancellor. How great a position this was a contemporary tells us : " The chancellor of England has so high a dignity that he is accounted second from the king in the realm ; he has the charge of the king's seal and seals his own orders with the obverse thereof; the king's chapel is in his charge and care ; he takes into his keeping all vacant archbishoprics, bishoprics, abbeys, and baronies that fall into the king's hands ; he attends all the king's councils, and may enter even if not summoned ; everything is signed by his clerk, who bears the king's seal ; and everything ordered by the advice of the chancellor ; so that if by God's grace his well-spent life should procure it for him, he shall not die save as archbishop or bishop, if so he please. 1 John of Salisbury (Materials for the history of Archbishop Becket^ Rolls Series, ii. 303). 2 As to this see Round, The Commune of London, p. 114, who seems to follow a hint of Mr. Freeman's in his articles in the Con- temporary Review. 1 6 2 244 THE ENGLISH SAINTS And thus it is that the chancellorship is not to be bought." 1 And Thomas's greatness was due not only to his high office, but to the closeness of his personal relations with the king. Two bright, active, keen-sighted men, impatient to do what they thought should be done, they both came to look on their work with the same eyes, and to do it together with one heart. And as they worked they played. " When work was over," says the same observer, " the king and he would play together like boys of the same age ; in hall, in church, they sat together, or together they rode out. One day they were riding together in the streets of London ; the winter was severe : the king saw an old man coming, poor, in thin and ragged garb, and he said to the chancellor, ' Do you see him ?' ' I see,' said the chancellor. The king : ' How poor he is, how feeble, how scantily clad. Would it not be great charity to give him a thick warm cloak ?' The chancellor : ' Great indeed ; and, my king, you ought to have a mind and an eye to it.' Meanwhile the poor man came up ; the king stopped and the chancellor with him. The king pleasantly accosted him and asked if he would have a good cloak. The poor man, who knew them not, thought that this was a jest, not earnest. The king to the chancellor : * You shall do this great charity,' and laying hands on his hood he tried to pull off the cape a new and very good one of scarlet and grey which the chancellor wore, and which he strove to retain. Then was there great commotion and noise, and the knights and nobles 1 W. Fitzstephen (Materials, iii. 41). THE STATESMEN SAINTS 245 in their train hurried up wondering what might be the cause of so sudden a strife ; no one could tell : both were engaged with their hands, and more than once seemed likely to fall off their horses. At last the chancellor, long reluctant, allowed the king to win, to pull off his cape and give it to the poor man. Then first the king told the story to his attendants ; great was the laughter of all ; some offered their capes and cloaks to the chancellor. And the poor old man went off with the chancellor's cape, unexpectedly happy, and rich beyond expectations, and giving thanks to God. " Sometimes the king would come to the chancellor's house, sometimes for fun, sometimes for the sake of seeing whether the talk of his house and his table were true. Sometimes the king rode on horseback into the hall where the chancellor sat at meat ; sometimes, bow in hand, returning from hunting or on his way to the chase ; sometimes he would drink and depart when he had seen the chancellor. Sometimes jumping over the table he would sit down and eat with him. Never in Christian times were there two men more of one mind or better friends." 1 The chroniclers dwell on the lavish magnificence of his household, the train of knights and pages who followed him and fed at his table, the grandeur of his equipage when he went on embassy to the king of the Franks. The people, they say, rushed from their houses to see the train, and cried, " Marvellous is the king of the English whose chancellor goeth thus and so grandly." But in all this those who knew him 1 W. Fitzstephen {Materials^ iii. 22). 246 THE ENGLISH SAINTS noted also the simplicity of his personal life. The Icelandic " Saga," embodying an English chronicle, speaks of his manner of life thus : " The holy fathers have made plain that a chaste monk is like unto a knight who keepeth his wealth and life in a close stronghold. But he who liveth chastely in the world signifieth a knight who fighteth with sword and shield in open field and receiveth a greater reward the more glorious victory he gaineth ; for that indeed is a more wondrous art to stand on the embers being unburnt than to shun the fire and be unscathed. Both these signs point to that laudable man the blessed Thomas. He was placed by the lord king in the way of such a good hap and fulness of this world's bliss as hath been before told, and yet he wore over his breast nevertheless such a trusty hauberk of virtue through God's abiding with him that he never departed from a life of purity and holy endeavour ; for if in the daytime the fulfilment of many duties hindered he would get up anight-tide to worship his Creator." 1 Such is the life which the chroniclers describe, there can be little doubt, from tales dropped in later years from Becket's own lips. 2 It went on happily enough 1 Saga (ed. Magnusson, Rolls Series), i. 50. 2 Our information for the earlier years of Becket's life is derived principally from William Fitzstephen, " the fellow-citizen of my lord, his chaplain, and of his household, called by his mouth to be a sharer of his cares," from John of Salisbury (who quotes his own words), and the anonymous writer whom Mr. Freeman, in his articles in the Contemporary Review, 1878, identified with Roger, a monk of Pontigny, in which house Becket dwelt in exile. Dr. Abbott, S. Thomas of Canterbury, his death and miracles, 1898, and Miss Norgate (Diet. Nat. Biog., vol. Ivi.) both consider that there is not sufficient evidence for this identification ; but in any case it is THE STATESMEN SAINTS 247 for nearly eight years. Then Theobald died, and Henry made his friend archbishop. It was natural, inevitable, and yet, as with Hildebrand a century earlier, the result was foreseen. 1 Becket, it was clear enough, was a man of conscience fixed and firm. From the moment of his ordination to the priesthood, June 2, 1162, he had to choose so he felt between God and the king. It was not that his life as chancellor seemed to him to have been sinful. It was rather that his work then was the work of a statesman. He had aided Henry in all those great reforms that made the first years of his reign a turning-point in English history. But from his consecration he was supremely responsible for the fate and future of the English Church, and with the Church it was impossible to doubt that Henry II., like other kings before him since feudalism had sway, would come into open conflict. The contest came soon, and it was long and bitter. Its issues, however, can in our day be quickly dis- cerned and clearly summed up. The first occasion of contention between the two friends, king and archbishop, was a question of certain dues which Henry wished to have paid in a certain way which Thomas said would be unjust. 2 The friends quarrelled. Then came what seemed to be a question clear that the writer had practically first-hand evidence for the personal life of his hero. 1 Cf. Herbert of Bosham (Materials, iii. 180) with Bonttho, Liber ad amicum, in Jarfe", Monumenta Gregoriana, p. 657. 2 See Grim (Materials, ii. 374). A brief note on the" subject in 5. Thomas of Canterbury, W. H. Hutton, second edition, pp. 38-39 ; but cf. ]. H. Round, Feudal England, pp. 497-502. 248 THE ENGLISH SAINTS of religious principle. Henry declared that there were a number of clerical offenders who escaped with only light punishment strictly speaking, who, being clergy- men and claimed by the Church courts, could not lose life or limb as laymen did, though they could be imprisoned for life. The Constitutions of Clarendon, 1164, drawn up by the king's clerks, asserted this view 7 . Becket, and the clergy who were of his mind and the Pope was with them refused to assent to this claim. The question was simply this : Should the Church or the State have the final judgment of clergy who had broken the law ? Should they be summoned before the lay courts, there charged wdth the crime, then judged, if the bishop claimed them, in the Church court, and then sent back to the lay court to receive a civil punishment besides the ecclesiastical one which the Church court might have thought fit to inflict ? This was what Henry claimed. 1 1 This statement of Henry's claim is based on the article of Pro- fessor Maitland, English Historical Review, April 1892. which on the whole seems more fully to meet the difficulties of the question which the language of the chroniclers raises than the older ex- planations. Dr. Maitland reprinted the article in his (1898) Roman Canon Law in the Church of England, pp. 132-147. Becket and his friends unquestionably considered the constitutions to be in their main aspects new ; and this appears to have been the opinion of Henry's mother, Matilda, though she was " of the race of the tyrants" (see Materials, v. 145 sqq^}. Clause I, for example, was certainly new. It is always difficult to argue from custom. The king had done such and such things when he had power to do so : the " customs " of William Rufus went very far indeed. But custom, in the sense of law, did not cover the Constitutions of Clarendon. On the other hand Professor Collins (note, pp. 35-36) thinks that " The case, as it has been said, really goes by default. ' Henry did assert repeatedly and emphatically, with the concurrence of his THE STATESMEN SAINTS 249 Becket, on the other hand, declared that this would be giving two punishments for the same offence, con- trary to the elementary principles of justice. Not less strongly did he assert that the Church had the privilege of exclusively judging all clerical offenders. That was the question between them : the king on one side with many bishops and barons at his back ; Becket on the other with the great majority of the clergy and people of his mind. What is the meaning of it to us now ? Bossuet, two centuries ago, com- pressed its significance thus : " The discipline of the Church as well as her faith must have its martyrs." The claim was really that each separate estate of the realm should have its own laws, its own rights, its own judges, its own punishments. It was a claim that could not possibly be upheld in face of a united nation, a united state. But then, when law and custom and the routine of public business were but very slight checks on a strong, despotic, arbitrary king, the hope for barons and with the approval of many bishops, that he was but restoring the old customs. Becket and his friends, so far as we can see, would not meet this allegation. When one of the martyr's biographers reminds us that Christ said, not u I am the custom " but " I am the Truth," we cannot but infer that on the question of fact Henry was substantially in the right' (Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law, Cambridge, 1895, vol. i., p. 432). Becket and his friends, of course, met the king's statement with a de- murrer : they would keep the customs so far as they were not at variance with an (assumed) higher law : ' saving their order.' '' The argument seems to me to be hardly conclusive. Becket indubitably said that if a custom were wrong it ought not to be obeyed because it was a custom : but the argument of his friends throughout seems to imply that the " customs " were at least highly coloured by Richard de Lucy and Jocelin de Balliol. 250 THE ENGLISH SAINTS English liberty was thought by most Englishmen to lie in the assertion of the rights of each class as against the Crown. But there was more that won Becket support. There was a revolt of public feeling against the barbarous punishments that the Norman kings had brought in. There was a reverence, approaching super- stition, for Holy Orders, for the Sanctuary of the Church, for the rights that the Redeemer might have claimed for His servants on earth. Becket was in danger of his life. He had to fly to foreign lands, and he was a wanderer for six years. Henry damaged his position by cruelty, intrigue and malice. The Pope was in great political danger, and pitiably turned from one party to the other, only to meet the sarcasms of both. Gradually Becket's seclu- sion became like the court of an exiled king. His vehemence seemed only to win him more friends. Henry's firmness seemed only to lead him to perpetual blunders. The conscience of Europe, in some strange way, came clearly to the archbishop's side. At last Henry infringed on the ancient custom by having his young son crowned by the Archbishop of York ; and on that point Becket's constitutional position was unassailable. The Pope at the same time pro- nounced decidedly against the king. It was clear that he would be put out of communion. He yielded. The old friends met, and they seemed to be at peace again. Relying on Henry's safe- conduct, Becket went back to his diocese. The account of his home-coming, in the words of two of his friends, is among the most touching passages in the old histories. He landed on December i, 1170. THE STATESMEN SAINTS 251 " It became known at Canterbury," says Fitzstephen, 1 " that the archbishop had landed. Then all in the town rejoiced from the least to the greatest. They decked the Cathedral. They put on silks and costly array. They prepared a great banquet for many people. The archbishop was received in solemn pro- cession. The church resounded with hymns and music, the hall with rejoicing, the city everywhere with fulness of joy. He preached a most instructive sermon, taking for text, ' Here we have no continuing city, but we seek one to come.' ' Herbert of Bosham tells the tale more fully : " On the morrow the archbishop left the harbour where he had landed, which was distant about six miles from Canterbury. As he approached the city he was awaited by the poor of the land as a victim sent from heaven, yea even as the angel of God, with prayer and ovation. But why do I say with ovation ? Rather Christ's poor received him as the Lord's anointed. So, wherever the archbishop passed, crowds of poor, small and great, old and young, ran together, some throwing themselves in his way, others taking their garments and strawing them in the way, crying and exclaiming ' Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.' Likewise the priests with their parishioners, met him in procession with their crosses, saluting their father, and begging his blessing, reiterated that oft- repeated cry, ' Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.' But wherefore thus ? You would have said, had you seen, that the Lord a second time approached . 119. 2 Heb. xiii. 14. 252 THE ENGLISH SAINTS His Passion, and that among the children and the poor and the rejoicing people again He who died once at Jerusalem for the salvation of the whole world was now again ready to die at Canterbury for the English Church. And though the way was short yet among the thronging and pressing crowds scarce in that day could he reach Canterbury, where he was received with the sound of trumpets, with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs by the poor of Christ, His children, and by his holy monastery with the reverence and veneration due to their father. Then might you see at his first coming into the cathedral the face of this man, which many seeing marked and wondered at, for it seemed as though his heart aflame showed also in his face. . . . And the disciple who wrote these things when he observed these things, and observed with wonder, recalled to mind what is told of Moses. . . . Then the archbishop standing on his episcopal throne received to the kiss of peace each brother, one by one, wdth many sighs and tears from all. And as he stood there stood by him the disciple who wrote these things, and said ' My lord,- it matters not now when you depart hence, since to-day in you Christ's Bride has conquered ; yea, Christ conquers, Christ reigns, Christ rules.' And he looked upon him that said these things, yet said he nothing. " And when all things in the cathedral were solemnly ended, the archbishop went to his palace, thus having finished that joyful and solemn day." 1 This joy, so genuine an expression of the feelings of the English folk, was not long to last. The archbishop, 1 Materials, iii. 478. THE STATESMEN SAINTS 253 with strict legal justification, 1 refused, unless they " gave satisfaction," to absolve the bishops whom he had, with perhaps as much personal eagerness as zeal for Church discipline, excommunicated. They laid their complaints before the king. Roger of Pont 1'Eveque, archbishop of York, the lifelong foe of Becket, told Henry that he would never have peace as long as the primate was alive, 2 and according to one authority 3 even urged on the knights who set out, at Henry's hasty words of rage, to " avenge him on the low clerk." Supplied with money by Roger of York, and with words of his put into their mouths, they came to Canterbury. Becket was a man of undaunted courage, and he would not yield an inch when they ordered him to absolve the bishops and leave his diocese. The first, he said, he could not, the second he would not, do. He knew, and so did all the timid monks at his side, that his death was certain. The last scene must happen in his own cathedral church. The monks when he came to vespers would have bolted the doors, but he said, " It is not meet to make a fortress of the House of God. We came to suffer, not resist." We have the words of three at least who were present at the end. Thus wrote Edward Grim, the monk who himself tried to save the martyr : " Inspired by fury the knights called out, ' Where is Thomas Becket, traitor to the king and realm ?' As 1 See Constitutions of Clarendon, clause v., and compare the practice of Roman law as to " vadium ad remanens," Institutes, ed. Moyle, i. 670, and Poste's Gaius, lib. iv., sect. 185. 2 W. Fitzstephen (Materials, iii. 127). 3 Gamier de Pont S. Maxence, ed. Hippeau, pp. 174 sqq. 254 THE ENGLISH SAINTS he answered not, they cried out the more furiously, ' Where is the archbishop ?' At this, intrepid and fearless, as it is written, ' The just, like a bold lion, shall be without fear,' he descended from the stair where he had been dragged by the monks in fear of the knights, and in a clear voice answered, ' I am here, no traitor to the king, but a priest. Why do ye seek me ?' And whereas he had already said that he feared them not, he added, ' So I am ready to suffer in His name Who redeemed me by His Blood: be it far from me to flee from your swords, or to depart from justice.' Having thus said, he turned to the right, under a pillar, having on one side the altar of the blessed Mother of God and ever Virgin Mary, on the other that of S. Benedict the Confessor : by whose example and prayers, having crucified the world with its lusts, he bore all that the murderers could do with such constancy of soul as if he had been no longer in the flesh. The murderers followed him ; ' Absolve,' they cried, * and restore to communion those whom you have excommunicated, and restore their powers to those whom you have suspended.' He answered : ' There has been no satisfaction, and I will not absolve them.' ' Then you shall die,' they cried, ' and receive what you deserve.' ' I am ready,' he replied, * to die for my Lord, that in my blood the Church may obtain liberty and peace. But in the name of Almighty God, I forbid you to hurt my people whether clerk or lay.' . . . Then the unconquered martyr, seeing the hour at hand which should put an end to this miserable life and give him straightway the crown of immortality promised by the Lord, inclined his neck as one who prays, and joining THE STATESMEN SAINTS 255 his hands he lifted them up, and commended his cause and that of the Church to God, to S. Mary, and to the blessed martyr Denys. Scarce had he said the words than the wicked knight fearing lest he should be rescued by the people and escape alive, leapt upon him suddenly and wounded this lamb who was sacrificed to God on the head, cutting off the top of the crown which the sacred unction of the chrism had dedicated to God ; and by the same blow he wounded the arm of him who tells this. For he, when the others, both monks and clerks, fled, stuck close to the sainted arch- bishop and held him in his arms till the one he inter- posed was almost severed. . . . Then he received a second blow on the head, but still stood firm. At the third blow he fell on his knees and elbows, offering himself a living victim, and saying in a low voice, ' For the Name of Jesus and the protection of the Church I am ready to embrace death.' Then the third knight inflicted a terrible wound as he lay, by which the sword was broken against the pavement, and the crown, which was large, was separated from the head ; so that the blood white with the brain and the brain red with blood, dyed the surface of the virgin mother Church with the life and death of the confessor and martyr in the colours of the lily and the rose. The fourth knight prevented any from interfering so that the others might freely perpetrate the murder. As to the fifth, no knight, but that clerk who had entered with the knights, that a fifth blow might not be wanting to the martyr who was in other things like to Christ, put his foot on the neck of the holy priest and precious martyr, and, horrible to say, scattered his brains and blood over the pavement, 256 THE ENGLISH SAINTS calling out to the others, ' Let us away, knights ; he will rise no more.' " x It is impossible to doubt the feeling which speaks in those words. It was the feeling which made all Europe horror-stricken at the deed, which raised the shrine and gathered the miracles that made S. Thomas the most famous of English saints. Truly, on Englishman of the Middle Age made so profound an impression on his countrymen as did Thomas of Canterbury. " Second after the King in four realms" he was often styled, when he was at the zenith of his power : first among the saints after the Blessed Virgin he was held for nearly four centuries after his death. And the cause was more than sentiment or enthusiasm or the morbid interest of so tragic a death. The popular admiration which had followed the saint in his life, because he withstood to their faces, again and again, king and Pope and barons and bishops, clung to him after death because of the abiding national sense that he had been an heroic champion in a great national struggle. 2 It was not the attraction of a 1 Materials, ii. 431 sqq. 2 And here may be noted the great merit of Miss Norgate's narrative in the Dictionary of National Biography. Here and there her research has revealed a new fact, or supplied a new inference, for the history of Becket. But most of all the value of her work lies in the fact that, though hampered by the stem editorial restriction as to style (this was described by the Master of the Temple at a gathering of the contributors as " no flowers, by request"), and confined to the jejune allotment of space which the garrulousness of some of the earlier contributors has rendered necessary for the later volumes, she has with masterly precision and lucidity made the tale speak for itself and show the martyr for the hero that he was. THE STATESMEN SAINTS 257 peculiarly Roman type of sanctity, or the character of a devoted son of the Papacy that made Becket famous. It was the thoroughly English determination of his life, the steadfast appeal for justice against despotism. It was the struggle of a statesman who saw the danger of all power being absorbed by the centralized state. It was the struggle of the priest who knew that while the statesman's work was noble, there was a higher claim in the Church and the souls of men. Becket never ceased to be a statesman ; but in his later years he became inspired, before all things, with the passion of the priest. A spiritual society, a body which asserts for itself the care of man's spiritual nature, must have spiritual rules laws for its own members. If these conflict with other rules, then the members of the spiritual society must be ready to suffer for the faith they believe and the rules they obey. For the Church, like every other society, though nowadays we seem in danger of forgetting it, has rights rights which those who believe in Jesus Christ and His Commission must be prepared to defend and, if need be, to die for. S. Thomas said again and again that he would do such or such an act " saving his order." It is a proviso that must be always necessary. Priests can only act in the ordinary affairs of life with the understanding that they must be loyal before all things to the law to which they are bound. Lay folk similarly must do their work in the world in the light of the revelation that they are citizens also of a Heavenly City, whose rules above all things they must obey. This is the supreme lesson of the life of the great English saint. This it is which is unfolded in page 17 258 THE ENGLISH SAINTS after page of that remarkable series of letters which was copied and handed about all through the middle ages, a collection than which there is none other so full and so intimate in medieval history save, perhaps, that of S. Bernard. This it is which made natural the promptness with which Henry VIII., when he had em- barked on a campaign against individual liberty, recog- nized the bygone saint as a deadly foe. In August, 1538, fourteen years after Erasmus had seen the wonders of the shrine, Thomas Cromwell directed its destruction. The bones, which had rested in an iron chest since the translation by Stephen Langton in 1220, were " then and there brent." 1 It was a fit expression of the triumph of the Tudor despotism. 1 The fate of the bones has been the subject of a keen contro- versy which can hardly be said yet to be ended. I believe that an opinion is still held at Canterbury that the bones found in 1888 were those of S. Thomas. But to my mind the evidence of Stowe (Annals, Sept. 1538) and of the Consistorial Acts (cf. Annales Eccles. cent. Baronii, torn, xiii., 494) is sufficient ; cf. Letters, etc., Henry VIII.) vol. xiii., pt. 2, p. 49. And Miss Norgate takes this view. The comment of Archbishop Benson on the unholy diggings which have delighted the chapter of Canterbury (as those also of Winchester and Durham) is not to be forgotten. " Last Saturday my Dean and Chapter made a conspiracy and broke burglariously into a tomb and sacrilegiously plundered it. They had before their scholarly eyes the determination of so important a question as whether Stephen Langton or Hubert Walter or nobody was buried in it. And having found the most beautiful things which have yet been found in a tomb, they know no more than they did, and have put the things in their museum. To his sons and brothers in the most sacred part of the Church the Archbishop commended himself for ever and had laid with him the loveliest symbols of his earthly work. They, breaking all honour, reverence and grace, plunder him. They wonder people are bent on breaking up cathedrals, and think little of their worship. The people see little of the Spirit 'they are of.'" Life of Abp. Benson, ii. 301-2 (March 14, 1890). THE STATESMEN SAINTS 259 It was as a gallant fight for liberty that Englishmen cherished the memory of Becket's career. And beyond all the causes of his fame that we can coldly estimate is the unquestionable heroism and picturesqueness of his life. It is a tale of passion, determination, courage to the death, that stirs the blood as we read it now ; and there are few scenes in English history so rich in tragic fascination as that of the twilight hour in Canter- bury Cathedral when the tall strong priest gave himself to death for what he believed to be the call of duty and the voice of God. Of the influence of this life and death there can be no doubt. It is implied in the popularity of the cult which centred round S. Thomas's tomb. He was a bold de- termined man who put his conception of duty before everything else. And that was a characteristic which the veneration of his name tended to stamp with im- pressive force on the character of the English people. In this lies the essence of the contrast between S. Anselm and S. Thomas. Anselm, so far as we can judge, won no wide popularity. 1 Only a few monks remembered him, and an enthusiastic friend preserved his fame. Only those who thought deeply over the questions in debate, or who could see the ultimate issues of the strife, saw that there was deep significance in the struggle in which Anselm was the victor. Anselm himself seemed to ordinary folk to be merely a good man contending about trifles with the foolish pertinacity of good men. His books, theological and philosophical, 1 Cf. the excellent summary of S. Anselm's career and of the contrast between his character and the common English ideal in J. M. Rigg, S. Anselm of Canterbury, pp. 263-4. 172 260 THE ENGLISH SAINTS were known to few ; his character was one, men would say, of mere goodness, and mere goodness has never appealed to the world at large. He had no followers and no imitators. He passed to his rest, and was for- gotten for centuries. The fame of Thomas was very different. If scholars doubted 1 and ecclesiastical statesmen considered his action folly, 2 the English people, and the judgment of foreign nations, accepted him from the first as a hero and a saint. Men saw clearly what he was fighting for. If it was the cause of the Church, it appeared also to be the cause of the poor, of widows and orphans. 3 The dragging of clerks before secular tribunals, the hearing of cases in which the cure of souls was in- volved, the abandoning of Church protection over the helpless, these were visible tangible wrongs which appealed to plain men. Becket's death was felt by all Europe to be a martyrdom. While men forgot Anselm, miracles and romance gathered round the name of S. Thomas. To the present day tales of him linger in many parts of England : 4 and a romantic story of his 1 William of Newburgh, Chron., etc. (Rolls Series) i. 140-1 : Herbert of Bosham, Materials^ iii. 273. 2 Gamier de Pont. S. Maxence, ed. Hippeau, p. 61. 3 See Freeman, Historical Essays, ist series, p. 108-9. It is quite certain that it was not thought that he was fighting to secure immunity for clerical offenders. There can have been no such number of criminous clerks as has been asserted, or public opinion would certainly not have been on Becket's side. 4 " Thomas Becket must have been a favourite in this neighbour- hood (Warminster). For several churches have traces of him Mere, e.g.^ with an altar, and probably a window ; Heytesbury, where his 'episcopal slipper' (crepida) was in 1220 one of the relics ; Norton Bavant, inscription on a bell. THE STATESMEN SAINTS 261 birth was among the favourite legends of the later middle age. 1 But his fame was so different from that of many medieval saints because it was immediate. There was never a time when it was forgotten or revived. " But at Longbridge Deverill there are still oral traditions repeated about him. It has always been affirmed in the place that he consecrated the church, and that there was truth in this seemed likely, because there is another tradition, still repeated, that he visited the village ' Revel ' (this I will give below). But the diffi- culty, at first sight, was this. The church is spoken of, in Registrum Osmundi, as 'ecclesia beati Petri,' about 1130-1135, that is, quite 30 years or more before its supposed dedication. "But the Registrum also proves that names of churches were not infrequently given before dedication ; so that there is no reason for doubting the tradition, which has been handed down locally and orally only, and which, so far as I am aware, comes from no source printed or published. "The second tradition, still repeated by old folk, is, that Thomas Becket ' went to the Revel dressed like a gentleman, and left it like a beggar dressed in rags.' ' He came through Southleigh wood ' [ local detail quite conceivable]. ' Why did he go away like a beggar ?' ' Oh, I suppose because he had spent all his money there, and couldn't go back fine.' " Now that is noticeable for another reason. This 'revel' is a 'changed feast,' t.e., instead of being held on S. Peter's Day, it is held on the first Sunday after the Translation of the Relics of S. Thomas (the day of the Translation is July 7). After his body was translated in 1220, the original feast was changed to July 7th, exactly as was done at Wymondham, Norfolk ; and his spiritual presence was held still to visit and cheer the social gathering." [Note from my colleague Mr. J. U. Powell.] The story of the change of clothes is probably a growth from that told by Fitzstephen. 1 The story that his mother was a Saracen who followed his father, a Crusader, home, knowing only the two words London and Becket, appears in the Quadrilogus and is told in the Nova Legenda Anglice without any hint of romance but clumsily dove- tailed into the authentic history. 262 THE ENGLISH SAINTS From the day when as archbishop he first stood to defend the rights of the Church it may be said that he was a hero of the English people. And from that day the legends began to spring up around him. The miracles of his tomb were foreshadowed by the miracles that men made, while he was still living, of the adven- tures of his boyhood. He had fallen into a mill-stream, and happily the miller stopped the wheel just in time to save him i 1 before long men told that the wheel stopped of itself. And so the canonization was easy. It was the spontaneous tribute of a whole people, which the very Pope who had played fast and loose with him while he lived was bound to recognize. All the pre- liminaries were hurried over : the testimonies were so sure, the martyrdom was so unquestionable, and little more than two years after his murder Alexander III. commanded the Chapter of Canterbury to pray " that his pious intercession for the whole body of the faithful, and for the peace of the Universal Church, may be offered up unto the Lord." 2 With Anselm it was very different. He passed to his rest with more love than honour. S. Thomas him- self at the Council of Tours, 1162, begged for his 1 So Gamier, p. 9 : De la juste la plaunche ont un mulin mulaunt, De grant ravine ala : Tomes i vin flotaunt, Quant il dut en la roue chair, le chef avaunt, Li muners ont mulu, mit Pescloture a taunt, Si guarist Deus de mort, a cele feiz, 1'enfaunt. 2 Materials, vii. 545. Mr. Freeman, Contemporary Review, 1878, p. 237, well wrote : " No wonder if Pope Alexander, calm, crafty, politic, with his own objects to gain, felt the living saint an encum- brance, till he was, so happily for all Alexander's objects, changed into the dead martyr." THE STATESMEN SAINTS 263 canonization in vain. John of Salisbury made investi- gation as to the miracles claimed for him, and Alex- ander III. went so far as to commit the inquiry to S. Thomas and the suffragans of his province, and to promise to ratify its findings. 1 The troubles of the times prevented any action. Meanwhile his cultus spread to Italy and France : the ancient necrology of the priory of S. Andrew at Turin records his death : and at Aosta his festival took rank among the greatest of those celebrated in the Cathedral Church. But the canonization was long in progress. In August, 1452, Nicholas Upton and Simon Huchyns, the agents of the Chapter of Salisbury, engaged in endeavouring to pro- cure the canonization of S. Osmund, wrote from Rome to the Bishop of Salisbury that the Archbishop of Tarantum, whose aid it was important to secure, had taken on him " the business of promoting and procuring the canonization of blessed Anselm, for which he had already received two hundred marks." 2 But it was not until I494 3 that Alexander VI. at the instance of Henry VII. gave a bull to Morton, Archbishop of 1 See Job. Sar. Vila S. Ans. (Anglta Sacra, ii. 173, 175, 181, 183). The letter of Alexander III. on the canonization is in Materials, v. 35. 2 Letter printed in Maiden, Canonisation of Saint Osmund, Salisbury, 1901, pp. 105-108. The cost of canonization was con- siderable. Everything at Rome was expensive, notably the interest of cardinals. The Dean and Chapter of Salisbury expended what would amount to ,10,000 nowadays on the canonization of S. Os- mund (formally completed January i, 1457), not to mention the money expended for the purpose in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in vain. 3 The actual date is not given in the Acta SS. or in Sarum or Roman Breviary. The festival is April 21, the translation July 3. 264 THE ENGLISH SAINTS Canterbury, to authorize the cult. In 1720 Clement XI. gave to the saint the title of doctor of the church, with proper office and mass to be said on April 21. Even the completion of his canonization seems to have aroused little interest. At the Reformation he was neglected in the special attention paid to the relics of S. Thomas. 1 And in the eighteenth century when the King of Sardinia desired to translate his bones to Aosta they could not be discovered. 2 So different was Anselm's fate from that of Thomas. 1 See Stowe, Annals, Sep. 1538: Hutton, S. Thomas of Canter- bury^ pp. 268-9. 2 It was not mere Protestantism but genuine ignorance which made Archbishop Herring write as he did, an ignorance which seems to have been shared by all concerned in the inquiry. See Hist. MSS. Commission. Report on MSS. in various collections, 1901, vol. i., pp. 226-231. The following letter speaks for itself as to the neglect of the great memory of S. Anselm : "Archbishop Herring to the Dean of Ca?iterbury. Dear Mr. Dean. I had a Request communicated to me to Day of a very singular Nature : and it comes from the Ambassador of a great Catholic Prince. Arch Bishop Anselm, it seems, lies buried in our Cathedral and the King of Sardinia has a great Desire to be possess'd of his Bones, or Dust & Coffin. It seems he was of the Country of Oost, the Bishop of which has put this Desire into the King's Head, who, by the by, is a most prodigious Bigot, and in a late Dispute with Geneva gave up Territory to redeem an old Church. You will please to consider this Request with your Friends but not yet capitularly. You will believe I have no great Scruples on this Head, but if I had I would get rid of them all if the parting with the rotten Remains of a Rebel to his King, a Slave to the Popedom an Enemy to the married Clergy (all this Anselm was) would purchase Ease and Indulgence to one living Protestant. It is believed, that a Condescension in this Business may facilitate the way of doing it to thousands. I think it is worth the Experiment, & really for this End, I should make no Conscience of palming on the Simpletons any other old Bishop with the Name of Anselm. THE STATESMEN SAINTS 265 It is not far from the greatest tribute to the memory of S. Thomas Becket that Stephen Langton was proud to rank him among the fathers of English liberty. It was he who carried out the ceremony of his transla- tion, 1 and the eulogy which he delivered was no doubt designed as a political warning to the young Henry III. 2 As the troubles gathered round the King and his foreign favourites S. Thomas appeared to the Londoners to be their guardian and support. 3 In his last days the exiled S. Edmund poured forth unceasing prayer to God, beseeching his intercession for the state of the Church of England that was in peril. 4 When Matthew Paris sought to make of Stephen Langton a national saint, the true representative of the kingdom, it was on the model of S. Thomas that he based his biography. 5 He felt that the two archbishops alike resented, as he him- self did, the intervention of the foreigner, and, not least, the encroaching power of Rome over the national life. Thus at every point he represented his hero as being hated "of old" by the Pope, and as opposing the I pray God send you and yours many happy new Years. . . . your affectionate Friend [T. Cant.] Lambeth House Dec r . 23, 1752." But the chapel of the translation was never forgotten, and M. Croset-Mouchet in his Anselme, p. 476, is good enough to note that it was " consent avec un respect reTigieux a travers les tenebres et les injustices du protestantisme." 1 For the translation see Thomas Saga, \\. 196, 202 ; cf. ii. 210. 2 The sermon is printed by Migne, Patrol. Lat., vol. cxc., p. 408. 3 See Matthew Paris (Rolls Series), vol. iv., pp. 93-95. 4 Ibid., iv. 72. 6 This is printed by Liebermann, Ungedruckte . . . Geschichts- quellen, Strasburg, 1879, pp. 323-329, and reprinted in Man. Hist. Germ, Script., 1888, pp. 441-3. 266 THE ENGLISH SAINTS tribute to Rome. But though it is clear that he had no desire to provoke the curia, it cannot have been the object of Matthew to carry through a formal canoniza- tion at Rome by means of this Life. He rather wanted to make a popular saint of this " true representative of the kingdom of England." 1 Inexact in details, he yet makes no mistake in his general conception of Lang- tori's importance. The Archbishop was to the historian of the thirteenth century the link between S. Thomas and the political heroes of the Church in the days of Henry III. And of these the chief were Grosseteste, S. Edmund, and S. Richard. In the thirteenth century two other English prelates who were brought into contact with grave political crises are ranked among the saints, Edmund of Abingdon, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Richard of Chichester. There could be no greater contrast to S. Thomas than S. Edmund. Mild and gentle, severe, if at all, hardly at the right times, he was utterly unable to with- stand or amend the laxity, the intrigues, and the weak abnegation of duty, which marked the men of his time. Pious and simple, a spiritual writer of subtlety and charm, he was fitted rather for a cloister than for the throne of Augustine. He stood for a moment against the tide, and was swept away. The extraordinary austerity of his life, the contagious affection of his intimate friends, with its result in many miracles, led to his canonization within seven years from his death. But all that could be said for him as a public man was that his advice, though it was not listened to, was 1 " Fidelis regni Anglie advocatus," i, p. 324. THE STATESMEN SAINTS 267 worthy of a Christian bishop. He did not see into the future or estimate aright the political forces that were at work. 1 Close to him in his troubles was Richard de Wyche, scholar and canonist, who was his friend of many years 2 and had been his Chancellor at Canterbury. S. Richard might seem but a pale reflection of S. Ed- mund, for men told how he would always quote his " lord " for every act and tell of his manner and voice and preaching. And his biographer calls them "duo Cherubim gloriae Domini." Elected Bishop of Chichester in 1244, he was regarded as so strong a supporter of the dead archbishop that the King did his utmost to prevent his receiving the see. He won by appeal to Innocent IV. by whom he was consecrated. He made a good bishop, strict in discipline, abounding 1 The admirable life by Dr. Wilfrid Wallace, a thorough investi- gation, uncritical only when questions of medieval belief are con- cerned, contains an excellent list of authorities and describes the Saint's character with due reverence. It draws the age perhaps too darkly. It is emphatic in dwelling on the Saint's wonderful austerities. The life in the Nova Legenda, i. 316-324, is a com- pilation chiefly from the life by his chaplain Bertrand. An excellent English collection of extracts is S. Edmund, by B. Ware, 1903. 2 For S. Richard of Chichester, see Nova Legenda ii., 328 sqq., Bollandist Acta SS., April i. 277 sqq. The life by Ralph Bocking, his chaplain, written at the time of the canonization, in 1262, is the basis of each, Capgrave abridging it with some alterations, the Bollandists printing both Ralph's and Capgrave's lives. There are several references to him in Matthew Paris. A sketch is given by Dr. W. Wallace in his Life of S. Edmund, pp. 196 sqq. Oxford men will not forget the graceful sonnet in which the President of Magdalen in 1892 linked the names of the two Richards of Chichester, both scholars of Oxford. 268 THE ENGLISH SAINTS in charity, and like Grosseteste an eager supporter of the mendicant friars. So he " Ruling Cicestria's ' realm ' with gentle sway Sent light and peace out o'er our troubled isle "- a very picture of quietude and holy work in days of strife. And yet he was not afraid to speak out boldly, with Grosseteste and others, against papal taxation, refusing it as evil " lest the King and we ourselves incur the heavy wrath of God." 1 But far more his heart was in the Crusade, 2 and with the memory of his friend. His last act was to consecrate a church and a cemetery to the memory of S. Edmund. The life of S. Richard, and the miracles told of him after his death, afford evidence of the work that the Church was doing for the growth of the simplest virtues. He was loved, and he was canonized, because he lived a peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. His was a quiet memory in days of strife. 3 But the claim to saintship in that time of struggle was asserted by the people not only for clerks who had fought as true statesmen but for politicians also. And here the result was less happy, for the feeling expressed was less genuine. Perhaps the strangest of all attempts at political saint-making is that which endeavoured to represent King Henry the younger, Henry II.'s undutiful and 1 Matthew Paris, Hist. Maj. (Rolls Series), vol. v., p. 326. 2 He collected the alms in 1250 and preached it in Southern England. 3 For his translation and canonization see State Papers : Papal Letters, i. 332, 376, 377. Adam of Marsh was one of the commis- sion of investigation. THE STATESMEN SAINTS 269 rebellious son, as a worker of miracles. 1 It completely failed, as it deserved to do. But the Barons' War as a vindication of English liberty a very imperfect one was not to pass by without an attempt to make a saint from among the political leaders. Earl Simon de Montfort, the chief of the oligarchic party, was elevated 1 Ralph of Coggeshall, Chronicon Anglicanum (Rolls Series). At p. 263, Magistri Thomae Agnelli Wellensis Archdiaconi, Sermo de morte et sepultura Henrici regis junioris : "^gritudinis denique invalescente molestia sanctorum occur- rentium vallatus patrocinio, iii idus Junii felici consummatione diem clausit extremum, et terrenis exuviis depositis migravit ad Dominum. Huic ergo non debet martyrii gloria denegari, qui tantarum persecutionum violentia vitam finivit vice gladii." I Here follows the account of two miracles performed by his relics, then] " Placuit etiam Altissimo, qui in sanctis suis semper est et utique mirabilis, ut locum in quo vir sanctus migravit a sasculo signis virtutum primitiaret, et beati viri miraculi testimonio consignaret ; et qui extra portam suscitare dignatus est viduae filium, extra portam confessori suo signorum indiciis praestitit sanctitatis testimonium." [Here follows the account of a leper healed by coming in contact with the bier.] " Ad perpetuandam itaque tarn admirabilem virtutis memoriam, in eodem loco ad laudem Dei et gloriam beati viri pia fidelium devotione constructa est ecclesia, ubi ad honorem ejus qui locum ilium signorum indicio consecravit, martyris continua agitur me- moria." And, p. 271 : " Quodque maximum est potest sanctitatis Eius indicium, corpus sanctum, cum amplius quam xl diebus post beati viri excessum, nunc terra? depositum [at Rouen] nunc ardori- bus solis esset expositum, nihil sub tanti mora et aestivi fervoris inclementia contraxerat quod spiraret horroris, nihil quod astantium posset nares offendere evaporabat foeti odoris." The sermon was probably a bid for the favour of Queen Eleanor, after Henry II.'s death, for see p. 272 : " Nee silentio praetereundum censeo illud quod in Anglorum partibus illuxit virtutis insigne quo divinae pietati complacuit et reginam beati viri matrem divinitus consolari, et ipsius meritum et gloriam magnifice declarari." 270 THE ENGLISH SAINTS by some among the monks into a martyr. 1 The Chronicler of Melrose, safe from direct attack, and perhaps nourishing a nationalist animosity against King Edward, elaborated a comparison between Simon the righteous and Simon Peter, the prince of the apostles, in prayer and watching, in fasting and frugality. And not content with that he was compared also to S. Thomas of Canterbury. Even in his lifetime he was set forth as a pattern. " You might have heard," says the Chronicle of Mel- rose, 2 " grave and religious men, of different orders, saying everywhere throughout England (of whom some came into Scotland and said the same) that after Simon was dead they would quite as willingly visit his tomb for the purpose of their praying to God, as they would go to Jerusalem for the same purpose. This was in consequence of the austerity of his life, as demonstrated by the hair-cloth which he wore ; for those who were the chamber fellows with him had mentioned to some of their most intimate friends that Simon used a shirt of hair ; for there is nothing hidden which shall not be revealed. Another reason was that he had taken in hand the most righteous cause of defending the in- habitants of England. There were others who said that if at the time when they were speaking Simon had fallen for the sake of right (as he afterwards did) they would quite as readily have gone to his sepulchre there to pray to God, as to the great shrine of S. Thomas the martyr, in which he reposes at Canterbury, en- 1 "Quid ergo? Suspiria mutantur in laudis praeconia, et revixit pristinae laetitioe magnitude." Rishanger, Chronicon, p. 49. 2 Ed. Stevenson (Bannatyne Club), pp. 207 sqq. THE STATESMEN SAINTS 271 dowed by God with many miracles 1 and adorned with precious stones. The remark which they made in their conversation with each other was not devoid of sound reason, for no less did Simon die for the lawful right of the just possessions of England than Thomas for the lawful right of the churches of England. Each of them had died in his own day, clothed in the penance of hair-cloth, a penance which sooner than any other leads a man to God, that so they might put on incorruption through means of the penance thus voluntarily assumed by God's inspiration. " After the precious death of this Simon the Friars Minor, 2 whom he had always loved as became a religious man, and who also were acquainted with the inmost thoughts of his heart in many things, taking matter of a speech from his life, published a history out of his good deeds, consisting of lessons, responses, verses, hymns, and other matter appertain- ing to the honour and respect due to a martyr ; but as long as Edward survives this compilation does not attain that acceptance by being chanted within the church of God, which was hoped for." 1 Cf. Ban of Kenilworth, c. 8 (Stubbs's Select Charters}. "We humbly ask both the lord legate and the lord king that the lord legate himself forthwith forbid, under ecclesiastical distraint, that Simon, Earl of Leicester, be held by anyone as a saint or righteous person, since he died under excommunication, as holy Church holdeth that the vain and foolish miracles told by some of him be uttered by no lip hereafter, and that the lord king strictly forbid the same under pain of corporal punishment." Cf. also the elaborate list of miracles in the Miracula Simonis (ed. Haliwell, Camden Society) with the poem there addressed to Simon, Salve comes montis fortis. 2 See also Carmen de Bello Leiuensi (ed. Kingsford, 1890), doubt- less the work of a Franciscan. 272 THE ENGLISH SAINTS So the chronicler writes, and three hymns, part of the office, still remain. 1 A resemblance between them and the famous partizan " Song of Lewes fight " suggests that it was the ardent Franciscan politician who wrote the song who compiled also the office. 2 In the song, which celebrated Simon's victory over Henry III., the Earl is declared to be the deliverer of the Church, and the avenger of her wrongs, 3 and the theory that the king is responsible for his acts and ought to be cor- rected if he does wrong is clearly enunciated. 4 The writer of the poem and the office, and indeed the whole Franciscan order in England, well knew that there was no more powerful way to influence the people than by attributing to their hero the glory of sainthood. If a veneration could spring up over Eng- land in his memory, Simon's principles would never be forgotten. If men tried to make a saint of Simon de Montfort it needed no stretch of imaginative enthusiasm to speak of Grosseteste as Saint Robert. Royalists and oligarchs alike hailed him among those whom God had especially blessed 5 : pilgrimages were made to his tomb 6 and miracles were wrought. 7 Strong efforts were made for his canonization espe- See Mr. Prothero's Life of Simon de Montfort, pp. 388-391. 2 As Mr. Kingsford ingeniously argues in the introduction to his valuable edition of the Carmen de Bella Lewensi, pp. xxi-xxiv. 3 Carmen de bello Lewensi, 11. 23-55. 4 Ibid., 11. 730-740. 5 See Thomas of Wykes, Ann. Monast., iv. 103 : Adam of Marsh, Mon. Francisc., 325. 6 Burton Annals, 344. 7 Matt. Paris, Hist. Maj., v. 491. Rishanger, Chron., p. 71. THE STATESMEN SAINTS 273 cially in 1286, 1288, and 1307. Edward I. himself joined in urging upon the papacy the claims of one whom the clergy and the people revered and who had never feared king or Pope or people. But the attempts failed. As in other cases, the reason of the failure is unknown, but it may be conjectured to be due to three causes. The monks, for all their protesting, can hardly have been very eager for the beatification of one who was so decidedly " malleus monachorum." 1 The Popes could have as little sympathy with one who withstood them to the face. And before Wyclif had long in- fluenced English feeling men traced a sympathy be- tween his views and those of the great bishop of Lincoln. 2 And also the expenses were considerable. 3 But surely of all Englishmen who mixed the colours of their politics with religion Grosseteste most de- served to be remembered by his nation. He honoured the king but he feared God more : he was a scholar, a teacher of statesmen, a wise and understanding 1 Observe the famous comments of Matthew Paris upon his visitations. ' 2 See Wyclif, English Works, iii. 467, who comments on the failure to secure his canonization. The English vernacular books of prayer were believed to be associated with his influence. The Rev. Edgar Hoskins writes to me (May 25, 1901). "Brit. Mus. Add. 17376. (Psalter in English with Hours of the Virgin in English Stanzas) Cent. xiv. has Fol. I98 b . Hymn to B.V.M. ' Mary maid mild and free ' and at the end fol. 2o5 b . " ' Oretis pro anima Domini Roberti Grosseteyte quondam Episcopi Lincolniensis.' "'Oretis' is to my mind significant." 3 Cf. Stevenson, Robert Grosseteste, p. 328, and see Canonization of S. Osmund, pp. 105-108. 18 274 THE ENGLISH SAINTS student of his times. Well might later ages remember him as " a perfect godly man." 1 Stranger than the veneration of Simon de Montfort was that of a less reputable political leader. Thomas Earl of Lancaster, 2 whom Edward II. put to death as a rebel in 1322, was said within a year to work miracles at Pontefract, where his body was buried near the high altar : and more obscure persons of his party were suspected of following suit ; 3 and in 1327 the Commons actually petitioned for his canonization. 4 It was an expression of the popular sentiment for the House of Lancaster and its traditional policy of popular control. Saintship had come to be regarded as the fit recognition of an honest political creed. If the policy was right the man responsible for it was a saint. So again, in 1469, when Robin of Redesdale was trying to see if there was chance of a Lancastrian restoration, the relics of the Earl Thomas began to sweat blood and work miracles. 5 To this had hagiology come : and yet though the object of veneration had been disreputable the political sentiment was not discreditable. Men thought the Lancastrian policy was right : and if it was right, certainly God hallowed it. Another political execution which it was attempted 1 Dray ton Polyolbion, xix. 2 In the Anecdota ex codicibus hagiographicis J. Gielemans (1895) is printed a sanctilogium from a MS. in the private library of the Emperor of Austria which, pp. 80-100, gives his Life, Mar- tyrdom and miracles. 3 Rymer's F&dera, ii. 526, 536, 547 : see Stubbs, Const. Hist., ii. 354- 4 See Stubbs, ii. 369. Walsingham, ii. 195. 6 Chron. Abbrev. (Camb. Antiq. Soc.), p. 10; see Stubbs, iii. 285. THE STATESMEN SAINTS 275 to turn into a martyrdom was that of Archbishop Scrope (1405) for treason against Henry IV. At his hasty trial he declared that he had intended no harm against the king 1 : but he had in his proclamation of grievances described him as a cruel beast, 2 a murderer and excom- municate. At such a time of danger a king insecure on his throne could not afford to be scrupulous. Scrope died as a traitor. He was buried, with scant ceremony though with loving care, in the Minster 3 ; and it was not long before men began to speak of the alleged miracles. Relics were collected, people began to call him " blessed " and saint, his prayers were asked, and, nearly sixty years later, the Convocation of York sought " the holy work of the canonization of Richard Scrope of blessed and pious memory." 4 There is still a window in the Minster with a portrait of the Arch- bishop and his nephew and the words " O Ricarde pastor bone, tui famuli miserere Stephani " 5 : and up to the pillage of Henry VIII. his tomb was decorated with many precious models of things recovered or healed by his aid. But no one was audacious enough actually to apply to Rome for the canonization. Like Henry VI. he could be a saint only to those who loved his memory. 6 So, as the Middle Age draws to its close, we may end our sketches of statesmen saints. There are many 1 Miscellanea relating to Abp. Scrope in Histor. of York, ii. 307. 2 Ibid., pp. 298, 300, 301. 3 See the notes in Wylie's Henry IV. ii., 343. 4 Browne History of S. Peter's, York, p. 245. r> Wylie, ii. 356. 6 Mr. Wylie, ii. 364-367, strangely compares his case with that of Dorothy of Pomesania. 18 2 276 THE ENGLISH SAINTS later names whom we should delight to honour. Few of us, strongly though we repudiate the Romanist dogma of Papal supremacy, would cavil at the decree 1 which gives the name of blessed to the gentle bishop and the wise chancellor whom the savage passion of Henry VIII. hurried to the block. Few, as the mists roll away, would scruple to remember with reverence the name of one of Oxford's greatest benefactors, 2 who died on the scaffold with the happy text on his lips " Cupio dissolvi et esse cum Christo." But with such men we reach an age of other ideals, more complex, more disputable, perhaps as yet less well understood. We pause on the threshold : but as we look back we can see that the strength of English political life has been found. The endeavour to rank men of inferior and selfish aims among the heroes of English liberty failed : but Englishmen cherished the memories of those in whom they saw the virtues they most valued and most strenuously endeavoured to imi- tate, of S. Dunstan and S. Anselm and S. Thomas, of men who had set God always before their face, who were honest, unselfish, loyal and true. Strength, subtlety, gentleness, were each transfigured by the grace of Christ. The earthly statecraft was brought into obedience to the heavenly citizenship, without which it would be but a maimed distorted thing. 1 Leo XIII. on Dec. 9, 1886, approved the beatification of John Fisher and Thomas More (with a number of others whose claims it is permissible to doubt). 2 " I greatly rejoice " wrote Mr. Gladstone to me on January 6, 1895, "i n the important historical rectification which has now advanced so far as to be, I trust, beyond all likelihood of reversal." APPENDIX TO LECTURE VI ENGLISH MEDIEVAL MIRACLES IT is not proposed in this note to give an exhaustive rationale of medieval miracles. This would be beyond the power or knowledge of the writer. It is intended rather to mention some cases which may be regarded as typical and to suggest a rough classification based upon a somewhat wider survey. In the first place it may be observed that miracles do not make a saint. Nothing could be farther from the truth than the statement of Mr. J. W. Willis Bund, The Celtic Church of Wales, p. 457, in regard to " the Latin saint " (why Latin and not Teutonic also ?) : " His whole claim to sanctity rested, not on who he was, but on what he could do, and it was therefore necessary that miracles should always be going on at his tomb so as to keep him well in evidence." Far more true was the view of Sir Thomas Duffus Hardy (Descriptive Catalogue of Materials relating to the History of Great Britain and Ireland, Rolls Series, vol. i., part i., 1862, Preface, p. xix), whose authority is not to be disputed. Of miracles he says : " They would be important were it only to show how man, in the Middle Ages, never made the attempt to blend into harmony the seen and the unseen ; how ready he was to attribute the action of the outer world to a spiritual agency, whose efficacy he recog- nized in himself and in his own power of rising above nature. These miracles were the growth of a superstitious age, I admit ; but it does not follow that the age was truthless because it was superstitious ; nor is it in conformity with all our knowledge of its poverty of invention to assert that these narratives were studiously invented to impose upon [277] 278 THE ENGLISH SAINTS the unwary. We look for natural causes to explain all effects, however marvellous. They looked for the super- natural to explain even the most simple, and felt it impious to do otherwise. It is, moreover, hard to tell how far these legends are to be regarded as a poetical or allegorical version of actual experience ; the external and material present- ment, in a rude age, of a spiritual reality." The spiritual reality behind them gave them their force. The life of the saint made them real to men : certainly they did not make the saint. Miracles at the tomb, or through the intervention of the saint, came to be the almost indispensable necessities for canonization. Great as were S. Osmund's services to liturgiology, and to the " dignity and comfort " of the Chapter of Salisbury, he would never have been canonized were it not for the fifty-two miracles attested by seventy- five witnesses, which were furbished up in 1424 from the records of the cathedral church and from the personal experience of the chapter. 1 But miracles were not in themselves ever regarded as sufficient evidence of sanctity. Thus, though it is true that when canonization came to be a process formally conducted at Rome, miracles were a necessary proof of sanctity (in most cases two are enough, says Ferrari, " Etiamsi sint solum tertii generis " : the whole question is treated at very great length by Bene- dict XIV.), Benedict XIV. explicitly asserts that without holiness of life, miracles and visions are of no value what- ever (see above, p. 20, and cf. De Beat, et Can. 55., vol. vii., pp. 73, 74). And this was the view even of those who were most familiar with them. Even in the Middle Ages, at which we so readily mock, there was not always an exaggerated belief in the value of " miracles." " Let others," says Turgot, " admire the tokens of miracles which they see in others, I, for my part, admire much more the works of mercy which I saw in 1 See Maiden, Canonization of S. Osmund, Wilts Records Society, 1902, printing documents in full. APPENDIX TO LECTURE VI 279 Margaret. Miracles are common in the evil and the good, but works of true piety and charity belong to the good alone. The former sometimes indicate holiness, but the latter are holiness itself. Let us, I say, admire in Margaret the things which made her a saint, rather than the miracles, if she did any, which might only have indicated that she was one to men " (Turgot, Life of S. Margaret, cap, in.). The same was the feeling of S. Hugh of Lincoln. When he was told of a miracle in the Eucharist, he refused to witness it" In the name of the Lord," he said, "let them keep to themselves the signs of their want of faith " (Magna Vita, v. 4). This was the spirit in which Gregory the Great spoke of spiritual miracles as far transcending physical ones (Dialog., iii. 17), emphasized the truth that " vitae vera aestimatio in virtute est operum non in osten- sione signorum " (ibid., i. 12), and warned Augustine not to think highly of the mighty works that had been shown in him. Even medieval writers exercised some faculty of criticism, though in but limited fashion, on the miracles submitted to them. Hermann, who recorded the miracles of S. Edmund of East Anglia, notes not a few failures (though they are at other churches than his own), and frequently observes that the miracle remains incomplete, and historians like Wibert of Nogent and Henry of Hunt- ingdon constantly condemn spurious wonders. To the Middle Ages indeed the boundary between the natural and the supernatural was a very uncertain one Men had formulated as clearly as they have now a theory of the uniformity of Nature, though not so complete a theory : and therefore the variations from her laws seemed to them more frequent and peculiar. But to deny such variations is impossible ; and the theologians of the Middle Ages were wise in declaring that the only tenable explana- tion of them was the action of a Higher Power. Experience may speak more or less certainly against the violation or supersession of these laws, under ordinary circumstances : but then experience is not complete. In other words, 280 THE ENGLISH SAINTS medieval thinkers would have expressed themselves if questioned by moderns much as did Mark Pattison in regard to the healing spring which was said to have burst forth where S^ Ninian preached " Men of this day may smile at their simplicity ; but better surely is the mind which receives as no incredible thing, the unusual inter- position of Him, who worketh all things according to the counsel of His own will ; better the spirit which views the properties of a salubrious spring as the gift of God, granted to a faithful and holy servant, than that which would habitually exclude the thought of the Great Doer of all, by resting on the Laws of Nature as something independent of Him, not, as they are, the way in which He usually works ; or thanklessly and as a matter of course receive the benefit of some mineral waters" (Life of S. Ninian in Newman's Lives of the Saints). It must also be noted that the belief in miracles in the Middle Ages was dependent on two other and essential beliefs. I. No divine powers were claimed for the wonder-workers. The witnesses, and those who recorded their witness, never dreamed that anyone should attribute to them any power of their own. The claim made for Becket, for example, is to be compared, if it be compared with the sacred records at all, with the claim of S. Peter in Acts iv. 10, that "by the Name of Jesus of Nazareth . . . even by Him doth this man stand here before you whole." The glory throughout is that of God. No better examples could be found than those in the MiraculaS. Edmundi Ungedr. Geschichts., Lieber- mann). Hermann gives God the glory, and represents the Saint's powers as intercessory. Thus, according to refer- ences given by Liebermann on p. 224: 64. in 1095, a time of long drought : " Incipit voce praesul [sc. Walkelin, bp. Winchester] precelsa, de martyre sancto plebi sermo- cinatur dulcia simul et utilia, redigens omnia ad animae corporisque necessariora, scilicet ut presens sanctus apud Deum veniam presentibus impetraret et absentibus, pluviaeque jam diu deficientis affluentiam condonaret salutarem indi- APPENDIX TO LECTURE VI 281 gentibus. . . . Ecce, dum Deus oratur, sanctus etiam in Deo interpellatur, aeris facies mutata quod desideratur minitat. . . . Nam interventu sancti, velut credimus, secuta est aeris tanta temperies, quanta desiderari potuit ab homini- bus in dies. Nunc nunc psalmista [Psa. 145, 18] profite- atur verus, dicens * esse prope Dominumeuminvocantibus': prope est enim in veritate se invocantibus ; sed est propior, sanctis intervenientibus, quia quo boni presto sunt inter- ventores, dulciores subsequuntur exauditores" (Liebermann, pp. 279-280). Further, the saint works in and through God by unity of will with God: i. (Prologue) Martene 822: " Memores simus virtutum suorum (sc. Dei) operum per se suosque sanctos effectorum." 4. Martene 824 B : ". . . pre- tiosi martyris Eadmundi gesta mirifica patrata per eum quando et quomodo voluit Omnipotentis dementia. Opera- tur enim per suos fideles Omnipotens ut per instrumenta artificialia quivis artifex prudens, quod et propheticis appro- batur dictis, dicendo : Mirabilis Deus in sanctis suis ; quae operata mirabilia fidem credendi nobis augent et implent, si vera relatione florent, ut debent." 7. Martene 828 E, a dying man " pandit astantibus Suveyn Sancti perfossum cuspide, vitam male perdidisse Dei pro sancto ultione" Ibid. 829 A : " Ut superius de Suveyn relata ultio peregit divina." 36. Liebermann, pp. 247-8 : " Super quern martyr [Ead- mundus] revera vigilavit : quern ultio divina post paucos dies cefalargica passione percussit. . . . Verum quia sancti sciunt quodammodo, quae cordium intima patent Deo, recusat Deus et sanctus caereum, quern mittit mala mens vel malus animus." 49. Liebermann, p. 261, after a vision and restoration of stolen goods : " Sed quod in hac re videtur verum et summum, talia fuerunt per Deum et sanctum [Eadmundum]." 67. Liebermann, p. 281 : " [Deu]s, cujus in sancto via ejus, faciens mirabilia solus essentialiter Deus, in populis suam .notincat virtutem, etiam in inrationabilibus invocatione fidelium dans exhibi- tionem. Quod dum asscribitur ad laudem Dei, non minus dicitur a laude sancti, quia quo Deus invocatur per sanctos, 282 THE ENGLISH SAINTS eo sua gratia mirificat eos, indigentibus prebendo beneficia, periclitantibus etiam prestando levamina." Further, Her- mann praises God at the same time as the Saint : 3. Liebermann, p. 233 : " Ad laudem ergo Redemptoris et in honorem sui martyris miracula disseramus nostri protectoris, fisi de munere Domini creatoris !" 31. Liebermann, p. 244, after Osgod Clapa has recovered his senses : " Laus et ymnus persolvitur Deo et sancto." 52. Liebermann, p. 264, Normann(us) journeys on, " ejus se fiducia muniens, cujus filacterium ferebat in collo dependens, glorificans Deum in secula seculorum." 65. Witnesses of the healing of a cripple, " laudem adaugent [Eadmundi] martyris, virtutem videntes Omnipotentis." Liebermann, p. 280. This point, though it is an obvious one, is often forgotten by critics of medieval miracles. Equally important is II. The power of God, evoked by the intercession of the saint, was exercised in and through the Church. Miracles, thought the Nonjuror Dodwell, became scarce or abounded according to the need. No one in the Middle Ages would have denied this. In the continuous Society resided a power which was from time to time manifested. Mr. Arthur Balfour has shown in regard to the miracle-controversies, of which he rightly says that " no profit can yet be extracted " when the contention is merely " as to the precise relation in which they stand to the Order of the world," that con- troversialists have been continually in error in ascribing to the early Christian writers a theory of the world and of their mission of which they were entirely innocent. It has often been argued as if their " message to mankind consisted in announcing the existence of another, or supernatural world, which occasionally upset one or two of [the assumed] natural uniformities by means of a miracle " (The Foundations of Belief, p. 312). And this, we may add, is true, and perhaps equally true, of the medieval hagiologists. It is idle to discuss medieval miracles from such a point of view, or to criticise thus the medieval hagiologists. " No such theory can be extracted from their writings," says Mr. Balfour, APPENDIX TO LECTURE VI 283 still speaking of the Evangelists, "and no such theory should be read into them ; and this not merely because such an attribution is unhistorical, nor yet because there is any ground for doubting the interactions of the ' spiritual ' and the ' natural ' ; but because this account of the ' natural ' itself [i.e., that of uniformity acting automatically] is one which, if interpreted strictly, seems open to grave philosophic objection, and is certainly deficient in philosophic proof" (ibid.) It is true that they regarded what they called miracles as " wonders due to the special action of Divine power " ; but the world being to them the theatre of the continual exercise of this Divine power, in the course of external nature and in the processes of the human soul, the miracle was not out of relation to but a part of the scheme of Divine government of the Church and of man. As Bernoulli puts it (Die Heiligen der M"erownger, 1900, pp. 271, 272), in ancient and in medieval religion the miracle is not supernatural, but a natural function of a second, higher, world, which goes its own way and speaks its own tongue. The miracles in Gregory of Tours are, in his words, against nature, but not against reason. Miracles seemed to the writers to be an evidence of God's abiding presence with His Church, the treasury of His graces and the store- house of the virtues of the saints. This to some extent accounts for the obviously imitative character of many of the miracles. The imitation was rarely conscious and yet at the same time it was largely literary. Men wrote of wonders done by their contemporaries which had been done by Christ or His Apostles, because they saw no reason why the powers once given should have been withdrawn ; and, when they wrote, their language was naturally that of those who were saturated with the thoughts and expressions of the Vulgate. When we turn to the stories it is evident that the concep- tion of exact accuracy as we have it now did not then exist. It must be remembered that the miracles attributed to the saints were all written down for edification. The way in which a thing occurred, the details of the evidence for it, 284 THE ENGLISH SAINTS really did not matter. The event, the healing, the punish- ment, had happened. The names of the persons were given. This seemed all that was necessary. This accounts for the number of impossible things which are stated in the gravest way and sometimes by the gravest persons. What Eadmer believed on the word of Helias was believed by others on the word of Eadmer. Bede believed Herebald of Tynemouth when he told him that years before his skull had been fractured and his thumb broken and both had been miraculously healed by Bishop John of Hexham. The wonderful virtues of Canterbury water in the same way were believed by Benedict of Canterbury, when " the rumour had gone abroad as to how the holy Thomas had wrought a beautiful miracle on prior Robert inasmuch as he had cured a certain hurt of his leg," on the evidence of prior Robert himself, who wrote to him that it was indeed true, though the physicians had assured him that he had " without doubt caught the disease which is called morbus chronicus and is not to be healed by the hand of man " (Thomas Saga, ii. 93, sqq.). Thus both the most honest men were at the mercy of those who wilfully invented to deceive, and the acceptance of one marvel tended to the acceptance, or imagination, of many more. It is noteworthy that there was a steady growth in the stories of miracle. The earlier stages of the conversion of England, it is clear from Bede, were not associated in men's memories with much that was miraculous : in the same way the miracles of S. Martin (see Life of Archbishop Benson, ii. 227) are " easily reducible to order and thought." The Life of Columba by Adamnan is an excellent example of the growth of legend. It contains a number of personal traits which bear the stamp of unquestionable truth. It includes some stories which are at least gross exaggerations, and many in which the inference of supernatural interven- tion is quite unwarrantable. But for the most part, the stories of supposed miracle are easily explicable, and, when allowance is made for the credulity of an ignorant age, APPENDIX TO LECTURE VI 285 cannot be considered to be outside the range of common experience. And over the whole tale lies the stamp of a beautiful life, with its compelling influence of goodness and purity. But as time went on the stories of miracles assumed a different form, both when told by contemporaries of the saints, who professed to speak from their own knowledge and examination of evidence, and when discovered in later years and produced as witness to the sanctity of men long since passed away. The instances of S. John of Beverley, S. William of Norwich, and S. Swithun of Winchester may illustrate these points. (i) Fulcard wrote for Ealdred, the English Archbishop of York, the life of S. John, the founder of Beverley Minster. A quaint piece of work are his thirteen chapters. That the saint was at one time Bishop of Hexham, and that he was a missionary, is almost all that he knows of him ; and everything he has to tell, except the miracles, comes from Bede. But these are many of them connected with wine, whether the cup which the man received whom S. John healed of grievous sickness, or the inexhaustible jar which he gave, to the astonishment of King Osred, or the broken flask which he restored whole when the venerable man drank in the cellar at Beverley at the Abbot's request after a bath. 1 Other writers give miracles of a more extended, or beneficent scope to the "second Elijah"; 2 he appears as a healer of sickness, the saviour of travellers in danger of shipwreck, as one who banishes the passion of love from the breast of a scholar of music, 3 and cures the deaf and dumb. When Archbishop Gerard (1100-1109) visited Beverley indeed, and the merits of S. John healed one of his servants during mass, he alluded to it with much im- 1 Fulcard, Vita S. Joh. in Hist. York, i. 251. " Porrigit ilico inclytus prassul calicem vini, jubetque sitibundum suum ex eo refocillare." 2 Hist. York, i. 271. 3 Ibid., i. 281, 282. 286 THE ENGLISH SAINTS pressiveness in his sermon, till a certain Englishman, wearied with the discourse, arose and interrupted it. He addressed the Archbishop and told him not to think that there was any wonder at such a miracle, for the like were common at Beverley every year, and that therefore he had better not meddle with the privileges of a Church which was so highly honoured. However Gerard though warned paid no heed ; but the young man who was healed would not depart from the monastery, and so became a baker and married a wife and lived hard by the cemetery, where the recorder of these miracles when he was a boy saw him with his own eyes. 1 The miracles of S. John of Beverley are indeed characteristically rich in human interest. He took pains to appear in a dream to a naughty boy named William Paternoster (who had become dumb as a punish- ment for walking alone with a little girl and not enjoying athletic sports, and to recover him), whereupon he learned letters and came to speak both English and French. 2 Two women from Lindsey, one of them sent by " the wise women," a madman from Kesteven and many sufferers with swollen arms and feet, and beasts with cattle plague and a boy who fell from a roof where he had no business to be, watching a miracle play, were all recovered by his aid : and when a priest named Ingulf was saying the night hours and his candle went out S. John put a new one, and lighted it, in his hands. (2) The miracles at the shrine of S. William of Norwich or connected with his fame are typical. They rarely suggest fraud and they never demand for their explanation a super- natural intervention. The ailments which are cured are either intermittent, such as toothache, or such as may yield to treatment, such as blindness or deafness, nervous dis- orders, in the cure of which faith plays so large a part. In the telling of them by Thomas of Monmouth there is much homely human nature. A priest tries to traffic in the saint's 1 Hist. York, i. 299, 300. 2 Ibid., pp. 311, 312. APPENDIX TO LECTURE VI 287 holiness and obtain news for himself thereon ; his avarice is fitly punished. There are not enough candles to honour the saint : and there is a timely and very judicious benefaction. A young man who sleeps with his mouth open swallows a viper, and the results are very inconvenient, until some scrapings of the saint's tomb, taken in holy water, afford relief, by acting as an emetic. A black pig enters the chapter-house by night and attacks a sleeping monk, who was supposed to watch by the tomb : it is believed by some to be the devil in disguise. These and such like tales were not taken too seriously even when they were written. (3) The next case is a different one. Of the holy life of the famous S. Swithun 1 there is no contemporary record in detail. He was the trusted adviser of Ecgbert who knit England together under Wessex, and he was the tutor of his son. He lived as a good Bishop, a church builder, a feaster 1 See Nova Legenda, ii. 358 sqq., for the best life, with list of sources. Analecta Bollandiana, torn, iv., p. 367 : Sancti Swithuni^ Wintonensis Episcopi Translatio et Miracula, auctore Lantfredo Monacho Winloniensi ex cod. olim Gemeticensi, jam Rotomagensi nuncprimum edidit E. P. Sauvage, sacerdos Rotomagensis. Tom. v. Hymni paracterici tres in laudem S. Swithuni^ Wintoniensis Episcopi. Ed. E. P. Sauvage,presbytero Rototnagense. i. hymnus ad laudem smi. pont. S. Swithuni eleganti urbanitate metrica artis perite compositus. This contains nothing noteworthy ; it is a highly artificial acrostic, ii. Incipit hymnus in honore S. Patris et gloriosi pont. Swithuni, degiaco et paracterico carmine per alphabetum compositus. This is much the same as above. These are the two last strophes of the " Amen " : E venerande Pater ! modicum jam claudimus ymnu Teque omnes petimus, e venerande Pater ! Nos iugiter refove, nos semper ab hoste tuere, Et patrio affectu, Nos iugiter refove. iii. Elogium et paractericus de S. Sivithuno hymnus. Ex codice Alenconiensi 14, Begins at E .... Gentibus Angligenis solennia festa recurrunt Et renovant iubitu, Gentibus Angligenis. 288 THE ENGLISH SAINTS with the poor not the rich, ever with open mouth that he might invite sinners to repentance. But his fame is due almost entirely to his translation and the miracles that gathered round his shrine. 1 In his case the miracles may be regarded as a revelation of his character as it lingered in popular reverence. In ^Elfric's Lives'* the saint appears in a vision to a certain smith, three years before his translation. He inquires from this man of a certain priest Eadsige living at Winchelcombe who with others had been expelled by ^Ethelwold from the old monastery for misconduct. He tells Eadsige in a message to go to ^Ethelwold, to tell him to open his grave and bring the bones into the church. He promises that in his tomb they will find a treasure to which gold is nothing. The smith afraid of people thinking him a liar kept silence and the saint appeared to him on two other occasions, rebuking him. The smith at last went to the tomb to prove for himself the truth of the vision. He took the ring of the lid of the tomb, pulled it, and it came clean out of the stone as the Saint had foretold. Going away thoroughly convinced he met a serf of Eadsige's who was entrusted with the message. Within two years Eadsige entered a monastery and remained there until his death. A hump-backed churl had a dream in which it was revealed that Swithun could heal him. He set off in the morning to Winchester with his crutches and prayed at the Saint's tomb and was immediately healed. The monks, who at that time had no knowledge of the Saint, attributed the cure to some other saint, " but the churl said that Swithun had healed him, because he himself knew the most certainly about the matter." Another man with a strange disease in his eyes and tongue was carried to Winchester where his friends kept a vigil at S. Swithun's tomb. The sick man also watched 1 Cf. Hunt, English Church, 597-1066, p. 367. 2 E. E. Text Soc., no. xxi., p. 441, edited by Skeat. APPENDIX TO LECTURE VI 289 and towards morning fell asleep. He was awakened by a feeling as if someone was trying to pull his shoe off, and found himself healed. The shoe was nowhere to be found. In all eight sick men were healed by S. Swithun before his translation. After this King Eadgar ordered Bishop ^Ethelwold to proceed with the translation and the body of the Saint was carried into the church. Many miracles of healing followed and the burial-ground around the church was crowded with sick people waiting their turn to be laid at the tomb. In those days there were in the Isle of Wight three women, one blind from her birth and the other two for the space of nine years. They had a dumb boy for guide and all four went on pilgrimage to the tomb. They watched for one night and were all healed. A bondwoman condemned to be flogged was delivered by S. Swithun and set free by her master in honour of the Saint. A thegn crippled by paralysis desired to be carried to Winchester for the cure and was healed before he started. Twenty-five men, blind, halt, deaf and dumb, were healed in one day. A thegn suddenly stricken with blindness lived at Rome four years to pray for his cure from the Apostles. Hearing of S. Swithun he returned to Winchester in haste and was cured. A blind man, forsaken by his guide in a quarrel, invoked S. Swithun and was able to get home without a guide, being cured of his malady. yEthelwold ordered Te Deum to be sung at every cure. The monks grew tired of having to get up three or four times in a night and left it off when the Bishop was busy with the king. A good man had a vision of the Saint who bade him go to the monks and rebuke them for their sloth, telling them that if Te Deum were not sung the miracles would cease. The good man went to ^Ethelwold who at T 9 290 THE ENGLISH SAINTS once ordered the monks to do what they were told and sing Te Derim. This custom was in use in the preacher's time and he notes that he and his hearers had not seldom sung this hymn with the monks when a miracle had been per- formed. A certain man wrongly accused of theft had his eyes put out and his ears cut off : he was made whole at S. Swithun's tomb. On this says ^Elfric " Nevertheless it is to wit we must not pray to God's Saints as to God Him- self, because He alone is God, and above all things ; but we should truly pray the Saints to intercede for us with the All-ruling God, who is their Lord, that He may help us." During a vigil of the dead (a "lyke-wake") a man blas- phemed and joked, saying he was Swithun. He was sud- denly struck down in a trance and only recovered when laid at the Saint's tomb. A hundred and twenty men with various diseases were all healed within three weeks. A thegn's servant with a broken leg is healed by the prayer of the Saint. An old thegn of the Wight bedridden for nine years was carried in a dream by two saints to a church in which S. Swithun stood as if about to say Mass. After enjoining upon him the law of charity the Saint promises that if he fulfils it he will be healed. The sick man asks the Saint's name and is bidden go to Winchester to learn it. On awaking his wife tells him the Saint was Swithun and he is carried into a church and prays for his healing and is cured. He went to Winchester and reported his cure to ^Ethelwold and " Landferth the foreigner" set it down in Latin. The church was hung round with crutches, etc., left by cripples, and half of them could not be put up, so many they were. These cases, selected from different periods of the Middle Ages, are typical of the whole collection of medieval miracles. Is it possible to make any classification of the miracles ? Any such, so far as the present writer's knowledge goes, can only be tentative and inexact. But it may be said in the APPENDIX TO LECTURE VI 291 first place that they all fall into one of two classes : they are either miracles of vengeance or miracles of compassion. I. The first class is by far the smaller. The evidence for it is of course always mere conjecture or unwarrantable inference. It is conspicuous in the stories of the Welsh saints. Cedoc of Llancarfan by his cursing caused the death by fire or water of those who had offended him even in the smallest matters (see his life in Rees, Cambro -British Saints). Parallel to the cursings are cases of the old Celtic custom of "fasting against" a person. The Irish stories are equally full of cursing : as late as the seventh century it seems to have been a common practice to reduce a sinner or even a saint to submission by the curses of a holy man (see Fragmentary Annals in Silva Gadelica, ii. 436 ; and cf. Revue celtique, xiv. 16, 22). S. Columba not infrequently avenged wrongs by this method. S. Hilda in a later legend is said to have driven serpents over the cliffs of Whitby as is said in different places of many saints but this hardly falls within the category. It is rather an attempted explanation of the existence of fossil ammonites. But there could be no better example than the case of S. Edmund (see Liebermann, Heremanni Miracula S. Eadmundi, and Martene and Durand, Veterum Scriptorum . . . ampl. colkctio^ VI.). He is represented as punishing offences against his reputation or temporalities, often quite dispro- portionately, with death ( 6), sickness ( 15, 29, 31, 36, 41), loss of goods ( u, 46). 6 relates the death of King Swegen by a spear-thrust from S. Edmund the same night after he had spurned the emissary of the saint who came to beg remittance of tribute. The same story is in Florence of Worcester anno 1014, William of Malmesbury, Orderic, and Snorri. Again, a noble Dane peeps under the pall covering the saint's body and is blinded. He repents and gives his two golden arm- rings to the saint, and is restored to sight ( 15). 29. Liebermann, p. 242. Abbot Leofstan gets stiffened hands for meddling with the saint's body out of curiosity. 19 2 292 THE ENGLISH SAINTS This story occurs also in William of Malmesbury, Gesta Pontif., p. 156; and in Wibert of Nogent, De pignonbus Sanctorum, p. 337. 31. Liebermann., pp. 242-244. Osgod Clapa comes into the church at Bury in all the splendour of Danish armour and then, struck by the power of the saint, falls to the ground raving. He promises never again to do harm to the monastery and then he is restored, but his hands remain weak (above, p. 147). 36. Liebermann, pp. 247, 248. One of William I.'s Norman knights seizes an abbey manor, saying it will be more useful to a king's servant than to the sleeping S. Edmund. He is punished with pains in the head and gets a white spot on the pupil of his eye. His expiatory wax candle breaks into nine pieces, because it was not sent with true repentance. (" Quern ultio divina post paucos dies cefalargica passione percussit.") 41 , 42. Liebermann, pp. 251-254. Hermann was an eye witness in this case. Arfast, bishop of East Anglia, who had evil designs against the abbey, e.g., had confiscated the abbot's crozier, is blinded by a bough while riding in the forest. Not till he prays to S. Edmund for forgiveness is it possible for Abbat Baldwin to heal him. He retains traces of the injury, repents, and preaches on the miracle on S. Edmund's day. 11. Martene, 829 B. A priest who was afraid to shelter the man who was carrying about the saint's body to shield it from the ravaging Danes [A.D. 1010], is punished with the loss of his house by fire. A number of other cases are collected by C. A. Bernoulli, op. cit. But, though it would be possible to multiply instances of this kind, they form a very small proportion of the recorded cases of miracle. It is to be observed also that the cases are almost without exception attributed to the influence of the saint after his death. They are of course in most instances mere coincidences, as for example the tales of S. Thomas killing a cow and paralysing a naughty boy. APPENDIX TO LECTURE VI 293 II. Acts of Compassion. Of these four classes (though this may be to some extent a cross-division) may easily be traced. 1. The directly imitative (see above, p. 283). To this class belong the stories of raising from the dead, which are not very common, and which the chroniclers generally regard with suspicion ; and also a number of cases of healing, notably, for example, in the instance of S. Thomas of Canterbury, based upon the Gospels or the Acts. 2. Dreams. Of these there are several told of S. Dun- stan ; there is the vision told by Helias to Eadmer of S. Dunstan and S. Anselm ; there is the appearance of S. Oswald to King Alfred, and there are many like occur- rences. Here again the records of the miracles of S. Thomas of Canterbury and of S. Edmund supply many instances. Thus, to take an example from the latter : 54. A Norman knight, with a head only for fighting and such worldly matters, dreams : " Somniat quod equitans fugam iniat, et sanctus martyr [Eadmundus] eques insequutor fiat ejus armatus. Lancea dorso deorsum affixa, donee, ab equo resupinans eum supra sepem, velut miles ei desuper intenta- verit mortem. Sicque, veluti dabat visio sibi, resupinus jacens in sepe plena florum amoenitate, sancto compugione superasstante, precatur miser veniam. . . ." He was pardoned, and became a monk. There are very many stories like this. These are for the most part purely subjective processes. Sometimes they take the form, familiar to modern psychical research, of " second sight "; but for the most part they are quite dream-like : figures dissolve into each other, etc. Says Dr. Liebermann, men were more schooled to believe than to think, and were slaves of nature and imagination. The excitement can often be given a cause : raging of the elements, long fasting, night watching in churches filled with incense-smoke, rude pictures, and mysterious dim candle-light. 3. Coincidences. This accounts for a very large number of the medieval miracles. The more exact the coincidence, 2Q4 THE ENGLISH SAINTS the more unlikely is the case. There is only one such in Hermann's Miracula S. Edmundi, viz., about Swegen's death, and for that the writer was dependent on tradition. ^Ethel- win ( 6) is told in a vision he will hear something pleasant (gratissima) about Swegen ; a dying man ( 7) is told that S. Edmund's spear-thrust killed Swegen. Men who were present speak only of a spear-thrust. A more familiar case is the capture of William the Lion at Alnwick after Henry II. 's humiliation at the tomb of S. Thomas ; and these events were soon declared to have happened simul- taneously, in order to enforce the power of the martyr (see William of Newburgh, i. 187, Gervase of Canterbury, i. 248). There are frequent cases of ordinary treatment effecting cures, or natural processes being at work, when a miracle is sought at the same time, and is believed to have been worked. This is largely the case with the tales of recovery from blindness. Thus natural phenomena in the miracles are not at all unusual : the weather changes, a house burns, a candle breaks, a bough hits a man's eye, stolen goods lost at harbour are found in the city (but cf. above, pp. 186, 281-293). Miracles of healing are not uncommonly of this order, but the larger number are due to 4. Natural causes. The large majority of these are cures of nervous diseases, which are now known to be often capable of cure by abrupt methods or by what is termed " faith-healing." This is by far the largest class of medieval miracles. Thus in regard to the Becket miracles, Dr. E. A. Abbott (5. Thomas of Canterbury, his Death and Miracles] rightly says : " The diseases healed by them were for the most part (as might have been antici- pated) nervous disorders, such as might be cured by a strong emotional shock. In some cases Benedict frankly tells us that the cure was not at first perfect ; in others that it was followed by relapse. In one case he informs us that the reputed water of S. Thomas was not S. Thomas's at all. It was a fraudulent imitation ; yet it performed the APPENDIX TO LECTURE VI 295 desired cure." Similar to this was the work of S. Anselm's girdle (see Eadmer, Mir. S. Anselmi, in Liebermann's Ungedmckte Geschichtsquellen), though in some of the instances given its use as a tight bandage may have been really effective. In many of the cures described by medieval writers as miraculous the process took a long time, nor was the use of ordinary medicines regarded as at all incom- patible (cf. Mir. S. Edm., 42). Often recovery was not complete. This class is obviously capable of so large an extension that it is unnecessary to do more than briefly mention it. Every medieval saint's life will afford many instances. Examples might be taken from the lives of S. Edmund of Abingdon (on which it is interesting to read Dr. W. W. Wallace) and of S. Hugh of Lincoln (on which cf. G. G. Perry with H. Thurston). See e.g., Magna Vita S. Hugonis, pp. 97, 241, 245, 361, 362. Another division of medieval miracles would be : 1. Those wrought by a saint in his lifetime. 2. Those wrought by relics of him. 3. Those given in answer to prayer and without any visible intervention of the saint or recourse to relics of him. It is to a great extent but not quite universally true, as Dr. Liebermann (Miranda S. Edm., p. 218) asserts, that the subjects of miracles are either (i) persons on whom the faithful already expect the saint to operate, or (2) persons who have done something which the faithful afterwards recognize as a cause of the saint's interference. There must always be some relation established with the saint before he takes the initiative. If this means no more than that the saint is presumed to have some knowledge of the person who is benefited through him it is obvious. Prayer on the one hand, a crime on the other, introduces the intervention of the saint. The power exercised through the saint does act in a purely arbitrary way, with no con- nection between subject and object. It must have a cause. But it would not be safe to assert that the medieval writers believed always in a conscious relation between the subject 296 THE ENGLISH SAINTS of the miracle and the saint with whom it was associated : though in the great majority of cases they certainly did. In regard to the miracles of S. Edmund Dr. Liebermann concludes thus (p. 222) : " As a matter of fact Hermann's miracles are true accounts of occurrences some of which are ordinary, others unusual in themselves, but which without exception do not constitute marvels in our sense, while some of them perhaps have only this connexion with S. Edmund, that they were produced by faith in him." This conclusion is valid over a large part of the area of medieval miracles. A detailed examination of these has a result which can hardly be denied. It establishes, what every student of the literature must have long decided for himself, that while there was, as time went on, much imposture and much confusion, and much record without evidence, and much healing that is easily explained on purely natural grounds, there still remain cases which may be conveniently treated as due to " faith " in some inexplicable way, but which to the Christian seem to involve an obvious relation to the Divine Power acting in a manner which is beyond ordinary human experience. Within the limits of our present knowledge it is impossible to do more than to admit that there were signs due to "the power of God." To call these miracles or to describe them as "super- natural " is hardly more than a tentative suggestion. " Persons' knowledge of what is natural will be enlarged in proportion to their greater knowledge of the works of God and the dispensations of His Providence," says Butler : and it is obvious that " under our present life- dispensation, things that warrant or require the intro- duction of the supernatural in order to present them even as conceivable, in one given state of our knowledge, may in another state of our knowledge be found to fall within the range of ordinary human experience" (Gladstone, Studies Subsidiary to the Works of Bishop Butler, p. 313). Thus the question of medieval miracles is in the first place one of evidence : it affords an interesting study of APPENDIX TO LECTURE VI 297 medieval thought, notably in regard to the medieval notion of what constitutes proof ; and it is thus a matter of interest and importance to historical students. There is of course every difference in the world between the evidence for different miracles. It is true that " in every age, including our own, there are a great number of people whose super- stition, or prejudice, or careless untruthfulness, is so great that we could never rely on their evidence for any ex- ceptional event, where their interests were enlisted or their passions excited" (Gore, Bampton Lectures, 1891, p. 74). But, on the other hand, I should not be inclined to endorse the preceding statement of the same eminent writer, that "it is undoubtedly true that there are certain ages when belief is so utterly uncritical that it does not seem as if they could under any circumstances afford us satisfactory evidence of miraculous occurrences " (ibid.) : nor is it possible to make an a priori distinction between the miracles of the New Testament and those of the Christian Church. And thus, in the second place, the question ultimately merges in the general discussion, so often otiose and incon- conclusive, of the miraculous in general. This must be dealt with on philosophical as well as on historical principles : and the contribution which a study of medieval miracles makes to the discussion is simply the fact that, after all allowances are made for imposture and for natural explanations, there still remain events which cannot be explained, or explained away, by our present knowledge of so-called natural causes. We seem to be a long way from any conclusion of the whole matter : it may be that we are nearer than we think. Towards this I do not fancy that these scattered notes are of the smallest assistance. But the mention of the facts was a necessary part of any treatment, however meagre, of the lives of the saints and of their influence upon national character and national ideals. On the main question raised by these notes what we need is observation at least as much as criticism ; and it is probable that it is through the 298 THE ENGLISH SAINTS former that explanation will at last be reached. But when it is reached, or is approached, it will certainly be approached through a consideration of the phenomena of Personality and Will (cf. Dr. Sanday's striking paper at the Church Congress 1902). Of the results of " the contact of personalities filled with the Spirit of God with the con- ditions of the outer world " we have still very much, one is tempted to say almost everything, to learn. A step towards the learning will certainly be the full examination of the " miracles " ascribed to the medieval saints. LECTURE VII WOMEN AND CHILDREN AMONG THE SAINTS. " The elect lady and her children whom I love in the truth." 2 S. JOHN i. i. So S. John wrote, with the wonderful freedom that came through the faith of Christ. It is a commonplace of history that Christianity changed, and changes, every- where, the position of women. It is the experience which perhaps more than anything else forces itself, and its necessary inferences, upon the attention of those who seriously watch the progress of missions to-day. And our experience is exactly what the experience of our forefathers was. 1 The law of Christ means the freedom 1 " I think we are getting into a milk-and-water view of Heathen- ism, not of African Heathenism alone, but of Buddhism, Hinduism, and Mohammedanism also, which prevail in Asia. Just one or two remarks as to what these false faiths do. They degrade women with an infinite degradation. I have lived in zenanas and harems, and have seen the daily life of the secluded women, and I can speak from bitter experience of what their lives are the intellect dwarfed, so that the woman of twenty or thirty years of age is more like a child of eight intellectually ; while all the worst passions of human nature are stimulated and developed in a fearful degree : jealousy, envy, murderous hate, intrigue, running to such an extent that in some countries I have hardly ever been in a [ 299 J 300 . THE ENGLISH SAINTS of woman. " The Gospel was in a way in which no religion, nothing which spoke of the unseen and the eternal, ever had been or could be a religion of the affections, a religion of sympathy." 1 It seemed natural to the Teutonic races to respect womanhood, but how immeasurably was this respect transfigured by the teaching of the Gospel of the Virgin's Son ! Long before the reverence paid to His mother grew till it seemed to threaten the homage which is due to God alone, the Church had helped men to learn how high and holy was the work of women in the conversion of the world. Our race is generally believed to set a special value on virtues which owe much in their action to the gentle determination of noble women. Truth is among them, and most conspicuously purity. Such were the virtues, men seemed to think, naturally at home in the Teu- tonic peoples, which Christianity brought out, cherished, strengthened. The Christian life of the household, the shelter of peace and love and holiness, was developed through the ministration of women. While the warrior kings gave their lives for their faith, and the monks were restless in zeal to extend its borders, women followed them everywhere, to make their work firm by the influence of sympathy and love. In "the age of heroic spiritual ventures," when there were saints whose women's house or near a women's tent without being asked for drugs with which to disfigure the favourite wife, to take away her life, or to take away the life of the favourite wife's infant son. This request has been made of me nearly two hundred times." Mrs. Bishop, Nov. i, 1893, quoted in Mission Field, Feb., 1894. 1 R. W. Church, The Gifts of Civilization, p. 204. WOMEN AND CHILDREN AMONG THE SAINTS 301 lives are quite forgotten, whose names linger only in some bare mention in a chronicle or in the dedication of an ancient church, women played a foremost part. It is thus that a book of late medieval hagiology introduces the lives of the women saints of " our contrie of England " : " Faith decaying in the worlde," says the writer, who had doubtless in his mind many noble women of the early Renaissance, " and Charitie becoming more and more colde, Christians commonlie thereuppon make small or verie base conceite of the vertue and force of those vertues; obseruing as they imagine little difference between naturall persuasions, and supernaturall instruc- tion, between sensuall, worldlie, and humane love, and between spirituall, heavenlie and divine Charitie. Not- withstanding as the admirable workes and benefits of nature are many, yet not observed or dulie pondered, untill by some speciall art and industrie they are pro- posed and proued, as the nature and vertues of herbes are not knowne but by physicions, nor the precious earth of golde and siluer mines, but by the art of goulde- fyning, neither the secret effect and rare dignities of stones and pearles but by lapidaries, and so in other things. In like sort God's grace and the workes thereof, the force of faith, the glorie of God's love, are not ordinarilie considered or much weighed, bicause they are usuallie either not truly present but imagined ; or if they be present, they are so confused with other drosse of sensuall affections and naturall imperfections, as that their light is much obscured, their operation blunted and dulled, and their dignity undiscerned. Wherefore when we may finde them pure and fined from such 302 THE ENGLISH SAINTS drossie desires, tried and cleane from such base affec- tions, there may we behold the beautie and glittering of those Jewells, the worth of those gemmes, the admir- able vertues and forces of their power. Then also may we know what a benefit it is to have them, what riches to possess them, what comfort to enjoy them. For this cause hath our gracious God provided some speciall Saintes in all sexes and estates, in all professions and callings, whereby all other of the same condition or qualitie, may learne the power of God's grace, the force of faith, the abilitie of charitie, when in the weakest sex, the youngest years, and in the greatest difficulties, as of kingly honours, of princelie pleasures, of roiall riches, of youthfull concupiscence, of danger of dys- grace, pouertie, penurie, and death it self, they produce such potent effects, as to glorie in worldlie contempt, to choose pouertie for the greatest riches, obedience for Christ's sake aboue any authoritie to command, spirituall solitarines before any pleasant temporall companie, payne for pleasure, fasting for feasting, penance for pastime." 1 The tales that the writer tells truly illustrate his words of introduction. Sacrifice, devotion, purity, were taught in the noble lives of English women saints. To the dim days of early Christianity in Britain belong not a few tales of married saints. Already the Christian ideal of pure wedded life was known and cherished. It may be that it is such a memory that lingers in the dedication of the splendid church of S. Probus and S. Grace in Cornwall, where two heads 1 The Lives of the Women Saints of England, pp. I sqq. [See below.] WOMEN AND CHILDREN AMONG THE SAINTS 303 are preserved, as perhaps those of the patrons, by the high altar. 1 Many memories there were too of saintly virgins among the Celts, Irish and Welsh. Of the latter S. Keyne is among the most famous, who like S. Hilda turned serpents to stone, and like S. Audrey caused a spring to burst from dry ground. She lived a solitary and mortified life at Keynsham, and afterwards, it would appear, in Cornwall : and when she was near to die she had the vision of an angel who stripped her of her hair- cloth " and put on her a singular white vesture and a garment of scarlet wrought with gold," and said to her " Be in readiness to go with us that we may bring thee to the kingdom of thy Father." 2 Of some of these and their contemporaries more may be said. S. Eadburg was by some confused with S. Ethelburg, 3 the wife of Eadwine, the beloved 1 It is quite possible that S. Probus and S. Grace may have been the founders of the original church there. Cf. Borlase, Age of the Saints. An eminent but in this matter sceptical Cornishman writes to me June 12, 1902, "We know not At tig about SS. Probus and Grace. I always suppose they were Latinized Britons who evangelized us here (before Dr. Benson) ' antequam rex Edw. in Cornubiam venit.' Borlase in his book is inclined to suppose it to be one of the Breton dedications like Cornelly which abound on the south side of Cornwall. I hope not : if so, S. Probus was never here. And then, what of the skulls ? Quod est absurdum." See also Miss Arnold-Forster's Studies in Church Dedications, ii. 542, 543- 2 For S. Keyne we have the life in the Nova Legenda, i. 103 sqq., and Acta SS. Bolland., 8 Oct. iv., p. 276 : in the Women Saints, pp. 39-40 : and Mr. Baring-Gould's sketch in Catalogue of Saints Connected with Cornwall, iii. p. 235. 3 Dr. Horstman in Nova Legenda, i. 308, accepts the confusion, but Bishop Stubbs on the whole thought it possible to distinguish 304 THE ENGLISH SAINTS " Tata" of Bede's history. S. Ethelburg has a fame of her own, and it belongs to the north and to the married state. S. Eadburg was a nun under her niece S. Mil- dred in Thanet, " comforting her heart with divine studies and garnishing her soul with divine contempla- tion and prayer." 1 Her niece S. Eanswith is remem- bered only through late lives, but John of Tynemouth seems to have had access to " lost records which it is not well to reject absolutely." 2 In the priory church of Folkestone dedicated to S. Mary and S. Eanswith was discovered in 1885 a twelfth century reliquary contain- ing what were doubtless her bones. Her memory was that of an able administrator and ruler of religious, the earliest great abbess perhaps in the English list. 3 S. Sexburg, Queen of Kent who built the abbey of S. Mary at Sheppey, died as a nun at Ely with her more famous sister, and " when she was fraught with virtues and years passed hence unto Christ her love and bridegroom." 4 S. Mildred is quoted as one of those who had hard fight to maintain their resolution of virgin dedication, the very abbess of her house " beating and bouncing her without all measure " to induce her to marry a nephew of her own. She has never been them (private letter to Miss Arnold-Forster, quoted in her Studies in Church Dedications, vol. ii., pp. 354-355). John of Tynemouth distinguished them and gives separate lives. Cf. Liebermann's Die Heiligen Engiands, pp. 5-6. 1 Lives of Women Saints, p. 50. 2 Bishop Stubbs, as above. 3 See Nova Legenda, i. 297 : Women Saints, pp. 51-52 : Arnold- Forster, Church Dedications, ii. 355-357. 4 Women Saints, p. 55: cf. Nova Legend a, ii. 355-357: Die Heiligen Engiands, 5-6. WOMEN AND CHILDREN AMONG THE SAINTS 305 forgotten in Kent, and though some have doubted her existence, the close association of her name with certain places and the reference in the earliest English hagi- ology are sufficient evidence of the share that she took in the conversion of her country. A legend of late origin says that as one was " sleeping in her church, she appeared to him, and gave him a blow on the ear, say- ing, ' Understand, fellow, that this place is an Oratory to pray in not a Dormitory to sleep in,' and so vanished away." 1 Saint Ebba, 2 a later and more famous saint, the foundress of the double convent at Coldingham, must not be forgotten. She was the friend of Wilfrith and Cuthbert, and one whose influence spread far over the land and southward, in memory at least, to our own city. But in her days began the degeneration of the monasteries which the English writers so greatly deplore. Bede heard the tale of the warning against her house, which she did all that she could to make needless. But in spite of her, the evils grew : and it needed a new reformation from without to restore the first love of the Saints. These, and many like them, are shadowy memories. We know that they belong to names of those who gave up their lives to Christ, setting before the people the example of devotion and sacred learning. But there were greater names to come. From the beginning of English Christianity the Church joyously availed itself of the national respect for 1 Women Saints, p. 65 : Lives in Nova Legenda, ii. 193 sqq. : Die Heiligen Englands, 5-6. 2 Women Saints, pp. 65-67 : Nova Legenda, i. 303 (full life by Reginald in MS. Fairfax, 6) : see Bede, iv. 19 : Vita Cuthb., 10. 2O 306 THE ENGLISH SAINTS women. Women were among the earliest agents of the conversion, or at least of the establishment of religion in settled resting places. ^Ethelburg, the wife of Ead- wine, who took Paulinus to Northumbria : Ermenhild and Ermenburg, wives of Wulfhere and Merewald, in Mercia : four East Anglian princesses ; Eanswith and Mildred in Kent ; Kyneburg and Kyneswith and Tibba at Peterborough, all helped to spread the faith, to build churches, or to encourage the religious life. 1 Quite early in the history of the English conversion comes the type of saintly womanhood which is best represented by the great name of Hilda. 2 She, through her great-uncle Eadwine, and indeed herself as a catechumen, was associated with Paulinus. She early adopted the monastic life, and joined one of the double monasteries which were common and perhaps universal 1 See Lives of the Women Saints of our Contrie of England^ edited from an unique MS. about 1610 by C. Horstmann, E.E.T. Soc., 1886. Capgrave (Nov. Leg.) contains all the lives in this except Dympna and Mechtilde. The author did not ever translate Capgrave verbally : but generally abridged. Life of S. Dympna is a verbal translation of the Vita by Peter of Cambray c. 1290. The other lives are S. Mechtilde from Thomas of Cantimpre, de apibus (1597), SS. Helena, Ursula, Regna, Brigid, Dympna, Edburg, Eanswide, Ethelburge, Sexburge, Hilda, Ermenilde, Werburge, Milburge, Mildrede, Ebba, [Ethelred], Kinesburge, Kineswith, Tibbe, Ethelburge, Hildelitha, Cuthberge, Withburge, Unthane, Frideswide, Walburge, Wenefride, Modwen, Ositha, Maxentia, Oswen, Elflede, Edith, Wulfhilde, Margaret, Mech- tilde, Monica, Agnes, Gorgona, Nonne Juletta, a captive in Iberia, Macrina. 2 For S. Hilda see Bede, especially iv. 23 : Nova Legenda, ii. 29 sqq.^ from Bede with additions "perhaps from a life by Joscelin " : Dictionary of Christian Biography, article by Dr. W. Bright : a sermon, taking a somewhat distorted view, in Lightfoot's Leaders in the Northern Church. WOMEN AND CHILDREN AMONG THE SAINTS 307 till the eighth century in England. 1 It was by the command of Aidan that she remained in Northumbria, where her whole life as a religious was passed, first at a small cell at the north of the Wear, then at Hartle- pool, and finally at Whitby, for ever associated with her name. At Hartlepool she showed the power that made her typical of the ideal of English nuns. She took pains to rule her house "according to such maxims of monastic discipline as she could learn from wise men. For bishop Aidan and all the religious who knew her, were wont to visit her, to hold her in regard, and to give her instructions, for the sake of her innate wisdom and her love for the service of God." 2 She passed in 657 to the "bay of the Lighthouse" (so Bede renders Streaneshalch), that most wonderful and beautiful of all the northern harbours, where the severity of the monastic ideal was fitly to be realized. There is " danger conquered by activity " indeed. " There are cliffs more terrible, and winds more wild," says Ruskin, " on other shores ; but nowhere else do so many white sails lean against the bleak wind, and glide across the cliff shadows." There are " not many other memorials of monastic life so striking as the abbey on that dark headland," 3 the abbey that is the ruined successor of Hilda's work. It was a splendid foundation, and Hilda was the type of the " mother in 1 So Hunt, English Chtirch, 597-1066, p. 182: cf. Bright, Early English Church History, pp. 192-193. 2 Bede, iv. 23. 3 The Harbours of England, ed. 1895, P- IJt 7- But the classic description of Whitby is of course in Mrs. Gaskell's Sylvia s Lovers. 2O 2 308 THE ENGLISH SAINTS Israel," such as the great abbesses became, who ruled their households in fear, and worship, and learning. Two houses she had under her authority, which lived " 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 one person." Many ladies of high degree were trained in the service of God : and among the men five became bishops, one the famous S. Wilfrith himself. There too began English poetry. Csedmon, he who could never make a gleeman at a beer-party but would go home shamefast when others sang, had the great gift bestowed on him, and sang of heaven and hell and made quick-coming death a little thing, so that from herdsman he became monk and taught those from whom he once had learnt. The story of his death is a beautiful picture of brotherliness. 1 Whitby was a true home of the children of God : and all who knew Hilda, says Bede, called her mother, for her singular piety and grace. The common folk in their needs, and princes too and kings, sought the counsel of this wise woman : and so for ten years she ruled, at the last broken by constant sickness, yet ever giving thanks obediently to God. Bede tells how on November 17, 680, she received " about cockcrow " the viaticum, and "exhorted her nuns to keep Christian peace with each other and with all, and while uttering her farewell counsels looked cheerfully on death, or rather in the words of the Lord, passed from death unto life." At Hackness a nun saw in a dream the soul of Hilda 1 See Bede, iv. 24. WOMEN AND CHILDREN AMONG THE SAINTS 309 guided by angels to the threshold of eternal light. The whole folk learnt to admire and honour her. Her name came to hallow " the chivalry of their Christianity and their race " : she was " among the chief makers of England in the childhood of the English nation." 1 And for her influence, I can do no more than quote the words of Bishop Lightfoot : " Hilda does not stand alone. She was a type, albeit the highest type, of a numerous band of women, more especially in early times queens and princesses, who realised the prophetic foreshadowing, and became nursing mothers of their own Israel. Shall we forget that the two ancient universities of this land both trace back their spiritual descent to women of royal blood Oxford to S. Frides- wide, and Cambridge to S. Etheldreda ?" 2 Bede tells of many other holy women who were inspired to live for God, and among the Legends are many like Hildelith and Ulfild: but there is no story more beautiful than that of the young nun, Eadgyth, who as she lay dying said, " My light will come to me at the dawn of day." 3 Yet before we pass, with Bishop Lightfoot, to Frideswide and Etheldreda, we should note that Englishwomen did not confine their work to their own land. Among the earliest English missionaries to the Ger- mans were many women ; and they too, after the manner of S. Hilda, were missionaries of culture as well as of Christianity. Famous among them were 1 Lightfoot, Leaders in the Northern Church, pp. 66, 67. 2 Ibid., p. 68. 3 Bede, iv. 8. 310 THE ENGLISH SAINTS Leobgyth, Thecla, and Cynehild, who with her son and husband and her daughter Berthgit entered the service of the German Church. 1 Thus from the first days of mission work Englishwomen have understood how great a part they might play in the turning of the nations to Christ. As abroad, in the dangers of the German forests, so at home among the swamps of Oxford and the fens of Ely. To the age in which it is difficult to disentangle from later myth the fragments of authentic history belong the name and holiness of Frideswide. 2 The earliest extant account of her life seems to be that of William of Malmesbury : but two manuscripts of the early twelfth century give a short life of her, with accompanying miracles. She refused to wed with any man, being vowed to Christ, and she escaped from a too pressing suitor by the way of the Thames, in a boat with two sisters, and a beautiful young man in white and splendid raiment, who rowed them ten miles in an hour, to Bampton or Benson or Binsey, none of which places is at that distance from Oxford. There was a rich legend about her in the fourteenth century : it even attributed to her a temporary residence in a pig- sty : but there is no reason to doubt that it grew round simple fact. William of Malmesbury, our earliest authority, con- 1 See Boniface, Epp. 23, 32, 10, 91, 148, 149 : and Hauck, Kirchengcschichte, I. ii. 474-478. 2 Her history and legend are exhaustively examined by Mr. James Parker in his Early History of Oxford, cap. 5. Her brief life is told by John of Tynemouth, i\ova Legenda Aiiglie, i. 457 461. WOMEN AND CHILDREN AMONG THE SAINTS 311 nects the story with the abbey of later fame 1 : " There was anciently in the City of Oxford a Convent of Nuns, in which the most holy virgin Frideswide reposes. She, the daughter of a king, despised marriage with a king, consecrating her virginity to the Lord Christ. But he, when he had set his mind on marrying the virgin, and found all his entreaties and blandishments of no avail, determined to make use of forcible means. When Frideswide discovered this, she determined upon taking flight into the wood. But neither could her hiding place be kept secret from her lover, nor was there want of courage to hinder his following the fugi- tive. The virgin therefore, having heard of the renewed passion of the young man, found her way, by the help of God, through obscure paths, in the dead of night, into Oxford. When in the morning her anxious lover hastened thither, the maiden, now despairing of safety by flight, and also by reason of her weariness being unable to proceed further, invoked the aid of God for herself, and punishment upon her persecutor. And now, as he with his companions approached the gates of the city, he suddenly became blind, struck by the hand of heaven. And when he had admitted the fault of his obstinacy, and Frideswide was besought by his messengers, he received back again his sight as suddenly as he had lost it. Hence there has arisen a dread amongst all the kings of England which has caused them to beware of entering and abiding in that city since it is said to be fraught with destruction, every one of the kings declining to test the truth for himself 1 " Some time after the glorious death of S. Frideswide. the nuns having been taken away, secular canons were introduced." So the Cartulary of S. Frideswide (Ch. Ch. MSS.), Parker, pp. 319-322. 312 THE ENGLISH SAINTS by incurring the danger. In that place, therefore, this maiden, having gained the triumph of her virginity, established a convent, and when her days were over and her Spouse called her, she there died." 1 Of wider fame was S. Etheldreda, over whose shrine rose the great Cathedral of the fens. Twice a wife only in name, she left Ecgfrith the Northumbrian king, by the help of Wilfrith, 2 to rule the house of Coldingham in the northern half of his realm, forgetting or unheeding the saying of the father of English Christianity, that to dissolve marriage for the sake of religion is forbidden by the law of God. 3 Ecgfrith, though he had married another wife, could not bear to lose her, and she fled southwards to her own fenland, and founded an abbey for monks and nuns. As she fled her thirst was quenched by a fresh spring rising from the ground, and her staff grew into a shelter over her head. 4 It is possible that this legend is connected with the old pagan worship of trees and springs, and that here we have a survival, or an adaptation, of what the Church had done her utmost to suppress. The sacred fount of S. Audrey, and S. Jutwara, 5 and S. Keyne, 6 the holy 1 W. Malm., Gesta Pontificum (Rolls Series), p. 315. 2 Bishop Browne has some interesting remarks on this and its consequences, Theodore and Wilfrith, pp. 127 sqq. Wilfrith pre- tended to urge her to yield to Ecgfrith but really confirmed her in her resolution. So Nova Legenda, i. 424. 3 S. Gregory, Epistolae, xi. 45. 4 Cf, Nova Legenda, ii. no, for a similar idea in regard to S. Kenelm. The Dean of Ely in his paper on the Ely Octagon Sculptures (Tindall, Ely) seems inclined to favour the identification of the place with the Stow of S. Hugh ; cf. above, p. 216. 5 See Baring-Gould, Cornish Dedications (R.I.C.), p. 225. 6 Ibid., p. 235. These are only a few among many examples. WOMEN AND CHILDREN AMONG THE SAINTS 313 well of S. Frideswide and S. Winifrith, 1 and many more may well look back to a primitive past. But it is possible to strain these myth-genealogies too far: we may be told that the tree to which S. Edmund was bound was of kin to the golden bough, and we shall wonder if trees may enter into historic fact at all without transmuting it into legend. 2 It cannot be too emphatically asserted that the Church set herself, without any hesitation or looking back, to the de- struction of pagan superstitions. 3 As in Gaul, so in England, the progress of Christianity was marked everywhere by the abolition of the relics of druid worship. 4 1 For S. Winifrith see life of S. Beino in Rees, Lives of Cambro- British Saints. Refusing the advances of King Caradoc she was killed by him. S. Beino's prayers restored her to life, and at the place where her blood was shed gushed forth S. Winifred's well in Flintshire. Further cases of well-worship are summarized by Borlase, The Age of the Saints, pp. 97 sqq. 2 Mr. W. Hunt, The English Church, 597-1066, connects the legend of S. ^Ethelfryth with " the old heathen reverence for spring- ing water and trees." It is curious that Mr. Frazer, 7^he Golden Bough, ist edition, vol. i., pp. 56-108, makes no allusion to the tree references in hagiology or in medieval history. The life of Joan of Arc shows the survival. 3 M. A. Bertrand, La Religion des Gaulois, Annexe D., gives an elaborate list of condemnations by councils, etc., which refutes the view he takes in the text of his book. 4 On the history of the subject in Gaul, which has been much more fully treated than in England, see Bulliot and Thiollier, La mission et le culte de S. Martin, p. 26 : " Le culte des genies des eaux, multiplie' a Pinfini dans les campagnes de la Gaule, y con- stituait a proprement parler, avec celui du soleil, la veritable religion du peuple. Les sources fournissaient aux colons non seulement le breuvage pour eux et leur troupeau, non seulement la fertility du sol, mais tous les actes de la vie tombaient dans leur domaine. L'enfant arrivait-il k la lumiere ? C'dtait la fde de 314 THE ENGLISH SAINTS S. Audrey may be absolved from any pagan supersti- tion. She died in 679, and Bede writing in 731 preserves what is practically a contemporary portrait. The Eng- lish ideal of female saintliness, it is not too much to say, was formed upon what he wrote. 1 She " long and la fontaine, la Davie, qui avait preside a sa venue, qui 1'avait done*. Voulait-on savoir s'il franchirait sans encombre ce seuil fragile de 1'existence, s'il rdsisterait aux e'preuves de la maladie, s'il atteindrait 1'age viril ? La fontaine consultee au moyen de certaines pratiques rendait un oracle sans appel. Le be'tail de'pe'rrisait-il ? un male'fice portait-il le trouble dans la santd ? La fontaine avait des remedes pour tous les maux, des pronostics infallibles et, a 1'heure supreme, elle avertissait la famille du sort du moribond. Un culte identifie aussi profondement avec 1'existence journaliere devait s'incruster plus qu'aucun autre et aussi a-t-il e"te plus tenace que celui des dieux officiels. II s'est transform^ sans ceder sa place." On p. 240 the authors give a good example of destruction of local (Pagan) fountains. See also on the ancient sacred springs, A. Bertrand, La Religion des Gaulois, p. 197 : " Le clerge* a eu soin de nous en conserver le souvenir. Ces sources, ainsi dit J. de Petigny, faisaient des miracles. Les abbes, les dveques, dont les locality's de'pendaient, n'ont pas voulu en interrompre le cours. Ces miracles se faisant au nom du demon, ils deciderent qu'ils se feraient au nom des saints, et, en effet, il s'agit bien de miracles, puisque les eaux de ces fontaines, de ces sources, de ces rivieres, n'avaient et n'ont aucune vertu reelle que la vertu myste'rieuse que leur pretaient les genies et les nymphes. Les pelerinages et les neuvaines continuerent et n'ont cesse qu'en partie. Les conciles chercherent a les arreter, ils n'y reussirent pas. II fallut ceder au prejuges populaires, tant ces pratiques dtaient enracinees dans le cceur de nos vieux Celtes." That the pagan superstition lasted long in England and was recognized and condemned as pagan may be seen from the action of S. Hugh, Magna Vita S. Hugonis, v. 17. 1 Bede, Hist. Eccl^ iv. 17 (19). See Mr. Plummer's notes to his edition, vol. ii. 234-240. For the mention of her in the English Chronicle A.D. 673, 679, 963, see Earle and Plummer, Two Saxon Chronicles, ii., notes on each passage. W. Bright, Early English Church History (second edition), pp. 260-263. T here is a life also in Lives of the Women Saints ^ E. E. Text Soc. WOMEN AND CHILDREN AMONG THE SAINTS 315 earnestly desired" King Ecgfrith "that he would allow her to lay aside worldly cares and in a monastery to serve the true King Christ." At Ely " having built a monastery she began by examples and warnings of a heavenly life to be the virgin mother of many virgins dedicated to God." From the time she entered this house she wore no linen but only woollen, and she had long laid aside the needless weight of jewels, gold and pearls, which she wore when she was very young. The luxury of a hot bath she allowed herself only before the great festivals, and then made it a sign of humility, by first bathing her nuns. She seldom ate more than once a day : and daily she stayed at prayer from the hour of matins 1 till daybreak. Round her she gathered gentle maidens to teach them the ways of God, and, of royal race sprung from an earthly monarch, she followed the holy mother of the heavenly King. 2 In her life she was the kinswoman or the friend of the greatest saints of her time, Hilda and Wilfrith, and Cuthbert and may be John of Beverley. Years after she died men found in the uncorrupt- ness of her body a sign of the purity of her soul, and her sister sought for her a stone coffin of Roman times, marble, like the great coffers that hold the holy sovereigns of the East, 3 to be the shrine of 1 Soon after midnight. 2 So Bede in his poem, iv. 18 (20). 3 Like those great sarcophagi at S. Irene, Constantinople, or the so-called tomb of Stilicho at S. Ambrogio, Milan. Very consider- able interest attaches to Bede's description of the locelltim de marinor* albo pulcherrime factuin, as showing the artistic taste awaking in England, and evidenced by much work still surviving in the North. 316 THE ENGLISH SAINTS all that was left of one so deeply loved. A simple shrine at first, but then over it there rose the minster which the Danes sacked and burned, and then again the Benedictine house which Dunstan hallowed, and where the body of the saint rested above ground by the high altar, 1 when king Cnut from his boat listened to the singing of the monks ; and then, lastly, the great cathedral church to which the relics were translated in presence of Henry III. in 1252. There, though her bones have long been scattered, her memory abides in many a sculptured stone, as in the still honoured dedi- cation of the church itself. The legend of her wander- ings, fixed in sculpture on a corbel in the octagon, serves for a parable of "the life history of the Church of the nation, of its ever-changing fortune, of its ever- expanding mission, of its vicissitudes and dangers and trials, many and various, and yet of its essential character unchanged and unchanging, * the leaves of the tree for the healing of the nation,' because of its living root firmly planted ' on the word of our God which standeth for ever'": and to-day clerks of stout Protestant faith do not shame to dedicate their work to God asking the help of her intercessions. 2 S. Werburga, who died about the year 700, the 1 Liber Eliensis, ii. 52. 2 The Dean of Ely concludes the Preface to his Historical Memorials of Ely Cathedral, 1897, by adopting as his own the prayer of Thomas in the Liber Eliensis " Miserere eorum sorti compatere, quos tibi devotos, beata mater, intenderis, orationibus tuis juva, et certamen bonum futura immortalitas prosequatur pauperis tui cultoris, cujus tuae laudi sudavit ingenium : dedicentur Christo, te intercedente, labores." So far has the Invocation of Saints recently spread. WOMEN AND CHILDREN AMONG THE SAINTS 317 daughter of Wulfhere and daughter of S. Ermenhild, was another of the great princely abbesses. She was abbess of Ely, and later she was set over several Mercian nunneries. It was at Trentham that she died, and about 875 her body was carried, during the Danish wars, to Chester, where it remained to form the centre of a devotion which eventually built the great abbey and church of that city. She appears as a pattern abbess, giving shrewd and saintly advice to her nuns ; and the legends of her give her some quaint humour that showed itself in miracle. The wild geese that came when she did not want them were " pynned by her commaundyment and also releshed and put at lybertie ": and it made no difference that one had already been cooked and eaten. On the meek sub- mission of the others he was restored to life. 1 But the saintly women were not all like Hilda or Frideswide or Werburga or Etheldreda. The character of that good Englishwoman, Margaret Queen of Scots, as it is drawn by her chaplain, Turgot, was that of a pattern wife and mother. She brought up her children in the fear of the Lord, she ruled her household, uniting " such strictness to her sweetness and such sweetness to her strictness that all who were in her service, men as well as women, while fearing loved her and while loving feared her." In whatever she did or said " she showed that her mind was dwelling on things divine ": 1 This legend is in the Life by Henry Bradshaw, a monk of S. Werburga's Abbey, Chester (ob. 1513), E. E. Text Soc., 1887 (which reprints the life by Joscelin), pp. 96-99. It is told also in the Lives of Women Saints. See Nova Legenda, ii. 422 sqq., articles by Bp. Stubbs in Diet. Chr. Biog. and Rev. W. Hunt in Diet. Nat. Biog. 318 THE ENGLISH SAINTS and when she walked forth in her state " she in her heart trod all these trappings under her feet." Merci- ful and charitable, the patroness of learning, a loving wife, a wise sovereign, she left a memory which was cherished by generations as the ideal of a holy woman who lived in the world. 1 The many tales that are told of her, of her advice to her children, of her anxiety to be corrected when any faults were seen in her, of her earnest devotion to the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ and her care to urge frequent com- munion, of her close study of the Gospels, of her night hours spent in prayer, of her care for prisoners and captives, for distressed English folk made slaves by the Scots, of her loving charity to orphans and the poor, bear on them all the stamp of true records of a life that impressed itself on the memories of those who knew and loved her. Like so many of the women saints of this age, she was great too in wisdom of State, and she did a great work. She helped to remodel the old Scottish society, by her influence bringing in new customs of land- holding and personal relation, and quickening the national life into unity such as " the divided clans of a Celtic people" could not know. 2 Wise, loving, saintly, she was a model for queens of English race : and thus five centuries after her death men still remembered her. "... The vertuous Ladie was com- pelled to manage worldlie matters, yet her hart was 1 Her life by her confessor Turgot [or Theodoric] is in Pinkerton, Lives of the Scottish Saints, 1889, ii. 159-196. Nova Legenda, ii. 168-175. 2 Magnus Maclean, The Literature of the Celts, p. 93. WOMEN AND CHILDREN AMONG THE SAINTS 319 far from louing them. By her wise counsaile and commandement all was donne that was conuenient, by her advice were the lawes of the kingdome ordered, by her Industrie gods glorie and honour cheefelie aduanced. None more firme in faith than she, none more com- posed and stayed in countenance. She was so patient in suffering, so mature in counselling, so just in judging, so sweete in communication as none more." 1 A word should be said of the women hermits, or anchoresses. These were not at all uncommon in England, and S. Keyne and S. Frideswide are by some ranked among them. They lived apart in cells, often attached to parish churches, and were in most cases enclosed for life. It is easy to mock at their lives, and the Middle Ages were not silent in that regard. There were " prying, peering, gossipping, prating, listening," women among them : they needed a book of special warning about their feminine weaknesses. Some people even said " of the anchoresses that almost every one hath an old woman to feed her ears, a prating gossip who tells her all the tales of the land." Some were no more than comfortable ladies, living a retired life, but by no means without visitors, and enjoying, by per- mission of their rule, the company of a domestic cat. But at the best it was a strict and pious life spent in solitude, prayer and vigil, in counsel wisely given, in sympathy and intercession a life wholly dedicate and apart. 2 1 From Lives of the Women Saints, E. E. Text. S., p. 109. 2 On the anchoresses, see The Ancren Riwle, J3th century, ed. G. J. Merton, Camden Society, 1853 ; and F. M. Steele, Anchoresses of the West^ 1903. 320 THE ENGLISH SAINTS Another and much rarer type of the woman saint among the English folk is the mystic. From this place the gentle hopefulness of Juliana of Norwich has been beautifully commemorated. 1 The Julians and Julianas of English dedications are hopelessly confused : 2 and Julitta of North Cornwall claims place among them, with S. Julitta of Tarsus, whose name was borne by the ruined chapel at Tintagel. 3 The name Juliana was in- deed highly reverenced in England in the Middle Ages, as the two famous manuscripts telling the story of a S. Juliana of some Roman persecution show. 4 But Juliana of Norwich whose memory was merged in that of the others seems to have come near to S. Teresa in the keenness of her spiritual insight. The charac- teristic thoughts of her exquisite revelation of a pure soul bound by cords of love to the Lord of Life are summed up in those happy words, which answer so many questionings of medieval saints and modern sinners, " To me was showed none harder hell than sin." Side by side with her sincere and gentle thoughts may be set the lines attributed to that striking personality, that ruler of women and leader of men, S. Itha (S. Issey) of Cornwall, one of those Irish missionaries whose influence on the West of England was so strong during the days before English Christianity had begun : 1 See W. R. Inge, Bampton Lectures, 1899 (Christian Mys- ticisni), pp. 20 1 sqg.; and Revelations of Divine Love, ed. Collins. 2 See Arnold- Forster, Studies in Church Dedications. 3 See Baring - Gould, Catalogue of Cornish Saints, iii. 219- 220. 4 See Early Eng. Text. Soc., Juliana, 1872. WOMEN AND CHILDREN AMONG THE SAINTS 321 " Sons of princes, sons of kings Though they to my country come, Not from them make I demands ! Jesus is my rest, my home. " Sing in chorus, damsels pure, Greatest tribute is His due, High in heaven His throne endure, Though he comes to me and you." 1 Characteristic features indeed of English womanhood are brought into prominence by these lives of women saints. Strength and gentleness are rarely severed in their stories : their devotion does not unfit them for rule, but rather clears their vision, purifies their powers from all taint of self-will, sends them forth, either to teach and govern in cloisters where the arts of civiliza- tion and religion were cultivated, or to bring up children in the fear of the Lord, to train princes for kingship and bright-hearted children for the consecrated life. There is a mark on the histories of these English saints which is not on that of the famous Italians, or Spaniards, or French women, who have been ranked among the Saints of God. It is the mark which is still seen on the lives of many English sisters and in the nurture of many English homes. It seems to us that foreign women saints had often a lack of restraint bordering upon hysteria. Hallucinations of sight, touch, and hearing, are frequent accompaniments of what they have believed to be revelations : a passion for suffering and humiliation, or an ecstatic sense, almost physical, of the Divine presence, approach, or pass, the bounds 1 Translation by Rev. S. Baring-Gould, in Catalogue of Cornish Saints, iii. p. 211, from Whitley Stokes Felire of Oengus, p. xxxv. 21 322 THE ENGLISH SAINTS of sanity. 1 The caution is constantly given by Bene- dict XIV. that women are much more liable than men to illusions, to unreal visions and apparitions, that they must undergo more severe tests when their sanctity is in question, and the like. 2 They are cautions which the history of the Church abroad shows to have been abundantly needed. 8 But in England a perfect sim- plicity is mingled more commonly, we think, than in other lands, with knowledge. S. Hilda's influence is still strong among English students. Knowledge, prudence, simplicity, devotion not the extremes of Latin asceticism or the flamboyant courage of French types of female saintliness, or the restricted outlook of the German, but a calm, sane, and complete dedica- tion to the work given by God, that is what the Church has taught through the lives of Englishwomen of the past to Englishwomen still to come. When we speak of women saints in England we can never speak of them alone. Whether as abbesses, with great schools under their charge, or as royal ladies, ruling their households in the fear of God, the women saints have always had children very near their hearts in the love of God. We pass naturally from them to the stories of child martyrs and child saints. Of the kings we have already spoken. The other saints are all poor. Among the English saint-legends 1 Cf. the quotations in W. James, Varieties of Religious Ex- perience, pp. 310, 311, 343-345, from Bougaud, Histoite de la bienheureuse Marguerite Marie. " De Canonizatione et Beatificatione Sanctorum; e.g. vol. vi., pp. 415 W- 3 The case of Madame de Guyon is perhaps the best known. See the admirable account of her in Lord St. Cyres's Fenelon. WOMEN AND CHILDREN AMONG THE SAINTS 323 of the Middle Age it is impossible to ignore the many of which the old Lincolnshire song is the reminiscence : " How can I pity your weep, mother, And I so long in pain ? For the little penknife sticks close in my heart And the Jew's wife has me slain. " Go home, go home, my mother dear, And prepare my winding sheet ; For to-morrow morning before eight o'clock You with my body shall meet. " And lay the prayer-book at my head And my grammar at my feet ; That all the little schoolfellows as they pass by May read them for my sake." 1 It is now believed that the story, which became common all over Europe, originated in England. It was first asserted that Jews had murdered a Christian child : then it was added that this was a sacrifice allowed by their law, and indeed enjoined. This latter view has had an extraordinary vogue throughout Europe, but it must be regarded as completely dis- proved. 2 But of the belief of medieval Europe that 1 From English Country Songs (Broadwood and Fuller Mait- land, 1893), p. 86. ' 2 The classical work on the subject is Die Blutaberglaube, Dr. H. L. Strack, Miinchen, 1891. In a very clear and impressive article in The Nineteenth Century^ vol. xiv., pp. 753-7?8, Dr. C. H. H. Wright argued the subject in relation to the Tisza-Eszlar case, 1882. The original statements on the subject are those of Josephus, Contra Apionem, ii. 8, and Socrates, Hist. Eccl., vii. 16. In the case of S. William of Norwich, it seems to have been asserted from the first that there was a custom of the Jews to murder Christian children : e.g., S. William of Norwich, Jessopp and James, pp. 44 and 88. 21 2 324 THE ENGLISH SAINTS several Christian children had been martyred by Jews in contempt or abhorrence of the religion of Christ there can be no doubt at all : and the belief had so important a share in the popular cult of saints that it must be referred to in some detail. In 1144 at Norwich in Holy Week occurred the murder of a poor little ragged boy 1 named William, the son of country folk called Wenstan and Elwina. He was only eleven or twelve years old, but was learning the trade of a skinner ; and he was a good boy, much devoted to the rules of the Church, to prayer and piety. He had often visited Jews, but had now been forbidden to do so. On the Monday and Tuesday before Easter he was lured away from his employment against his mother's wishes, and finally he was taken into a Jew's house, after which he was never seen alive. On Easter eve his body was found in Thorpe wood, with suspicious wounds and the head shaved, from which it seems to have been thought that the child had been murdered by Jews in contempt and derision of the Passion of Christ. The body was first buried where it was found, after it had been seen by many people : a month later it was trans- lated to the Monks' Cemetery. The Jews were mean- while formally accused of the crime : popular indigna- tion was excited in every possible way : but the sheriff (whether he was bribed or not, as was suggested by the monks) was quite strong enough to protect the Jews as the king's most precious chattels, and he did protect them. No punishment was ever inflicted. The sus- picion was not brought home. 1 S. William of Norwich, p. 87. WOMEN AND CHILDREN AMONG THE SAINTS 325 We may in all probability dismiss the idea of an organized or in any sense sacrificial act : but since there is no sign whatever of previous preparations of such a charge, or of popular resentment at the favoured posi- tion of the Jews taking this line, we cannot refuse to believe that, in all probability, the boy was murdered by a Jew. 1 The description of what actually happened in the Jew's house must be purely imaginary : it is supposed to come partly from a Jew who had turned Christian, who in any case was not present. But it is of interest because it was undoubtedly spread abroad over England, and the people came everywhere to believe that a child had been tortured in imitation of the Passion and fixed to a cross by Jews, " as though they would say, Even as we condemned the Christ to a shameful death, so let us also condemn the Christian, so that, uniting the Lord with His servant in a like punishment, we may retort upon themselves the pain of that reproach which they impute to us." 2 1 Dr. M. R.James writes thus (Introduction, p. Ixxii) : " I should think nothing of the evidence were it not that we are dealing with the first of all the medieval accusations of child-murder. But that is a very important point. The way in which those on the spot received the notion is instructive. It did not command an unques- tioning reception. There were many doubters . . . ; and their disbelief was owing in great part, no doubt, to the lack of good evidence ; but also, we must allow, to the fact that the idea was a new one. No one can accept Theobald's account of the murder as a thing done every year by the most cultured and enlightened Jews of Europe : but as the result of accident, or as the deed of an insane or superstitious Jew, it is not incredible." What we have to account for is the origination of the idea : and on the whole it is most probable that it originated in fact. 2 vS\ William of Norwich, p. 21. 326 THE ENGLISH SAINTS It was this which made the monks of Norwich answer boldly to those who denied that there was a martyrdom at all " As to that which is urged against us ' Martirem pena non facit sed causa,' we too agree that it is so. But verily we have seen the marks of the sufferings on the holy William's body and it is plain that the cause of those sufferings was Christ, in scorn of whom he was condemned and slain. In like manner and for the same reason it was not their sufferings which earned for the holy Innocents the glory of martyrdom, but the grace of Christ, Who was the cause of their death." 1 It was a modern parallel to the Innocents, to the boy-martyrs Celsus 2 and Pancras. 3 S. William of Norwich soon came to rank among the most popular saints of England, with S. Edmund the King and S. Thomas of Canterbury. 4 One of the last records of the English chronicler was that of the English boy who suffered for Christ. It was in Stephen's day, when " men said openly that Christ slept and His saints," that "the Jews of Norwich bought a Christian child before Easter and tortured him with all the same tor- ments with which our Lord was tortured ; and on Long Friday they hanged him on the road for our Lord's love and afterwards buried him. They thought that it would be hidden but our Lord manifested that he was an holy martyr : and the monks took him and buried him honourably in the Minster, and he performs, 1 5. IVtlliam of Norwich, p. 96. 2 Acta SS., Jan. 9. He is not given by Alban Butler or Baring- Gould. 3 S. Gregory, Epp. iv. 18, vi. 49. 4 See S. William of Norwich, pp. 289 sqq. WOMEN AND CHILDREN AMONG THE SAINTS 327 through our Lord, wonderful and manifold miracles, and he is called Saint William." 1 The truth or falsehood of the case of William o( Norwich can hardly be considered apart from the other cases, which occurred within a few years of his death. In 1168 a boy named Harold was alleged to have been murdered by the Jews at Gloucester: 2 in 1181 "the holy boy Robert was martyred and buried " in the Abbey of S. Edmund : 3 at an unknown date a boy named Herbert suffered at Huntingdon : 4 and in 1192 a boy was said to have been murdered by the Jews at Winchester. 5 In 1244 the body of a boy was found in London with Hebrew letters written or painted on the limbs and trunk, and signs of torture. He was buried in S. Paul's with great ceremony. 6 In 1255 occurred the case most notable of all next to that of S. William. It was said that a great assembly of Jews from all England after a mock trial murdered a little boy named Hugh with mimicry of the crucifixion. 7 He had last 1 A.-S. Chron. after year 1137. See Earle and Plummer, ii. 311-12. The "buying" might be substantiated from Thomas of Monmouth, but is contrary to the view of John of Tynemouth, Nova Legenda, ii. 452. Hist. S. Pet. Gto., i. 20. 3 Jocelin of Brakelond, Chron., p. 12. Jocelin wrote an account of the martyrdom and miracles which is lost. 4 Chron. Melrose, p. 91. 5 Richard of Devizes, Chron., p. 435. Matthew Paris, iv. 377-8. 7 Matthew Paris, v. 516-18: Nova Legenda, ii. 39-41: both in considerable detail. See Letters of Henry III., ed. Shirley, p. no. See also Little S. Hugh of Lincoln, boy and martyr, Lond., 1894, reprinted from the Jewish Chronicle. A thirteenth century French poetic version of the story was edited by M. Francisque Michel, 1834- 328 THE ENGLISH SAINTS been seen entering a Jew's house, and his body was found at the bottom of a well. A Jew, perhaps from fear, or hope to escape, declared that he had been crucified, according to a common custom of the Jews, as a Paschal offering. For this many Jews were arrested : and it seems that the crime was so far brought home to the satisfaction of the king's justices in London that eighteen suffered for it. The cult of S. Hugh grew rapidly. He was buried in Lincoln Minster, his tomb was a favourite place of pilgrimage for centuries, and his fame far surpassed that of any other Lincolnshire saint. It is very difficult to account for the firm belief all over England in these charges if there was no founda- tion for any of them. 1 The cases of insult by the Jews, practically safe under the royal protection, of sacred emblems and processions, are undoubted. The cruel attacks on Jews were clearly not unprovoked by in- solence and greediness. The position of the Jews, with special privileges and protections yet alien from the sympathies of those among whom they chose to dwell, was bitterly resented by the people. But the clergy and the monks spoke almost invariably with the fullest charity. 2 The Canon Law expressly stated that Jews are not to be baptized against their will or to be con- 1 Bishop Stubbs said once in my hearing that while the stories were too numerous to be all true they were too numerous 10 be all void of credit. 2 With the exception of Thomas of Monmouth almost every chronicler speaks with reticence upon these cases of alleged ritual- murder ; and outrages on the Jews are hardly ever approved. Thomas Wykes, Chron., p. 141, speaks of the slaughter of Jews in 1264 as inhuman and impious. WOMEN AND CHILDREN AMONG THE SAINTS 329 demned without justice or spoiled of their goods or disturbed at their festivals or their cemeteries to be molested. 1 And S. Bernard's famous protest against ill usage of the Jews is typical of the attitude which the Church assumed to those whom she longed to win to the love of God in Christ. 2 In no case save only that of little S. Hugh was any Jew punished for this crime, however strong the contemporary writers show the popular suspicion to have been : and in that case many of those charged were released on the urgent interces- sion of the Mendicant Friars. 3 Judged as illustrations of medieval feeling the stories of S. Hugh, S. William, and the rest are most to be noticed for the pathos and sentiment with which they are told. They show an intimate sympathy with child-life, a tendency to idealize it, an endeavour to apply the Redeemer's saying " of such is the kingdom of heaven." The significance of each story, it is im- possible to doubt it as they are studied, and as the out- ward expression of the cult in each case is traced does not lie in hatred to the Jews, but in love and compassion for children and especially the children of the poor. Those who worshipped at the shrines of S. Hugh and S. William were the childless, priests and monks and lonely women ; and the tears which might have fallen over the pains or the sins of a son were shed at the grave which represented an ideal of child-life, 1 Corpus juris Canonici, Friedeberg, ii., cc. 771-8, quoted by Jacobs, Jews of Angei.>in England, p. 183. 2 M. Bouquet, xv., 606. See Cotter Morison, Life of S. Bernard, p. 375. S. Bernard Epist. 365. 3 Matthew Paris, v. 519, 546. 552. Burton Annals, 346. 330 THE ENGLISH SAINTS pure, simple, holy, resting trustfully in the love of God. 1 1 A curious tale, a sort of inverted version of those mentioned above, is given by Gregory of Tours, Libri Miraculorum vi : de gloria martyrum, cap. 10 (ed. Migne, ff. 714-15). A Jewish boy of Bourges who went to school with Christians one day received the Body and Blood of Christ with them. When he returned home his father put him into a furnace, in which he was preserved, and saw a vision of the B. V. M., till the Christians hearing of it rescued him, and thrust his father into the flames where he perished immediately. Cf. Evagrius, Hist. EccL (ed. Bidez & Parmentier, 1898), lib. iv. c. 36. LECTURE VIII THE COMPLETION OF FAITH " Compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses . . looking unto Jesus, the Leader and Finisher of Faith. "- HEBREWS xii. i, 2. IN illustrating the effect upon national character of the doctrine of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ it has been attempted to set forth, by representative examples, the witness of Faith, to show it as it affected the lives of Englishmen how, gradually, from Gaul and Celt, from Roman and Teuton, there was evolved the type of Christian character which we know to-day. As we turn back to those old days when Faith, as Christians know it, was young,_and the ways of Christ were untrodden by many feet, to the time before the responsibility of knowledge pressed heavily on ancient and stable nations who owe their civilization to the law and devotion of the Church, it may be that the severance between our lives and theirs seems more real than the similarity. But at least we cannot neglect the debt that we owe to those who first taught our fathers in the name of Christ. Those who have least sympathy with the system of Catholicism ape not the last to admit Jts services to religion and humanity. [33i ] 33 2 THE ENGLISH SAINTS " No modern Church," says an eminent Presbyterian writer, " is yet great enough to despise the medieval Church the Church which, with all its faults, was by far the mightiest and most beneficent agent in the formation of Christendom out of barbarism and con- fusion." 1 And of all the legacies which the Middle Ages bequeathed there is none so precious as the developed Christian character, the imitation of Christ as it is revealed in the lives of the saints, the witness of Faith in that encompassing cloud which shadows us as the _world advances on its way. So much we must say as we complete our survey of the medieval saints. Types have been set before us in which the witness of Faith is visibly expressed, types which have tried, with varying success, to image forth the Divine Manhood as it worked in national character and in the circumstances of different lives. Kings and missionaries, hermits and statesmen, scholars, monks, women, the pathos of suffering childhood, all have been made to furnish the witness of the Saints to the faith in God. Why do we pause at this crisis of our national history, at the end of the Middle Ages, when the Renaissance and the Reformation gave to men wider outlook, greater liberty, and those not least in the household of the Church ? Because, it may suffice for the moment to answer, it was then that the national character was seen to be formed. Such as Englishmen had become then, such they have remained. Ideas, as the years went on, were made emphatic, or 1 Professor Robert Flint, D.D., Agnosticism (1903), p. 483. THE COMPLETION OF FAITH 333 vivified into life, and each as it worked left its impress on the lives of men. In the Reformation the search for the absolute truth of God as He has revealed it to men ; in the struggles of the seventeenth century the deep sense of the binding force which links together the expression of human thought in the Church and in the State, and the loyalty to the powers ordained of God which is the teaching of the New Testament ; the strength of a vivid assurance of God's Personal action in mercy to the individual soul through the Evangelical movement of the eighteenth century; the consciousness of corporate fellowship in the Divine Society which is the Body of Christ all these were vividly presented in their effects on the lives of Englishmen, and each has left some great name as a shining example of its power. But not one of them was a new idea, not one was unknown to the medieval Church, or without its repre- sentative figure among the medieval saints. The English character had reached maturity : since then the changes have been only those subtle ones which, as in the character of men and women indi- vidually, it is so hard to estimate or to trace. Change there is, undoubtedly : changes there are that may be feared or hoped for ; but the main lines are the same. It may be said of the English character, as Burke said of the English constitution, that " in what we improve we are never wholly new, in what we retain we are never wholly obsolete." 1 Liberty and honour : those are the achievements on which most English- men would still pride themselves, the treasures which we should still claim to be the national heritage in 1 Reflections on the French Revolution, \ 790, p. 48. 334 THE ENGLISH SAINTS the Church of Christ. And they carry with them more. The Englishman, it has been well said, " takes with him wherever he goes a notion of liberty which is associated with duty and justice." 1 It is one of the characteristics of the strong firm national type which has been prominent for centuries : and " valour and good faith " are set beside it as the qualities which Englishmen have always claimed as their own. And they are the qualities which are most eloquent in the lives of the English saints. You may go back over our list and trace them everywhere : and with them also you will see how the holy men who set these patterns by the grace of Christ have left their impress set in- delibly upon the name of Englishman. How in some virtues, in some qualities of the Divine Nature as Jesus imaged it among men, our nation remains deficient, no candid observer will fail to see. The complete humility of Francis of Assisi, the mental absorption in God of S. Teresa, the fiery enthusiasm of S. Francis Xavier, perhaps the true chivalry of S. Louis, are not unknown among us, but they are rare. We have our own defects as well as the strength of our ancestors, and they are those which acute inquirers saw four hundred years ago. 2 So, not unfitly, at the epoch of Reformation, there closed for us in England the canon of the saints. 3 It is 1 Bishop Creighton, Romanes Lecture. 2 Cf. Venetian Relation of England (temp. Hen. VII.), Camden Society. 3 The phrase is not a technical or accurate one, but it is con- venient and I think permissible. THE COMPLETION OF FAITH 335 not that the society in which these lives were cherished can no longer bring forth fruit in perfection : but not unnaturally or unwisely the technical expression of it, the formal recognition won in past times, has ceased to be given. And yet this silence is not unbroken. The English Church in the stress of her great movement of reform did not ignore the past. In the Kalendar as Church and State alike sanctioned it there was the studied commemoration of the work of those saints who in a peculiar sense illustrate English history, and there was also as markedly a recognition of the shadowing sorrows that beset the life of Christian faith. And in one name the reformed English Church seemed to see those two thoughts united. A great Oxford man of letters in one of his volumes of luminous criticism which he collected, touched with a sympathetic insistence on the pathos of English kingship 1 on that note of sadness which runs through the lives of those set above others in this land and makes them akin to the lowest by the fellowship of suffering. It is a thought familiar to all those who have read the lives of the saints. It is a sentiment that has never been forgotten. It might seem that it was this aspect of our monarchy which Shakespeare especially elected to dwell upon : 2 in this lies the distinction of his tragical histories. It is not merely the thought that " Happy low lie down ; Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown :" 1 Walter Pater, Appreciations, pp. 192-212. 2 Another aspect of Shakespeare's view, the moral, is dwelt upon by Canon H. C. Beeching in a sermon, S. Luke xviii. 14, printed in the Church Family Newspaper, August 15, 1902. 336 THE ENGLISH SAINTS nor even the vast weight of responsibility which hangs upon one who has a nation in his charge " Upon the king ! let us our lives, our souls, Our debts, our careful wives, our children and Our sins lay on the king. We must bear all " but that the pains and miseries common to humanity seem to touch those in highest station with a doubly- sharpened barb : and so verily " Tis better to be lowly born And range with humble livers in content Than to be perk'd up in a glistering grief And wear a golden sorrow." They stand above us, so Shakespeare seems to say, and while they are the very fellows of our nature, yet there is an added pathos in their lives. They share our sorrows to the full ; and, further, there is that in their position, which to themselves as well as in the public gaze wherein they stand, makes grief more grievous and the pathos of life more pathetic still. Nor is this a mere literary exaggeration of the great master of poetic art ; there is something in the feeling which we recognize as entirely true. There is a dis- tinctness and a vividness in the lives round which English history centres which is not due solely to their intrinsic greatness, or to the fulness of our knowledge of them, or to anything in itself remarkable in the record of their deeds, but to a certain pitifulness which the heart of the people age after age has recognized, and clung to, and made immortal. The legend of the imprisoned hero answering the voice of his minstrel ; or the touching figure of the boy held up to the view of his people in his last days of mortal weakness ; the THE COMPLETION OF FAITH 337 pathetic dignity of the unhappy man whose sad fate blotted out the memory of his errors and made him a martyr in the eyes of the next generations ; the piteous story of the old king awakening the solemn strains of the organ till their very grandeur overpowered him and with a flood of tears he relapsed into hopeless insanity : these are instances that have appealed deeply to men's hearts. Sharply the lives of Kings stand out : and more than ever was this felt in the stormy days that came with the reformation of the English Church. Henry VIII., with his mastering passions, Elizabeth, with her tact and her virtues of public life, were ever in their sub- jects' eye. The language of courtly veneration made a new literature of its own. And when all this was brought to the sharp test of civil strife, when blood flowed freely, and hearts were bitter in assault and in revenge, it was round " the Lord's Anointed " that the struggle raged. So in the moment of supreme crisis all thoughts were turned to him who was, who had been, King. England looked back, after the years of war and tumult, out of the mist of private suffering and public discontent, to the days so long ago when she could point to her Kings as suffering among the people. Charles I. seemed to revive the memory of Henry VI., as Henry VI. had made men think of the confessors and martyrs before the Conquest. 1 1 From the mass of literature illustrating what may fitly be called the cultus of Charles, King and Martyr, the following is a representative, though inadequate, list : (i) Reliquice Sacra Carolina; or the works of that great monarch and glorious martyr King Charles I. Hague, 1650. (2) Sylloge variorum, 1649. (This contains his letters, etc., and a Latin version of the 22 338 THE ENGLISH SAINTS The close association between Church and State in England which was emphasized by the Reformation led inevitably to the claim of saintliness and martyr- dom for the King who shed his blood on the scaffold. other accounts of his death.) (3) Attributed in the Bodleian Cata- logue (following Halkett and Laing, Diet, of Anon. Lit.} to Browne (Robert) The Subjecfs Sorrow, lamentations upon the death of Britain^* Josiah, King Charles. (There is really not sufficient evidence to decide upon the authorship of this tract.) (4) Philipps (Fabian) King Charles I. no man of blood but a Martyr for his people. 1649, 4. (a full enquiry whether the King began the war). (5) Aeterntz memories el sanctis manibus Caroli I., Anglice proto-martyris-regii sacrum (Lat. and English, also French poems), in Vatidnium votivum or Palcemorfs prophetick prayer. Utrecht [?] 1649. (6) P. Molineux, Canon of Canterbury, Regii Sanguinis clamor ad cesium adversus patricidas anglicanos. Hague, 1652 (a defence and support of Salmasius. Milton is thus spoken of (P- 9)> " Q u i s et unde dubium, homone an vermis heri e sterqui- linio editus.") It says (p. 85) that Juxon declared that the King especially ordered him to tell the Prince as the last command of his dying father not to punish his murderers. (7) The last counsel of a Martyred King to his Son, 1660 (gives his last letter Nov. 26, 1648, to his son and his conversation with Juxon and an Elegie]. (8) Blood for Blood, or Murthers Revenged. Oxford, 1 66 1. (An account of King Charles the Martyr, Montrose and Argyle, Overbury and Turner, Sands and his two sons, Knight and Butler. It is a series of tales chiefly of adultery and murder, to which is added a sort of religious aspect by the tale of the avenging of Charles I.) (9) The character of that glorious martyred King Charles I. , being a brief description of his religious reign, etc. Lond., 1660. (10) The faithful^ yet imperfect, character of a glorious King, King Charles /., his country's and religion's martyr. Lond., 1660. (n) The King advancing. . . . Lond., 1660. (A poem in Latin and English entitled Magni Manes Caroli regis et martyris.} (12) Glanville (Rev. Joseph) A loyal tear dropped on the vault of our late martyred sovereign. . . . Rom. xiii. 2. Lond., 1667. (13) A sober and reasonable com- memoration of the yoth day of January, 1648, being the day of the THE COMPLETION OF FAITH 339 To those who suffered under the stern rule of Crom- well, and to those who restored the Stewart to the throne, England seemed to have been at the mercy of men " who were engaged in the black design of sub- martyrdom of King Charles I. Lond., 1681. (Single leaf folio, broad- sheet). (14) On the martyrdom of King Charles /., a Pindaric ode. Lond., 1683. (15) Our modern demagogues modesty- . . . a vindication of the royal martyr's sacred memory Jrom the antiquated calumnies of the villain Milton . . . (circa 1689.) (16) A just defence of the Royal Martyr from the many false and malicious aspersions in Ludlow's Memoirs. Lond., 1699. (17) Memoirs of the two last years of the reign of that un- paralleled Prince Charles /., by Sir Tho. Herbert . . . with the character of that blessed martyr, by the Rev. John Diodati. . . . Lond., 1702. (i 8) -A vindication of the royal martyr from the Irish massacre in 1641. Lond., 1750. (19) A voice from the shades ; or the death and sufferings of the royal martyr revived. Also the speeches and sufferings of the Earl of Strafford and Arch- bishop Laud, whose speeches may serve as a perpetual memorial of those times. Lond., 1709. (20) Monarchy sacrificed . . . speeches of the royal martyr, King Charles I. Lond., 1710. (This like the last is a collection of speeches on the scaffold.) (21) The royal martyr : or, a poem on the martyrdom of King Charles I. Lond., 1715. (22) An attempt towards the character of the royal martyr, King Charles I. Lond., 1738. (23) The case of the royal martyr considered with candour, vol. ii. Lond., 1758. (24) A melius inquirendum into the character of the royal martyr, King Charles 7. Lond., 1758. A vindication : very bitter against Milton. I make this very brief selection from an enormous mass of litera- ture as roughly illustrative of the different forms in which the King's martyrdom was commemorated. A full and elaborate work on the King, with a complete account of the cultus, has been prepared by the Hon. Mrs. Greville Nugent. She has kindly sent me some most interesting notes of her researches. I have not incorporated them, as I found my studies were taking a somewhat different direction : but I hope that the work, which should be of great value and interest, may soon be published. The book is entitled 22 2 340 THE ENGLISH SAINTS verting the constitution of their country." 1 Those are the words of a calm thinker whom no " enthusiasm " misled : and when he came to speak of the death of King Charles he could only describe it as the crisis of the time when " our Constitution in Church and State [was] destroyed under pretence not only of religion, but of securing liberty, and carrying it to a greater height." 2 Charles was taken as having died to preserve the Constitution. The claim that he made at the begin- ning of the war was accepted. The Church regarded him as having perished in defence of his trust. It was clear from the first what form the com- memoration would take. The cult of Charles as a martyr began immediately on his death, though its earliest manifestations had to be, however thinly, veiled. Within a few days was published a tract entitled " The Devilish Conspiracy, Hellish Treason, Heathenish Condemnation, and Damnable Murder, committed and executed by the lewes, against the Anointed of the Lord, Christ their King, and the just Judgment of God severely executed upon those Traytors and Murderers. As it was de- livered in a Sermon on the 4 Feb. 1648," (i.e., 1649). Plus Regum, and its accomplished author writes to me that its object is to reawaken interest in " our own, our royal saint," and to prove " that he really was canonized and venerated in the seventeenth century, and to try to combat this ^//^^z-decanonization which political complications and other regrettable things have, alas ! brought about in some measure." The interest in the subject both in England and America should cause the speedy publication of this book. 1 Bishop Butler, Sermons (ed. Bernard), p. 235. 2 Ibid., p. 236. THE COMPLETION OF FAITH 341 This showed the lines on which the veneration of the King was to follow. It was the position which was at once claimed for him by the earliest preachers. Henry Leslie, who preached before the King's children at Breda, when the news came of the execution, elabor- ately compared the sufferings of Charles to those of his Divine Master, and spoke of him as "the best of Kings." " Never," he said, " was there yet any Prince that sate upon a Throne, who was beyond him for piety and prudence, for all heroicall and Christian graces." 1 So again, within a few days, A Groane at the Funerall of that incomparable and glorious Martyr, Charles the First (written by J. B., 1649) contains the lines : " Pilate's consent is Bradshaw's sentence here : The Judgment Hall's removed to Westminster. Hayle to the Reeden Scepter ; th' Head and knee Act o'er againe that Cursed Pageantrie. * * * * * The Church in Thee had still her A v mies ; thus The world once fought with Athanasius." The same is the tone of sermons and apologies for many years : Charles gave his life for his people, men said. Rather than consent to wrong, he died. It was thus that, in the steps of his Master, he followed S. Edmund and S. Alphege in the way of martyrdom. In making this claim for her royal son the Church of England whatever members of her communion, clerk and lay, might do set forth no impossible position. 1 The Martyrdonie of K. Charles, or his conformity with Christ in His sufferings. A sermon on i Cor. ii. 8, preached at Breda before Charles II. and the Prince of Orange; original edition, Hague (S. Brown), 1649 ; London, said to be reprint (or was it original ?), 1649. Ity Henry, Lord Bishop of Down and Connor. 342 THE ENGLISH SAINTS " It is as natural," said Keble, when he preached before the University of Oxford on the day of King Charles the Martyr, " that the Church of England should keep this day as it is that Christ's universal Church should keep S. Stephen's martyrdom." But it was no strained assertion of spotless innocence that was made when this was said. Sanctity never implied infallibility. No one in those days claimed to be infallible, theologically or morally. Rather the Church declared that here was one who had struggled hard to live according to the law of Christ, who had fallen and been raised again, and who at last gave up his life for a cause that was the highest he knew. " Had Charles," declared a great historian and bishop whose memory is still green among us here, " been willing to abandon the Church, and give up Episco- pacy, he might have saved his throne and his life. But on this point Charles stood firm ; for this he died, and by dying saved it for the future." 1 Theologically, the position that Charles had main- tained was that of the Church of England. 2 So the 1 Bishop Creighton (1895, Laud Commemoration Lectures, p. 25). 2 E.g., see Reliquia Sacra Carolines (printed by Samuel Browne at the Hague, 1650; a small thick octavo). This contains the papers written at Newcastle and at Carisbrooke, all showing a steady adherence to the Church and emphasis on the Apostolic Succession. L.g., p. 199, His Majesty s second paper : "When I am made a judge over the Reformed Churches, then, and not before, will I censure their actions ; as you must prove, before I confess it, that Presbyters 'without a Bishop may lawfully ordain other Pres- byters; and as for the Administration of Baptism, as I think none will say, that a Woman can lawfully, or duly administer it, though when done, it be valid ; so none ought to do it, but a lawful Pres- byter, whom you cannot deny but to be absolutely necessary for the Sacrament of the Eucharist." THE COMPLETION OF FAITH 343 Church remembered " the tragedy of the royal martyr, itself the sealing of the crown of England in the faith of the Church." 1 His declaration at Newport was explicit : 11 I conceive that Episcopal Government is most consonant to the Word of God, and of an apostolical institution, as it appears by the Scripture, to have been practised by the Apostles themselves, and by them committed, and derived to particular persons as their substitutes or successors therein (as for ordaining Presbyters and Deacons, giving rules concerning Chris- tian Discipline, and exercising censures over Presbyters and others) and hath ever since to these last times been exercised by Bishops in all the Churches of Christ, and therefore I cannot io conscience consent to abolish the said Government." But not only the cause made him martyr : there was witness too in the goodness of his personal life. Though, as Laud said, he was "a mild and gracious prince who knew not how to be or to be made great," and who even might " forget or deny " his word, he was a man who earnestly set his mind on good. Of no English King could there be given more simple record of a life that, with all its failures, was lived in the fear and love of God. That was the constant appeal of his apologists : and no one could meet it. When they would accuse him of sin it must be for loving to read Shakespeare or quoting Philip Sidney in his prayers. Of grievous falls, of the death-warrant of Strafford, his foes had not the face to speak : and, when those were remembered, it was remembered also that, in weakness 1 Bishop Stubbs, A Sermon, February 3. 1901. [Preached at Windsor, and privately printed.] 344 THE ENGLISH SAINTS often, he had still tried to walk humbly and penitently with God. Let us hear some words that those who spoke of him could say. Perrinchief s " Royal Martyr " is a fit example. It makes no apology for sin, but it claims the mercy of God : " When the State of his Soul required, He was as ready to perform those more severe parts of religion which seem most distasteful to Flesh and Blood. And he never refused to take to Himself the shame of those acts wherein He had transgressed, that He might give glory to his God. For after the army had forced Him from Holmeby, and in their several removes had brought him to Latmas, an house of the Earl of Devonshire, on Aug. I, being Sunday, in the morning before Sermon He led forth with Him into the garden the Reverend Dr. Sheldon (who then attended on him, and whom he was pleased to use as His Confessour), and drawing out of His pocket a paper, commanded him to read it, transcribe it, and so to deliver it to Him again. This Paper contained several Vows, which He had obliged His Soul unto for the Glory of His Maker, the advance of true Piety, and the emolument of the Church. And among them this was one, that he would do Publick Penance for the Injustice He had suffered to be done to the Earl of Strafford, His consent to those Injuries that were done to the Church of England (though at that time He had yielded to no more than the taking away of the High Commission and the Bishops' power to vote in Parliament) and to the Church of Scotland ; and adjured the Doctor, that if ever he saw him in a condition to observe that or any other of those vows, he should solicitously mind THE COMPLETION OF FAITH 345 Him of the Obligations, as he dreaded the guilt of the breach should lie upon his own soul. This voluntary submission to the Laws of Christianity exceeded that so memorable humiliation of the good Emperour Theo- dosius, for he never bewailed the blood of those seven thousand men which in three hours' space he caused to be spilt at Thessalonica, till the resolution of S. Ambrose made him sensible of the Crime. But the Piety of King Charles anticipated the severity of a Confessor for those offences to which He had been precipitated by the Violence of others. . . . His Dis- course with Henderson shews how just a Reverence He had for the authority of the Catholick Church, against the Pride and Ignorance of Schismaticks ; yet not to prostitute his faith to the adulterations of the Roman Infallibility and Traditions." 1 An earlier commemoration, in the year of his death, wrote freely while men still mourned : " His religious piety renders it-selfe glorious in His great love, feare, and honour of God ; His zeale and devout frequency in prayer, receiving the Sacraments, and reading the Holy Scriptures, His reverence in God's house, His attention unto God's word preached the esteeme He had of God's messengers, His hatred of heresie, and the zealous care he had (as it was con- sistent with Charity) to propagate the true worship of God, the Protestant religion ; this in the purity thereof, He established by His Laws, enlarged with his Regall 1 The Royal Martyr, London, 1676, pp. 215, 216. Cf. for the King's vow Sheldon's own full account, printed in Le Neve's Lives of the Bishops since the Reformation, 1720, vol. i., part i., pp. 178, 179. 346 THE ENGLISH SAINTS authority, cleansed from that rust it had contracted through the atheism and ignorance of the times, by the contemptibleness of the outward worship, adorned with decency and order in the publique service, and with cost upon the places dedicate unto that service ; but chiefly he beautified it with the glorious example of his holy life, and encouragement of the officers thereof, whom he rewarded with the rewards of honour and maintenance : His Roy all Palace (as Theodosius Juniors) was a constant receipt for Learned and pious Prelates whom he entertained and cherished as the servants of the Great God and dispenser of the mysteries of grace ; which as it was an especial and infallible marke of the sincerity of his humble piety, so through the supercilious irreligion of the times did that (which should have most endeared him unto Christians) draw neglect and contempt upon him from them (and those great ones too) who love nothing of Christianity but the naked name." 1 He had, all men admitted, that rare virtue of princes, an entire self-command. " A prince he was, so extraordinary enricht with grace, that temptations seemed to assault him, to no end but to be defeated. Though he had but three Kingdoms, he deserved four Crowns ; but the most splendid of all, for his absolute Empire over himself: for, self-denyal which is the task of all other men, and the most harsh Discipline in the School of Christ, seemed to him but recreation : He was snow in the midd'st of Flames, and Fire in a Mass of Ice ; He was 1 The Subjects Sorrow, attributed to Robert Browne (see also p. 338, note i), a sermon upon Lam. iv. 20 (London, 1649). THE COMPLETION OF FAITH 347 sober in the middest of Youth, when all others are loose and wild ; spotless in dispight of sanguin ; he was humble in the glories of a Court, which usually make others giddy and vain." 1 And to the life were added the touching dignities of the last scene, of his "second marriage day." To fit himself for death was no strange thing to him, who had for so long twice daily in private for an hour and twice daily in public, giving prayer and praise to God. 2 His last hours were wholly given to prayer, to thoughts of forgiveness, and to the Sacrament of the Lord's Body and Blood ; and there came to him in the proper lesson of the day, the 27th chapter of S. Matthew, the com- fort that made him " bless God it had so fallen out." And of the end, it was no royalist that wrote the not to be forgotten lines : " He nothing common did, or mean, Upon that memorable scene, But with his keener eye The axe's edge did try ; Nor call the gods with vulgar spite To vindicate his helpless right, But bowed his comely head Down as upon a bed." 1 T. L., Sad Memorials of the Royal Martyr, a sermon preached at Salisbury ; London, 1670, p. 9. Cf. the Qpyvudia sive elegia in injustissimam tnicidationem sanctissimi pritdentissimique principis Caroli Primi Magnce Britannia Gallice et Hibcrnice nuperrime l\egis, inhmnanissime perpetratam 30 die Januarii Anno Salutis Mundi 1648 (1649). 2 Sir Philip Warwick tells of his regularity in devotion, and " even when he went a hunting he never failed before he sat down to dinner to hear part of the Liturgy read to him and his menial servants;" and Alexander Henderson says that at Newcastle he spent two hours daily in private prayer, besides the two public offices of the Church. 348 THE ENGLISH SAINTS So he died, and so the White King was buried in a snow-covered pall. His death stamped upon men's hearts the belief that he was a true martyr. 1 And there was not wanting a still more powerful agent in the conversion of England to the veneration of his memory. The Eikon Basilike gave expression to the opinion which men came to have of King Charles. If it was not (as most probably it was not) 2 of this king's own composition, it gathered together with marvellous skill the thoughts which might well be put forth in vindication, in arrest of judgment, or in compassionate forgiveness of the sovereign who had been slain. It had at least some- 1 The accounts of Sir Thomas Herbert (1702) and Sir Philip Warwick (1701) cannot be surpassed for simple pathos. 2 The controversy as to the authorship has so little bearing on my subject that I will not reproduce the notes I have made on the subject. I will only say that the internal evidence (as examined by Mr. C. E. Doble in The Academy, 1883, pp. 330, 367, 402, 457) seems to me too strong to resist. The style is indubitably not at all like the King's, and is remarkably like Gauden's before and after the publication of the book. The external evidence is hardly con- clusive : see the elaborate examination of Wagstaffe in A Vindica- tion and A Defence of the Vindication. Mr. E. Almack's Biblio- graphy of the King's Book, 1896, adduces the MS. memoranda of Archbishop Tenison and Prince Rupert's MS. catalogue. This and much of Dr. Chr. Wordsworth's (Who Wrote EIKfiN BASIAIKH ? considered and answered, in two Letters addressed to the Abp. of Canterbury, 8vo., 1824,) argument does not really affect the question. It is obvious that if Gauden wrote it many were deceived. The mass of literature attempting to vindicate Charles's authorship leaves the reader undecided : and he has nothing to oppose to Mr. Doble's extremely close and practically convincing investigation. None the less, Dr. Wordsworth's arguments (and those of Miss C. M. Phillimore) are well worth consideration ; and the Bodleian volume (Wood, 363) of tracts on the subject (cf. also Life of John Toland, 1722, pp. 15-17) deserves reading through. THE COMPLETION OF FAITH 349 thing of the king's own writing : it had very much of what must have been his own feelings : it had most of all what his people came to think and feel about him. And if it was a plea for the dead king, it was at least as much a passionate defence of the Church of England. There need be no wonder then that the fullest asser- tion was made of sanctity and martyrdom, 1 that the 1 Mrs. Greville Nugent has very carefully collected and mar- shalled evidence to show that King Charles fully satisfied the conditions laid down by Benedict XIV. as essential to canonization as a martyr. It is interesting to add that claim was made, perhaps early, for miracles. See G. J., A letter sent into France to the Lord Duke of Buckingham, by an eminent divine, of a great miracle wrought by a piece of a handkerchief dipped in his majestie's bloud : the truth whereof he himself saw and is ready to depose it, and doth believe it will be attested by 500 others if occasion requires. Imprinted in the year 1649. [This describes a miracle done at " Bedford, near London, 3 ' seen by " a noble knight a kinsman of mine." The author went down and took the evidence of the mother, Mistress Bayly, wife of Charles Bayly, " in the presence of Mr. Thomas Bret an Ancient Gentleman of knowne truth and integrity." The story is that there were swellings of a child's face (cetat. about 14) leading to blindness, etc. A little piece of handkerchief that was dipt in the king's blood was obtained from the journeyman, of Mr. Francis Cole, a woollen draper, at the Black Lyon at Paul's Chaine, the Saturday after the king's death. The mother stroked her child's eyes and swellings with it, and they went away slowly after several days. They got worse if neglected for a night, but eventually disappeared. A further list of healings is added to a later copy. The story might be one of those told of the Becket miracles. There can be very little doubt that " G. J." was John Gauden, but it is not in the Thomason collection, which makes to some extent against its genuineness. There is also A Miracle of Miracles, 1649, which is entered in Thomason's MSS. in the British Museum as July 5, 1649. This deals with the same case. The title of this states that the girl was cured " to the comfort of the King's friends and the 35 THE ENGLISH SAINTS Church honoured the king's name among her saints, and that the state put the day of his death into her kalendar, from which it has only been removed illegally by the printers. The form of service for January 30 was the subject of long and serious discussion, and of considerable revision from the early and more primitive form which was at first drawn up. 1 It was issued by authority of the Convocations, annexed to the Prayer Book by authority of the Crown, and had also some statutory sanction. 2 It had not, however, the authority of Parliament as it stood, and its use was enforced only by Royal Proclamation, at the beginning of every reign till that of Edward VII. In 1859 it was withdrawn by an Order in Council. The insertion of " King Charles, Martyr," in the kalendar on January 30 has on the other hand the full authority of the Crown, the Convocations, and Parlia- ment, being in the Sealed Book, and it therefore remains by law as much in force as any other provision made by the Act of Uniformity. No action has ever been taken by Crown, Convocations, or Parliament to alter the kalendar, or to omit the name of him who was last admitted into it as an English saint. 3 punishment of his enemies, and the truth hereof many thousands can testifie." Thomason has added, " this is very true."] 1 See the form, published by His Majesty's direction, printed by John Bill, 1661. 2 12 Car. ii., c. 14. 3 See on all this W. H. Frere, [Proctor's] History of the Book of Common Prayer^ pp. 645, 646 ; Lathbury, History of Convocation, pp. 241-258 ; D'Oyley, Life of Archbishop Sancroft, i. 1 15, 1 16 (with criticism of Burnet). Even if the Order of January 17, 1859, could override the Act of Uniformity, it obviously does not deal with the THE COMPLETION OF FAITH 351 The form of service is interesting and suggestive. It shows more clearly than any other authority the view which was taken by the Church of the life and death of him whom Church and State now alike delighted to honour. His death is spoken of as a barbarous murder : the virtues that are commemorated in the king are " his courage and constancy, his meekness and patience, and great chanty " : he is called God's " dear servant, our dread sovereign, King Charles the First " ; and the Name of the Lord, " in Whose sight the death of [the] Saint is precious " is magnified for the grace bestowed upon the martyr "by which he was enabled so cheerfully to follow the steps of his blessed Master and Saviour in a constant meek suffering of all barbarous indignities, and at last resisting unto blood ; and even then, according to the same pattern, praying for his murderers." In the morning the New Testament lesson was the last the king heard on earth ; in the evening it was one consecrated of old time to the festival of a martyr. 1 Thus the Church of England, with the sanction of the State, definitely canonized Charles the King. The usage of the earlier days was followed. The bishops formally directed the observance of the day with a fixed kalendar, for it refers only to what was " annexed " to the Book of Common Prayer by Royal Warrant. The kalendar is part of the book itself. 1 On the Office for January 30, see A discourse of the Offices for Vth of November, XXXth of January, XXIXth of May, by Thomas Comber, D.D., 1796. Comber, in his notes (pp. 77-173) on the Special Services for January 30, gives some historical references as well as analytic comment. The day was to be observed as a strict fast, not as a saint's day with an eve. 35 2 T HE ENGLISH SAINTS order of religious service ; the public secular authority concurred. And the usage was in agreement with that of the Orthodox Churches of the East, where the action of the Bishops in Synod is confirmed in Russia by the consent of the Tsar. 1 A last sign of the full and formal nature of this canonization is the dedication of churches. Five (possibly six) of these are still known. 2 Bishop Seth Ward when he consecrated the second of them wrote 3 that he had used a special form " out of the honour which every true son of the Church owes to his memory (the only person canonized for a martyr by it)." This is the last canonization in the English Church, and it is typical of what was always meant by thus hallowing a name in the faith and fear of Christ. There was no claim for faultlessness, no setting forth for imitation in all things, no denial even of conspicuous faults and sins. All that is asserted is that the witness of faith has been given conspicuously, and so the soul has passed into the peace of the merciful God. It is not complete knowledge: " faith ' ? says S. Clement of Alexandria is " the knowing in sum the things that are 1 In Russia the final proceedings preparatory to the canonization of Father Seraphim of the SarofF Monastery, ob. 1833, are in progress as I write these words. In Greece also canonization though not common still continues. A recent instance is S. Philo- thea of Athens, who died in 1 589. 2 They are at Falmouth, Plymouth (possibly two?), Peak Forest, Newtown (Salop), and Tunbridge Wells. See Miss Arnold- Forster's Studies in Church Dedications, ii. 346-348. On the Falmouth Church, see Tanner MS., cxli. fol. 167. 3 Tanner MSS. in Bodleian Library, Letter of September i, 1665, to Archbishop Sancroft. THE COMPLETION OF FAITH 353 essential, and knowledge is the showing forth, strong and sure, of that which is received by faith, built upon faith by the teaching of the Lord." 1 Faith in its witness is welcomed not for what is but for what shall be. There is no mechanical collection of miracles, no imaginary trial of an imaginary candi- date : it is a spontaneous testimony that the life has been lived, with all its failures, with the face set God- wards, and that death has come as a true offering in the Lord. 2 Thus we may speak of that sad memory of our civil strife. It would be impossible in this place to forget it, where so often the words of a preacher have brought to men's minds the last great tragedy of our nation's historic life. But longer we cannot dwell on it : there is another memory which to-day 3 it would be impossible to forget. For sixty-three years this day was kept in England with increasing loyalty and reverence, as the day on which Queen Victoria was born. Hers is a remembrance which will not pass away. Duty, unselfish labour, the devotion of a life consecrated to good, those are the memories which, looking back to the early days of English kingship, now cluster round the name of Victoria the Great. " I ascend the throne,'\said the young Queen, when she prorogued her first Parliament, " with a deep sense of the responsibility imposed on me ; but I am sup- ported by the consciousness of my own right intentions, 1 Stromata, vii. 10. 2 It is so only that the soul can appeal to God as Judge, saying, "'Deus videt, et Deo commendo, et Ueus mihi reddet.' O testi- monium animas naturaliter Christianas." Tertullian, Apology, 17. 3 May 24, the birthday of Queen Victoria "of blessed memory/' 23 354 THE ENGLISH SAINTS and by my dependence on the protection of Almighty God. It will be my care to strengthen our institu- tions, civil and ecclesiastical, by discreet improvement wherever improvement is required, and to do all in my power to compose and allay animosity and discord. Acting upon these principles, I shall, upon all occasions, look with confidence to the wisdom of Parliament and the affection of my people, which form the true support of the dignity of the Crown and ensure the stability of the Constitution." Religion, personal service, full confidence in the nation those are the emphatic thoughts in those three pregnant sentences. They were the marks which we see now that the Queen's whole life will bear in- effaceably before the judgment of posterity. Year by year, in private diary or in public speech, the thoughts recur. They were summed up in the brief words of her message on the Jubilee Day of 1897 : " From my heart I thank my beloved people. May God bless them." They were repeated in the touching letter in which she declared her intention to work to the last. Men who do not flatter have expressed in deliberate language their sense of the power and the influence which she exercised, with increasing force as the years went on, over the development and the whole political history of her Empire. But here we must say still more. " The tact, the wisdom, the passionate patriotism, the incomparable judgment," 1 of Queen Victoria had their roots in the central power of her devoted life. She was, we all know, a good woman, in 1 The words of the Marquis of Salisbury in his commemorative speech in the House of Lords. THE COMPLETION OF FAITH 355 the fullest sense of the word, At the core of her whole life lay her religion. She loved her people because she loved God. And this fact may explain, as no other fact could, how there has arisen among the English race that wonderful feeling of brotherhood in service which the last three years of her reign brought so triumphantly before the world, vitalized and energized by an unparalleled consciousness of love and living service. That love and that living service were the Queen's ; and they made clear to the world the truth of the ancient words, " The throne is established by righteousness." 1 I have passed for a moment, you will forgive me, for I could indeed do no otherwise to-day, outside the strict limits of my subject as it might be rigidly defined. But is it possible I do not think it is to estimate the influence on national character, which still is sensi- tive, matured and fashioned though it be, to the touch of living faith, of such a life as that which was set before England in the blaze of publicity for so long a space of time ? Christ still lives and works among men : and in those who catch, however far off, His Spirit, there is something of His inexhaustible and unending power. Is it a power on men's lives that we should neglect ? Has not the time come to revive some outward ex- pression of a traditional, and a religious, reverence for the heroes of faith ? Ought we not to inscribe on our 1 So the most striking sermon of Bishop Stubbs at Windsor on the Sunday after the Queen's funeral, referred to above, which it is much to be wished may be published. 232 356 THE ENGLISH SAINTS kalendars and commemorate in the public services of our Church the holy lives and Christlike deeds of those who have passed, these last four centuries, into the Paradise of God ? It is time surely to satisfy this instinct which will not be suppressed, which shows itself even now in strange excesses of unauthorized devotion, which is so deeply stamped on our history and on our sympathies, this patriotism of our Church. It is time to make plainer before men's eyes, by commemoration historic and religious, the share which has never ceased to hp. horn^ jp the national life by the witness of Faith. Something we need, more than the faint remembrance of the few " memorial churches" we possess, to link those past ages of Faith with our own and witness that it may be no less faithful. For well we know that the service of saintly lives has not ceased. Not less than of old is the need, not less the achievement. Still " the best fruits of religious experience are the best things that history has to show." 1 As there is the same spirit behind the work of Christians in all ages 2 so it still works the wondrous transformations of grace. And so " the saintly group of qualities is indispensable to the world's welfare." 3 So much is admitted by those who are in doubt even as to the fundamental principles upon which the work has been wrought. But the question confronts us, when we strive to estimate the worth of such lives in the light of the 1 W. James, Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 259. 2 Cf. the passage from St. Beuve's Port Royal, quoted by James, p. 260. 3 W. James, op. cit., p. 377. THE COMPLETION OF FAITH 357 freedom which we attribute to the Reformation, is the achievement wholly for individuals, does the strength of the cloud of witnesses lie in the reality of each single separate testimony, or in the massed cohesion of the whole ? The true answer cannot long be doubtful. Yet it is not the common answer. The brjlliant psychologist whose book I have more than once quoted in these lectures, sees the hope for the future in an individual and specialized religious experience. " Let us be saints then, if we can/' he says, " whether or not we succeed visibly and temporally. But in our Father's house are many mansions, and each of us must discover for him- self the kind of religion and the amount of saintship which best comports with what he believes to be his powers and feels to be his truest mission and voca- tion." 1 The Christian character, he would seem to say, is seen at its best only in unchecked individualism. The legacy of the Reformation, many would agree, carries us so far in its assertion of the unfettered freedom and the essential dignity of man. It is the natural completion, we may be told, of the Renaissance, which " helped man onward to the reassertion of him- self, the rehabilitation of human nature, the body, the senses, the heart, the intelligence." 2 There is much to be said for this view. There is a .real need, and place, for what may be called Christian Humanism. It was the strange paradox of a clever writer that " not the least remarkable feature in English history is its lack of picturesque and 1 W. James, op. cit., p. 377. 2 Pater, The Renaissance (Pico delta Mirandola). 358 THE ENGLISH SAINTS emancipated individuals." 1 On,.the contrary, during the Middle Ages, the saint was a conspicuous figure in English life ; and the very essence of his position was that he should be individual, and that he should be picturesque. He stood out from his fellows as having caught a new and special brilliancy from the Sun of Righteousness. Often his greatness was not fully recognized while he lived : but when he died the picturesqueness and originality of his life were enriched by the fame and reverence and prayers of his countrymen. 2 He was venerated as he stood apart from the ordinary tame obscurity of life, detached from the surroundings in which the Englishman remains satisfied and content. The Middle Ages did not ignore individuality. But the saint cannot be regarded apart from the Church which trained and formed him. " The outward society is the natural atmosphere for the individual religious life." 3 Apart from the life of God stored in the living Body of Christ, he would dwindle and fail. The " excesses " of which we are warned by modern psy- chologists, " fanaticism or theopathic absorption, self- torment, prudery, scrupulosity, gullibility, and morbid 1 Bishop Creighton, Romanes Lecture on English National Character. 2 It is true that mythical elements from time to time collected round the saints, as is emphasized to an absurd extent by C A. Bernoulli, Die Heiligen der Merowinger, 1900 ; Fr. Gorres, Ritter S. Georg, in Zeitschrift fur wissenschaftliche Theologie, 1887, p. 62 ; Ignaz von Zingerle, Die Osiualdlegende, 1856. But at the root of the reverence, so the study of hagiology makes more and more plain, lies a firm basis of historic fact. 3 T. B. Strong, God and the Individual, p. 85. THE COMPLETION OF FAITH 359 inability to meet the world," are not " holy " : at all, but they are weaknesses, failures, due to a preference of individual tendency to the Catholic standard of Christ. No, it is not as an individual that the saint achieves. The saint is one who claims to live a life of Faith of which Christ is the Leader and the Finisher ; to act in a Society the Church of which Christ is the only and immortal Head. And this indeed is the true and enduring contribu- tion which the lives of the medieval Saints offer towards the perfection of the Christian character. That per- fection can only be attained in the unity of Christ. Where the Reformation, necessary and inspiriting though we know its work to have been, failed to emphasize this need, iL erred, and the error has had consequences which it is impossible to ignore. From the days of Miinzer to those o/ the fanatics of our own time the lesson is writ large on the history of religion. God designed man for society : only in unity is His work to be carried on without distortion and error. 2 The life of Faith is only, possible in its fulness in the solidarity of the Church of Christ. And the grand conception of the solidarity of the Church should be stimulated in each age of the world's 1 As Professor James calls them, op. '/., p. 370 ; and he adds, " By the very intensity of his fidelity to the paltry ideals with which an inferior intellect may inspire him, a saint can be even more objectionable and damnable than a superficial carnal man would be in the same situation." This distinguished writer can never quite arrive at a conclusion as to what a saint really is. 2 " Religion on the basis'of pure individualism is not and cannot be the supreme motive and the synthetic force which binds together and makes rational all the various elements of life." T. B. Strong, Christian Ethics (Bampton Lectures, 1895), P- 334- 360 THE ENGLISH SAINTS progress by the solidarity of national character. As the races settle down into homogeneous nations, strong in distinctively national ideals, each should offer to the whole the contribution of the excellence which comes from the inspiration of God. Where the ideal of saintly character has deteriorated and it is impossible to deny that, under some circum- stances, and wjiie_,the Church has been regarded as a voluntary association of individual members, it has shown signs of distortion the failure is due, beyond question, to the ignoring of the clear principle of the New Testament idea. The individual lives in and through the life of the Society : through it he is strengthened : with it his witness stands forth before God, encompassing the strugglers as they fight upwards towards the light. On the one side many Protestant sects have lost this strength altogether by reliance on individual feeling alone. The individualism fostered by the Reformation has resulted paradox though it may appear to be i n the neglect of the testimony of the individual Saints. Men have ignored those holy lives devoted of old to the love of God, because they have ceased to know whence came the strength by which they lived. And, in an opposite extreme, the Roman Church has de- veloped an exaggeration of the reverence for those great names which ignores or forgets that only in the whole Body was their testimony of value, their holiness secure, their intercession availing. 1 1 Their intercession : it is indeed a thorny point of contention and severance. But can it be denied that many Christians have lost much by closing their hearts to the immortality which belongs THE COMPLETION OF FAITH 361 .And this failure, be it of Defect or excess, is due to the same cause, to the neglect to recognize the true meaning of the saintly witness, the completion of the saintly faith. The witness of the Saints is an enduring one. They have not had their day and ceased to be. Still they survive in persistent testimony to the glory and sure- to the goodness of men ? In the Eastern Church, and notably in Russia, the Communion of Saints is felt to obliterate the separation of death. " The faithful who belong to the church militant upon earth, in offering their prayers to God, call at the same time to their aid the saints who belong to the Church in heaven ; and these, standing on the highest steps of approach to God, by their prayers and intercessions, purify, strengthen, and offer before God the prayers of the faithful living upon earth, and by the will of God work graciously and beneficently upon them " (Blackmore's translation of Abp. Philaret's Larger Catechism, quoted by A. C. Headlam, The Teaching of the Rtissian Church, p. 19). The prayer is mutual : the saints still pray for men, as they did on earth, and men still pray for them and ask their prayers. This teaching seems to be no more than the recognition of the unity of the Church in her Divine Head. The same is the teaching of those formularies of our Reformation, The Institution of a Christian Man, and The Erudition for any Christian Man, The former, after condemning prayer to saints for what God alone can give, adds : " Nevertheless, to pray to saints to be intercessors with us and for us to our Lord for our suits which we make to Him, and for such things as we can obtain of none but Him, so that we make no invocation of them, is lawful, and allowed by the Catholic Church." The latter modifies the statement by omitting the con- demnation of invocation ; and concludes that we sin only if we honour the saints " in any other ways than as the friends of God, dwelling with Him. and established now in His glory everlasting, and as examples which were requisite for us to follow in holy life and conversation, or if we yield unto saints the adoration and honour which is due unto God alone " {Formularies of Faith, Oxford, 1825 ; pp. 141, 305). 362 THE ENGLISH SAINTS ness of God. In Him they trusted, and He did not deceive them. In Him they reached that beauty of virtue, which, not counting them selves to have attained, and still pressing on towards the prize of their high calling, the spotless life that is Christ's, they offered to Him, by His grace and through His strength. Above them, Leader and Finisher of Faith, which alone makes goodness possible, is Jesus Himself, the very impress and expression of His Divine Being. It is in Him alone that the life can be lived, the victory achieved. So the saints proclaim the issue of their lives. It was .Christ Who alone realized Faith in its fulness, Who was therefore, and Who remains, the One Who perfects it, its Divine Consummator, the true jekeiwTrjs Trto-reo)?. And so they stand forth as His witnesses to us. They encompass us like a cloud, protecting as in the old Greek myth, while sin too encircles us with encroaching power. Human life is beset with dangers, its road is strewn with the bodies of those whom sin has slain in the unending war. The wTiter of the Epistle to the Hebrews does not stay to prove the fact which no ethical system can dispute. He points upwards rather to those for whom the warfare is accomplished, who have conquered, whose lives still hold before us the ideal which, with whatever weak- ness and imperfection, they have still triumphantly upheld. History rings with their names. , They are the. heroes whom the soul of man as it struggles does not forget. And they all point with undeviating agree- ment to the One Perfection, tq. Him Who has attained where they have striven, in Whose steps they have THE COMPLETION OF FAITH 363 striven to tread, to Whom they gave and give persis- tent witness, the Leader and Finisher of Faith. So the saints speak : and not of the past only, but for the future : " They have fought the good fight, they have finished their course, To us the inheritance, to us the labour, To us the heroic, perilous, hard essay, New thoughts, new regions, unattempted things. Not in the footsteps of old generations Our feet may tread ; but high compelling spirits, Ineluctable laws point the untrodden way Precipitous, draw to the uncharted sea. Again and yet again the appointed angel, A pillar of fire before this murmuring people, Moves beckoning on, again and yet again The dragon-haunted untractable wilderness They must adventure, or make the Grand Refusal And die forsaken of God the despised death." 1 Amid the perpetual tragedy of the neglected call, the saints speak of inextinguishable hope. Have Faith in God : that is the story of their lives. Goodness is real ; attainment is possible. In all the difficulties of belief there is a clue. God has not left Himself, all the world through, without witness. No religion that men have followed has wholly shut its eyes to Him ; few have been without, though it be in pitiful isolation, their heroes of Faith : but brightest among them all, incom- 1 The Builders, by Mrs. Woods (Cornhill Magazine^ December, 1902). 364 THE ENGLISH SAINTS parably, in the richness of their ideals and in the clear- ness of their vision of things divine, stand the saints of Christ. The life of Faith in the unseen is real to them because He has realized it, it is attainable because He has attained it. And it presents, in perpetual evidence, the truth of the superiority of moral greatness above all material excellence. The encompassing cloud of saints, each in his witness, stands out as in a measure the extension of the eternal truth which the Incarnation alone could triumphantly vindicate. 1 The saints witness and worship before One Who was Himself made perfect through sufferings and in Whom they can look " through the present and the visible to the future and the unseen." 2 The witness of life to Faith, however incomplete the area of its proof, is a true witness. Often, indeed, we see and it must be so in every age that " Divine truth is best understood as it unfolds itself in the purity of men's hearts and lives " ; and so God " hangs 1 " In the world looked at by the light of simple theism, the evidences of God's material power lie about us on every side, daily added to by science, universal, overwhelming. The evidences of His moral interest have to be anxiously extracted, grain by grain through the speculative analysis of our moral nature. Mankind, however, are not given to speculative analysis ; and if it be desirable that they should be enabled to obtain an imaginative grasp of this great truth ; if they need to have brought home to them that, in the sight of God, the stability of the heavens is of less importance than the moral growth of a human spirit, I know not how this end could be more completely attained than by the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation." A. J. Balfour, The Foundations of Belief, pp. 347-348 ; and cf. p. 354. It may well be said that this is what the Church was intended to keep perpetually before the world by the lives of the saints, imitators of the Incarnate Son. 2 Westcott, Epistle to the Hebrews, on xii. 2. THE COMPLETION OF FAITH 365 all true acquaintance with divinity upon the doing of His will." The completion of Faith in the enduring witness must be consummated in Christ, the Leader and Finisher of Faith : and it needs the environment of the Divine Society, the Church. Not apart from His brethren did Jesus triumph, but as the firstfruits of their offering to God : it is as members of His Body alone that their witness is acceptable and complete. And so it is not as individuals, but as knit together in one communion and fellowship that we in England must present our witness to the truth of the revelation of Christ. There is a distinct type, strong with its own special excellences, which it is ours to guard as a precious heritage from the past. The very condition of its maintenance is a loyalty to the Leader and Finisher of Faith, Who has moulded and sanctified the characteristics of our race. To attempt to remould 1 " Divine Truth is better understood as it unfolds itself in the purity of men's hearts and lives, than in all those subtle niceties into which curious wits may lay it forth. And therefore our Saviour, who is the great Master of it, would not, while He was here on earth, draw it up into any system or body, nor would His disciples after Him ; He would not lay it out to us in any canons or articles of belief, not being indeed so careful to stock and enrich the world with opinions and notions as with true Piety, and a godlike pattern of Purity, as the best way to thrive in all spiritual understanding. His main scope was to promote a holy life, as the best and most compendious way to a right belief. He hangs all true acquaintance with Divinity upon the doing God's will ; if any man will do His will he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God." John Smith, A Discourse concerning the Trtie Way or Method of attaining to Divine Knowledge (in Campagnac's Cambridge Platonists, pp. 86-87). The statement has the defects as well as the excellences of the position of the " Latitude-men." 366 THE ENGLISH SAINTS ourselves on a foreign type is unnatural, and so far it frustrates His purpose for our work. To seek unity is indeed incumbent on us by our very loyalty to Him : but it is treason to sacrifice that nationalism which stands for individuality in the Catholic Church. Seek unity that is indeed the witness of the saints of old for without it the Christian life misses the perfection for which Jesus prayed : seek to strengthen every force of national inspiration in Christ : but above all, in every moment of the life of labour and of achievement, seek Peace and ensue it. Tu, Qui cuncta sets et vales, Qui nos pascis hie mortales^ Tuos ibi commensales Cohceredes et sodales Fac sanctorum civium. INDEX ABBO OF FIJEURY, an authority for life of S. Edmund, 137 n. ; visits England, 139; on the Danish invasions, 140; quoted, 141-143 Ada Sanctorum, Bollandist, 17, 23 n. 2, 32, 33, 44 n. i, 77 n., 88 n. 4, 99 n. 2, 104 n. 3, 155 n. i, 207 n. 3, 219 n. i, 234 n. i, 236 n. 3, 263 n. 3, 267 n. 2, 303 n. 2, 326 n. 2 Ailred of Rievaulx, hagiologist, 30, 192 n. ; biographer of S. Ninian, 116; of Edward the Confessor, 159 Alban, Saint, 93, 94, no n. ; omitted in the Anglican Kal- endar, 33 n. 6 Alchfrith, nephew of S. Oswald, 131 Alchmund, King of the Old Saxons, 139 n. Adalbert, Saint, the Apostle of Alchmund, Saint, 153 n. i Prussia, 44 Adamnan, Life of Columba, 129 n., 284 Aedan, Saint, disciple of S. David, 109 n. 2 ^Elfeah (Elphege, Alphege), Archbishop, a Life of S. Dun- stan dedicated to, 230. See Alphege ^Elfric, Archbishop, his Lives of the Saints, 129, 288-290; a. Life of S, Dunstan dedicated to, 230 ./Ethelberht, see Ethelberht yEthelburg, Saint, 306. See Ethelburg ^Ethelfryth, Saint, 313 n. 2 Africa, effect of Christianity on, 11,12; S. John of God goes to, 83 "Age of Saints" in Wales, the, 105, 106 Agnes, Saint, 306 n. i Aidan, Saint, 116 n. i, 118, 123, 203, 307 ; fellow- worker of S. Oswald, 129, 131 ; of S. Oswine, 135 ; compared with S. Augus- tine, 182 ; as monk, 183-185 ; as missionary, 184; miracles of, 186 Alcuin, quoted, 127, 129 n., 130 n., 203, 204 Aldhelm of Sherborne, Saint, no n., 207-209; quoted, 102, in n. 2 ; omitted in the Angli- can Kalendar, 33 n. 6 Alexander, W., Archbishop of Armagh, 37 n. 4 Alexander III., Pope, 262, 263; insists on formal canonization, 23 n. 3 Alexander VI., Pope, 263 Alexander Nevski, Saint, 42 Alfred, King, 40, 57, 208, 209, 231; "theTruthteller," 148-153 Allen, Rev. Roland, on Chinese converts, 10 n. i. Alphege of Canterbury, Saint, 1 10 n., 142, 155 n. 2, 234-236 n. 2, 341. See sElfeah Ambrose, Saint, and the Em- peror Theodosius, 345 Amphibalus, Saint, teacher of S. Alban, 94, 95 n. i ^. Analecta BoUandiana, 28 n. 3, 44 n. i, 60 n. i, 95 n. i, 128 n. 3, 287 n. i Anchoresses, 319 Anchoret, meaning of term, 218 n. 2 [ 369 1 24 37 THE ENGLISH SAINTS Ancren Rizvle, the, 319 Andrew of Crete, Saint, 27 n. Animals, friendship of, with S. Cuthbert, 222 ; S. Godric, 225 ; S. Guthlac, 222 ; the hermits, 223 ; S. Hu^h, 216 Anne of Russia, Saint, 40 n. 2. Auselni, Saint, 152, 184, 189, 230, 233-238 ; authorities for, 236 n. 3 ; his theology, 238 ; canon- ization, 238, 262-264; miracles, 295 ; contrasted with Becket, 259-264 Antonino of Florence, Saint, quoted, 34 Apologetics, 2, 5 Arnold, Matthew, quoted, 35 Arnold-Forster, Miss, Studies in Church Dedications, 89 n. i, 95 n. 2, 101 n. 3, 132 n., 136 n., 137 ", 303 n. i, 3, 304 n. 3, 320 n. 3, 352 n. 2., etc. Art, sacred, in sarcophagi, 315 n. 3. See Pictures, Statues Arthur, King, 126 Asceticism of S. Edmund of Abingdon, 266, 267 n. i ; of S. Elizabeth, 54; reaction against (?), 51 n. ; of S. Francis, 69; S. Godric, 224; the hermits, 219 ; S. Hugh, 213 ; S. John of the Cross, 73 ; Simon de Mont- fort, 270 Asser, friend and biographer of King Alfred, 138, 149, 150 Audrey (or Etheldreda), Saint, 303, 312, 314 Augustine of Canterbury, Saint, 22, 97, 102, non., 203,279; his influence on English Chris- tianity, 110-115; compared with S. Aidan, 182 Augustine of Hippo, Saint, quoted, 21 ; Alfred's para- phrase of, 151 Bacon, Francis, Lord Verulam, 165 n. i Balfour, Right Hon. Arthur J., Foundations of Belief, 282, 283, 364 n. i Baring-Gould, Rev. S., 73 n i, 83 n., 326 n. 2, etc. Barons' War, the, 269 Basques, the, 84 Beatification, 24, 25 ; of Joan of Arc, 60 n. ; of S. John of the Cross, 75. See Benedict XIV. Beatus, meaning of the term, 25 Beazley, C. Raymond, 42 n. i Becket, Thomas, 152 n. 4. See Thomas of Canterbury Bede, the Venerable, no n. ; relics of, 193; authorities for life of, 199 n. i ; his monastic life, 198-206, 209 ; credulity of, 186 n. 4, 284 ; his martyrology, 28; his Life of Cuthbert, 186- 192 ; his Eccl. Hist., etc.. quoted, 45 n., 93 n. i, 98, 102 n. 2, 3, in n. 3, 112, 115 n. i, 116 n. i, 3, 127-131, 133, 134 n., 135, 35 n. 2, 306 n. 2, 307, 308, 314, etc. Beeching, Canon H. C., 218 n. i, 335 Beino, Saint, 313 n. i Benedict Biscop, 207 Benedict XIV., Pope, his book De Beatificatione et Canoniza- tione, 20, 23 n. 3, 24 n., 25 n. 3, 81 n. i, 198 n. 2, 278, 322, 349 n. i Benedict of Nursia, Saint, quoted, 198, 199 Benson, Archbishop, 68 n., 70 n., 184 n. 2, 193 n., 258 n. i, 284 Beodricsworth (Bury S. Ed- mund's), church built at, 143 Berhtwald, Archbishop of Can- terbury, 208 Beriu, Saint, 130. See Birinus Bernard, Saint, letters of, 258 ; protests against ill-usage of the Jews, 329 Bernardino of Siena, Saint, 65 Bernoulli, C. A., Die HeiLigen der Merowinger, 95 n. 3, 292, 358 n. 2 ; on miracles, 283 Berthgit, 310 Bewcastle Cross, 131 Birinus, Saint, no n., 116. See Berin Bishop's power of canonization, 22, 23 ; vindicated by S. Martin, 26 n.3 ; in the Eastern Chuich, 352 Bishop, Mrs., on Chinese con- verts, 10 n. 2 ; on position of women in heathen lands, 299- 300 n. INDEX Blood of Hayles, 138 n. Bollandists, see Acta and Ana- lecta Boniface, Saint, in the Kalendar of the Leofric Missal, 28 ; birth, 44; authorities for, 44 n. i, 46 n. i ; the name Boniface, 44 n. 2 ; his career, 45-47 ; canonization, 48 139 n., 310 n. i quoted, Saints of Boris and Glyeb, Russia, 41, 42 Bossuet, quoted, 249 Brendan, Saint, 102 Bride, Saint, 102 n. 2 Bridget, Saint, 101 n. 3, 102 ; B rigid, 306 n. i Bright, William, quoted, 93 n. i, 115 n. i, 116 n. i, 182 n. i, 2, 183 n. i, 2, 188 n. i, 4, 195 u. i, 196 n. 2, 201 n. 5, 219 n. i, 220 n. 3, 306 n. 2, 307 n. i, 314 n. i Bristol, Bishop of, quoted, 131 n. See Broiune Browne, G. F., Bishop of Bristol, 114 n. i, 131 n., 149 n. i, 194 n. 2, 196 n. 2, 199 n. i, 3 ; 207 n. 2, 3, 208 n. 4, 209 n. 2, 312 n. 2 ; on SS. Ninian and Kentigern, 117 n. i; on King Alfred, 150 n. 4 Brunforte, Ugolino, author of the Fioretti of S. Francis, 66, 67 Bund, J. W. Willis, Celtic Church in Wales, 29 n. 3, 100 n. i, 2, 103 n. 2, 104 n. 3, 105 n. i, 107 n. 3, 121 11. 3, 277 Burchardus, Saint, of Wurz- burg, 46 n. i Burke, Edmund, quoted, 333 Bury, Professor J. B., on S. George, 86 n. i ; on S. Patrick, 100 n. 2, 101 n. i Bury S. Edmunds, 143 Butler, Alban, Lives of the Saints, 73 n. i, 83 n., 326 n. 2, etc. Butler, Joseph, Bishop of Dur- ham, quoted on Common- wealth and Charles I., 339, 340 Csedmon, 308 Cairnech, Saint, 108 Cajetan, Saint, 70 n. i Calderon, his Constant Prince, 72 Canonization, 21-26; by the Pope, 23, 55 n. 2 ; by the Pope in the cases of S. John of the Cross, 75 n. i ; S. John of God, 84 n. i ; S. Francis Xavier, 81 n. i, 85 n. 2 ; S. Teresa, etc., 81 n. i ; Pope's confirmation necessary to, 163 ; expenses of, at Rome, 165 n. i, 263, 273 ; by a synod, 22, 24 n., 48; of Charles I. by the English Church, 349-352 ; in the Eastern Church, 352 ; so - called, of Dunstan by Cnut, 231, n. i ; popular, in the cases of King Edward the Martyr, 158; the Kentish Kings, etc., 126, 127; S. Robert of Knaresborough, 222 n. 2 ; see further the canonizations of S. Boniface, 48 n. 2 ; S. Elizabeth, 55 n. 2 ; S. Hugh, 215 ; Joan of Arc, 60 n. i ; S. Richard of Chichester, 268 n. 3 ; S. Roch, 24 n. ; Welsh saints, 106 n. 2 Canon Law regarding Jews, 328, 3 2 9 Capgrave, John, 31, 33, 267 n. 2, 306 n. i. See Nova Legenda Caradoc, Saint, 106 n. i, 2 Carlo Borromeo, Saint, 70 Carmelites, reformed by S.John of the Cross, 74 ; by S. Teresa, 79 Catherine of Genoa, Saint, 65, 81 n. Catherine of Siena, Saint, 65 Cedd, Saint, disciple of S. Aidan, 123, 185, 202 n. Cedoc of Llancarfan, Saint, miracles of 291 Celsus, boy martyr, 326 Celtic Church, looff. ; influence on English Christianity, final failure, 114, 115; saints, 29; dedications, 107, 108 Chad, Saint, 183, 185, 198, 202 n., 205 Chancellorship in time of Becket, 243 Charity practised by Edward 24 2 372 THE ENGLISH SAINTS the Confessor, 160 ; King Edward the Martyr, 156; S. Elizabeth, 52, 54, 55 ; S. John of God, 83 ; S. Louis, 59 ; S. Margaret, 318; S. Robert of Knaresborough, 222 Charles I., King and Martyr, 337-353 ; authorities, 337 n. i ; beginning of cult, 340; had maintained the theological position of the Church of England, 342, 343 ; goodness of his personal life, 343-347 ; dignity of his end, 347 ; satisfies Benedict XIV. 's re- quirements for canonization, 349 n. i ; miracles attributed to, 349; his place in the Prayer-Book, 350 ; form of service, 351 Charles II. of Spain, 75 Chastity, most prized by the Irish martyrologist, no n. Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, 242 China, effect of Christianit}- on, 9, 10 Chivalry, Christian, 57, 64 Christianity, its effect on Euro- pean civilization, 7 ff. ; on the Greek race, 7, 8 ; on the Latin races, 8 ; on the Teutonic races, 8, 9 ; on non-European races at the present day, 9 ff. ; on Chinese, 9, 10; on Central Africans, IT ; on Kafirs, 12; on cannibals of New Guinea, 13, 14 ; on Poly- nesians, 14 ; on Indians, 15 ; on England, seen in the lives of the saints, 34 ; its purpose to 'make men saints, 20, 21; Christian chivalry, 57, 64; Christian Humanism, 357 Church, the Catholic, 4; unity and nationality in, 90, 359-361 ; rights of, to be defended, 257 ; modern value of the medieval Church, 332 Church, the Eastern, venerated other saints than the Western, 27 ; national saints of, 40 ; canonization in, 352 Church, the English, attitude towards Popes, 22 n. 4, 24 ; re- form of, by the Normans, 160 ; its theological position main- tained by Charles I., 342, 343 ; its national witness, 365, 366 Church, R. W., quoted, 7-9, 20, 21, 236 n. i, 238 n. 4, 300 Cid, The, 72 Clarendon, Constitutions of, 248, 253 n. i Clarke, H. Butler, The Cid, 72 n. i ; on S. Teresa, 80 n. 3. Clarke, Sir Ernest, letters to the Times, 143 n. Clement of Alexandria, Saint, quoted, 352, 353 Clement XL, Pope, 264 Cloveshoo, Council of (A.D. 747), 22 Clovis, 41; "the Clovis of Rus- sia," 40 Cnut, King, 126; orders S. Dun- stan's Mass day to be observed, 231 ; at Ely, 316 Coincidences may explain mira- cles, 293, 294 Columba, Saint, 101, 102, 118- 123, 185 ; miracles of, 291 Communion of Saints, 3, 34, 356-366 ; impossible outside the Church, 24; view of, in the Eastern Church, 361 n. Confession, S. Teresa's experi- ence of, 78 ; S. Cuthbert hears, 188, 189 Confessors, their position in the Church, 22 Conrad of Marburg, S. Eliza- beth's confessor, 54 ; his Epis- tola, 49-55 n. Constance, Council of, 24 n. Constantinople captured by the Crusaders (A.D. 1204), 27 Constitutions of Clarendon, 248, 253 n - i Cornwall, dedications in, 108 ; saints of, 102 ff., 302, 303 n. i Coronation oath, 228 Councils, ecclesiastical, exercise power of canonization, 22, 24 n., 48; condemn pagan superstitions, 313 n. 3 ; synods in Greek Church, 352. See Cloveshoo, Constance, Haddan Creighton, Man dell, Bishop of INDEX 373 London, quoted, 334, 358 n. i ; on Charles I., 342 Cromwell, Oliver, 239, 339 Crusades, 98 ; treatment of Sara- cens by S. Louis, 57 n. 3, 59 n. i ; S. George helps the English, 88; Christian duty of, 71 ; prophesied by Joan of Arc, 62 ; preached by S. Richard of Chichester, '268; end of the Crusade in Spain, 81, 82 n. Cuthberga, Saint, 306 n. i Cuthbert, Archbishop of Can- terbury, corresponds with S. Boniface, 46 ; quoted, 48 n. 2 Cuthbert of Lindisfarne, Saint, no n., 1 18, 123, 146, 149, 185- 195, 203, 205, 219, 222, 224, 232, 305, 315 ;^ relics of, 133 n., 143; omitted in Anglican Kalendar, 33 n- 6 Cuthburga, Saint, 46 n. i Cynehild, fellow-worker of S. Boniface, 310 Cyprian, Saint, quoted, 4, 22 n. i Cyril of Jerusalem, Saint, quoted, 3, 4 Danes at Thetford, 138 ; Danish invasions, 140 ; Dunstan's policy towards, 228, 231 ; Danescot, 159; S. Edmund, 142, and S. Alphege, 234, 235, martyred by Danes Daniel, Bishop of Winchester, friend of S. Boniface, 202 n. Dante quoted, 64, 238 David, Saint, Bishop of Mene- via, 104, 1 06, 107, i ro n. De Guyon, Madame, 322 n. 3 Demetrius, Saint, 88 n. 3 Dictionary of National Bio- graphy, 44 n. i, 223 n. 2, 226 n. i, 227 n. i, 246 n. 2, 256 n. 2, 317 n. i Dodwell, Henry, the Nonjuror, on miracles, 282 Dogma, the Welsh attachment to, 109 Dominic, Saint, 211 Dorothy of Pomesania, Saint, 275 n. 6 Dreams, 293. See Visions Druids, 100 n. 2, 103, 313 Duchesne, Abbe, quoted, 113 n. Dunstan, Saint, Archbishop of . Canterbury, no n., 227-231, 2 33> 3 J 6 ; helps to place King Edward on the throne, 156; an authority for the life of S. Edmund, 139, 141 Durham Cathedral Church, 200, 224 ; relics at, 193 Dympna, Saint, 306 n. i Eadburg(h), Saint, 127, 303, 304, 306 n. i E(a)dgar, King, friend of S. Dunstan, 228 ; orders the trans- lation of S. Swithun, 289 Eadgyth, Saint, 309. See Edith Eadmer, 155 n. i ; lives of S. Edward attributed to, 179; on S. Anselm, 236 n. 3 ; credulity and credibility of, 284 E(a)dmund, Saint, no n. See Edmund E(a)dward. See Edward E(a]dwardi regis et martins, Passio, printed, 166-180 E(a)dwine, King, 41, 125, 127, 128, 303, 306 Eanswith, Saint, 304, 306, 306 n. i Earle, Professor John, on the Alfred Jewel, 149 n. 4; on Alfred, 150 n. 4 Eata, Saint, 185 Ebba, Saint, Abbess of Colding- ham, 141, 305, 306 n. i E(c)gberct of lona, 203 E(c)gbert, King of England, 287 E(c)gfrith, King of Northum- bria, 312, 325 ; invites S. Cuth- bert to become Bishop, 190; death at Nechtansmere, 191 Eddi, biographer of S. Wilfrith, 196 Edgar, King, friend of S. Dun- stan, 228 ; orders translation of S. Swithun, 289 Edith, Saint, 306 n. i. See Eadgyth Edith of Wilton, Saint, omitted in Anglican Kalendar, 33 n. 6 Edmund, Saint, King of the East English, ITO n., 126, 326, 341 ; his nephew also a saint, 374 THE ENGLISH SAINTS 31 n. ; authorities, 137 n., 139; Asser's account of, 138 ; his possible old Saxon origin, 139 ; his reign, 140 ; overcome by the Danes, 141 ; martyred by them, 142 ; legends of, 143, 146, 147 ; relics, 143 n. ; defender of E. Anglia and patron of seafarers, 144 ; patron saint of Richard II., 159 ; miracles, 145, 280-282, 291-296 ; transla- tion, 146, 147; i3th century life, 148 n. 2 ; his resemblance to Calderon's "Constant Prince," 72 n. 2 Edmund of Abingdon, Saint, 266-268 ; miracles, 295 Edward the Confessor, King and Saint, 22 n. 3; 159-161; poetical life of, quoted, 125, 126 Edward the Elder, King, 152 Edward the Martyr, Saint, King of the West Saxons, 110 n., 155-159; Passio et Miracula \ printed, 166-179; account of the MS., 179, 1 80 Edward II., the people desire ! to canonize, 161 Edwin, King, 41, 125, 127, 128, 303, 306 Egbert of lona, 203 Egbert, King of England, 287 Egfrith, King of Northumbria, 312, 315 ; invites S. Cuthbert to become Bishop, 190 ; death at Nechtansmere, 191 Eikon Basilike, 348 Eisenach, S. Elizabeth's chari- ties at, 51 n. ; her hospital at, 52 Elflede, Saint, 306 n. I Elizabeth, Queen, 239, 337 Elizabeth, Queen of Portugal, Saint, legend of, 53 n. 3 Elizabeth of Thuringia (or Hun- gary), Saint, 48-56 ; authorities, 48 n. 5 ; birth, 49 ; marriage, 50; children, 51 ; charities, 52; legends, 53 ; her ascetic period, 54 ; miracles, 55 ; relics, 56 n. | i ; in modern German poetry, 56 n. 3 Ely Cathedral, 316; S. Audrey at, 315 England, patron saint of, 86-89; conversion of, 93 ff. ; Church of, see Church, English ; Eng- lish kingship, 335 ff. ; English womanhood, 321 ff. English Chronicle (Anglo-Saxon Chronicle), 140, 147 n. i, 156, 157, 234 n. i, 326 Epistola adDiognetum quoted, 5 Erasmus, 70 n. i, 241 Pnd S. Hugh, 213, 214 n. 3 ; makes Becket Chancellor, 243 ; personal relations with Becket, 244, 245 ; contention with, 247-250; further cause of quarrel ending in martyr- dom, 253 Henry II., Saint and Emperor, 160 n. 3, 161 Henry VI., 337; begs for canoni- zation of King Alfred, 152 ; revered as niart}~r, 162 - 165 ; monition against veneration of, 162 n. 5 Henry VII. desires canonization of Henry VI., 164; obtains Saint Anselm's canonization, 153 Henry VIII., 337 ; said to have desired Henry VI. 's canoniza- tion, 165 ; enemy of Becket's memory, 258 Henson, Canon H. Hensley, 184 n. 2 Herbert, a boy murdered by Jews, 327 Hereford, patron saint of, 153 n. i Her(i)mann (Heremann), an authority for the cult of S. Edmund, 144 n. ; and for miracles of the same, 279-282 Hermit, meaning of term, 218 n. 2 ; hermit saints, 218 ff. Herring, Archbishop, 264 n. Hervey, Lord Francis, his criticism of the authorities for S. Edmund, 138 n. Herwald, two martyrs of this name, 48 Hii ( = Iona), 130 n. Hilda, Saint/no n., 224, 303, 306-309, 315, 322; miracles of, 291 Hildelith, Saint, 306 n. i, 309 Hobbes, Thomas, 233 Holmes, Edmond G. A., quoted 18 n. 2 Horstmann, Dr. Carl, 30 n. 4, 31, 32 (name spelled Horstman in Nova Legenda], See Nova Legenda and Women Saints, Lives of Hort, Dr. F. J. A., quoted, 90 Huchyns, Simon (A.D. 1452), 263; on proposed canonization of S. Osmund, 22 n. 4 Hugh of Lincoln (Avalon), Saint, 212-218; miracles, 279, 295; opposes pagan superstition, 314 n. Hugh of Lincoln, Little Saint, 327-329 Hugh, Saint, disciple of S. David, 109 n. 2 Humanism, Christian, 357 Humility of Saint John of the Cross, 74, 75 Hungary, Stephen of, 41 ; S. Elizabeth of, 48-56 Hunter, Sir W. W., on Chris- taimty in India, 15 n. i Hunwald, Earl, betrayer of S. Oswine, 135 Hutton, Edward, Studies in the Lives of the Saints, 81 Hutton, Dr. George, 201 n. 4 Hutton, W. H., Saint Thomas of Canterbury, 160 n. i, 239 n. i, 247 n. 2 INDEX 377 Icelandic Saga of S. Edmund, 146 ; Saga of S. Oswald, 132 ; Saga of S. Thomas, 240; quoted, 246, 265 n. i, 284 Ignatius Lovola, Saint, 81 n. I, 84 Incorruption of saintly bodies, 143, 315 India, effect of Christianity on, 15 n., 15, 16 ; Portuguese Christianity in, 83, 85 Inge, W. R,, Christian Mys- ticism, 20 n. 4 Innocent III., Pope, insists on formal canonization, 23 n. 3 ; relations with S. Alexander Nevski, 42 Innocent IV., Pope, 267 Intercession of Saints, 360 n. Intercessory powers of Saints, 280, 281 Investitures, contest concern- ing, 232, 236, 237 Invocation of Saints, 316 n. 2 lona, 130; S. Columba at, 120 Ireland, Saints of, 100-102 Irish influence on English Christianity, 116-123; love of travel, 120 n. 2 ; students at Canterbury, 209 Issey, Saint, of Cornwall, 320 Italy, typical saints of, 64-70 Itha, of Cornwall, Saint, 320 Jacobus de Voragine, Legenda Aurea, 30 James, Saint, patron of Spain, 82 n. ; pilgrimage to, at Com- postella, 224 James, Dr. Montague Rhodes, 323 n. 2, 325 n. i, 143 n., 32 n. 2 James. Professor William, 70 n. i ; The Varieties of Re- ligious Experience, 18 n. i, 19 n. 2, 20 n. 3, 356 n. 1-3, 357, 359 n. i Japan, Saint Francis Xavier in, 85 n. i Jarrow, Bede at, 200 Jews, murder of Christian chil- dren, legend, 323; no truth in stories of ritual murder by, 323 n. 2 ; supposed origin of, 324, 325 ; outrages on, 328 Joan of Arc, 56 n. 4, 60-64 5 au- thorities, 60 n. i, 313 n. 2; her achievements, 60 ; military genius, 61 ; her aims and mis- sion, 61 n., 62 ; visions, 62 ; devotion, 63 ; her appearance, 63, 64 John Baptist College, Oxford, Saint, MS. 96 printed, 166-180 John of Beverley, Saint, 285, 286, 315 John of the Cross, Saint, 73-75 ; canonization of, 75 n. i ; quoted, 19, 20 John of God, Saint (San Juan de Dios), 82-84; authorities, 82 n. i ; his good works, 83 ; canonized, 84 n. i John XV., Pope, begins formal canonization {?), 23 n. 3 John of Tynemouth, 303 n. 3, 304, 310 n. 2; his Sanctilogimn, 30, 31-33. See Nova Legenda Joinville, on Saint Louis, quoted, 57-59 Joly, M. H., Psychologic des Saints, 20 n. i, 21 n. i, 65 Juan de Dios, San, 82-84. See John of God Juan de la Cruz, San, 71. See John of the Cross Juletta, Nonne, a captive in Iberia, 306 n. i Juliana of Norwich, 320 Juliana, Saint, confusion of the name in England, 320 Julitta, of Tarsus, Saint, 320 Jutwara, Saint, 312 Kafirs, effect of Christianity on, 12 Kalendars; their history and im- portance, 21, 27, 28 and n. i, 29 ; of Iveofric Missal, 28 ; the Anglican, 33, 335, 350; desir- ability of extending, 355, 356 ; Gallic, 48 ; Roman, changes in Poland, 42 n. i Keble, John, on King Charles the Martyr, 342 Kenelm, of Mercia, Saint, iron., 153 n. i, 153, 154 Kentigern, Saint, 117-120 Keyne, Saint, 303, 312, 319 King, Mrs. Hamilton, The Dis- ciples, quoted, 68 378 THE ENGLISH SAINTS Kingship, English, pathos of, 335, 336 Kingsley, Charles, 102 n. 2, 219 n. i ; 'J he Saint's Tragedy, 49 n. Kyneburg, Saint, of Peter- borough, 306, 306 n. i Kynegils, West Saxon King, 130 Kyneswith, of Peterborough, Saint, 306, 306 n. i Lanfranc, 230, 235 Langton, Stephen, 258, 265, 266 j Latin races, effect of Christianity I on the, 8 Laud, William, Archbishop of Canterbury, 276; on Charles I., 343 ; speeches, 339 n. Legends of the Saints, their j value, 17; growth of, 30 n. 3; seen in Adamnan's Life of \ Columba, 284 ; S. Amphibalus, 94; ^Ethelfryth, 313 n. 2; Christian child murdered by Jews, 323 ; S. Columba, 120 n. i ; S. Cuthbert, 186 n. 4, 187 ; S. Dunstan, 230; S. Edmund, 137, 140 n., 143; S. Etheldreda, 312; S. Edward the Confessor, 159, 160 ; S. Elizabeth, 53 ; S. Francis, 67 ; S. Frideswide, 310 ; S. George, 86-89, 35 8 2 ; S.James, 89; S. Kenelm, 153 n. 2 ; S. Martin, 98 n. i ; S. Mildred, 305; S. Oswald, 358 11. 2 ; S. Patrick, 100 n. 2 ; Richard I., 336; S. Thomas of Canterbury, 260, 261 ; Vener- able Bede, 199, 200; S. Wer- burga, 317 ; Welsh saints, 106 Leo I., the Great, Pope, Saint, quoted, 37, and n. 2 Leo III., Pope, begins formal canonization (?), 23 n. 3 Leo XIII., Pope, approves beati- fication of Fisher and More, 276 n. i ; his gift of supposed relics of S. Edmund, 143 Leobgyth, 310 Leofric Missal, Kalendar of, 28 Lewis IV., Landgrave of Thu- ringia, husband of S. Eliza- I beth, 50-54 Liebermann, F., editor of Die Heiligen England's and Un- gedt uckte anglonormannische Geschichtsqitcllen, quoted, 94 n. i, 126 n. i, 127 n. i, 133 n. 3, 137 n., 143 n., 144 n, 150 11. 3, 236 n. 3, 265 n. 5, 280, 291, 295, 303 n. 3, 304 n. 4, 305 n. i ; on miracles, 293, 295, 296 Lightfoot, Joseph Barber, Bishop of Durham, 133, 182 n. i, 2, 205 n. i, 306 n. 2, 309 Lindisfarne, S. Aidan's See, 129; S. Aidan at, 183, 186 ; S. Cuth- bert at, 188, 189; Gospels, story of, 194 Lindsey, reception of S. Oswald's body in, 133 n. 3 Lioba, Saint, 46 n. i Lippomaiius, Aloysius, of Ve- rona, 33 Little, Professor A. G., 65 n. 2 Louis, Saint, King of France, 56-59, 71 n. i, 334 ; authorities, 57 n. i ; character, 57 ; impor- tance, 63 Luis de Leon, Fray, biographer of S. Teresa, story of, 76 n. i ; quoted, 80 n. i, 4 Lullus, Saint, of Mainz, 46 n. i Luther, admired S. Elizabeth, 56 n. 2 Mackinlay, Rev. J. B., O.S.B., letters to the Times, 143 n. Macrina, Saint, 306 n. i Magdalen College, Oxford, 201 n. 4, 206 n. 5, 267 n. 2 Magna Vita S. Hugonis, 213 Maitland, Professor F. W., on criminous clerks, 248 Malmesbury, the Abbey of, 207; William of, see William Manuscripts quoted, MS. Add. 17376 (British Museum), 273 n. 2; MS. Bodleian 240, 147 n. 3 ; MS. Bodl. 343, English sermon on S. Edmund, 139 n. ; MS. Bodl. 285, 154 n. ; MS. 96, at S. John Baptist College, Oxford, 155 n. i ; the same printed for the first time, 167- 180 ; MS. Tanner in Bodleian, 352 n. 3 Marburg, S. Elizabeth at, 54 n. i Margaret, Queen of Scots, Saint, 279, 306 n. i, 317, 318; example INDEX 379 of equivalent canonization, 26 Martiloge, printed in 1526, 29 Martiloge, Whytford's, 144 n. I, 146 n. 7, 152 n. 2, 161 n. 2 Martin of Tours, Saint, 95, 96, no n., 118, 121, 229, 232; vin- dicates the Bishop's power of canonization, 26 n. 3 ; authori- ties for, 95 n. 3 ; work and character, 97, 98, 100, 101 ; miracles of, 284 ; churches dedicated to, 117 Martyrdom of S. Alban, 93, 94; S. Alphege, 234; Becket (S. Thomas of Canterbury), 253- 256 ; S. Boniface, 47 ; SS. Boris and Glyeb, 41 ; King Eadwine (reputed), 128; S. Edmund, 142 ; King Edward, 156-158; the two Herwalds, 48; S. Kenelm, 154; S. Wil- liam of Norwich, 324 ; other Christian boys, 327 Martyrologies, their history and importance, 21, 22, 28, 29 ; Martyrology of Gorman, Irish, no, 116 n. 2 Martyrs, their position in the Church, 21, 22, 28; martyrs for discipline, 249; "martirem pena non facit sed causa," 326; royal martyrs, 153 n. i : e.g., S. Kenelm, 154 ; King Edward the Martyr, 155-159: Henry VI. regarded as a martyr, 162 ; Charles I. the Martyr, 337-353 ; cf. Simon de Montfort, 270, 271 Maserfield, Battle of, 131 Mass, evening (vespertinalis missa) in Adamnan, 122 n. i Maxentia, Saint, 306 n. i Mechtilde, Saint, 306 n. i Medieval ideals, their value in modern times, 91 ftlenology of England and Wales, Stanton's, 152 n. 2 Middle Ages furnish types for modern times, 91 Milburga, Saint, 306 n. i Mildred, Saint, 127, 304-306 Milman, Latin Christianity, 26 n. 2, 27 n., 43 n. 2, 87 n. i Miracles absent from S. Pat- rick's writings, 101 ; continu- ous miracles evidence for equivalent canonization, 25 ; medieval miracles, 17 Excursus on English medi- eval miracles, 277-298 ; miracles do not make a saint, 277 ; yet almost indispensable _ for canonization, 278 ; Divine power is not claimed for the wonder-workers, 280 ; but exercised in and through the Church, 282 ; imitative char- acter of some miracles, 283, 293 ; exact accuracy in the stories not to be expected, 283, 284, 296, 297; steady growth in the stories, 284 ; typical cases of medieval miracles, 285-290 ; tentative classification, 290, 291 ; (a) acts of vengeance, 291, 292 ; (b] acts of compassion, 293-295 ; the latter subdivided into (a) imi- tative, 293 ; (/3) dreams, 293 ; (7) coincidences, 293, 294; (5) natural causes, 294, 295; another classification, 295; some relation with the saint necessary before the miracle, 295 ; the general question of miracles is philosophical, 297 ; but the main question is one of evidence and criticism, 296, 297 ; and of " Personality and Will," 298 Miracles of S. Aidan, 186 ; S. Alban, 94; S. Aldhelm, 209; King Alfred, 152 ; S. Anselm, 236 n. 3, 293, 295 ; S. Audrey, 303 ; S. Augustine of Canter- bury, 112; S. Cedoc of Llan- carfan, 291 ; Charles I., King and Martyr, 349 n. i ; S. Co- lumba, 123, 284, 291 ; S. Cuth- bert, 186 n. 4, 189-191, 194 ; S. Dunstan, 230, 293 ; S. Ed- mund, 137, 145, 280-282, 291- 296; S. Edmund of Abingdon, 267, 295; Edward the Con- fessor, 160 ; King Edward the Martyr, 158, 180; S. Elizabeth, 55; S. Etheldreda, 312; S. Francis Xavier, 85 n. 2 ; S. Frideswide, 310, 311 ; King 3 8o THE ENGLISH SAINTS Henry the younger, son of Henry II., 269; Henry VI., 165 n. 2 ; S. Hilda, 291, 303 ; S. Hugh, 217, 295 ; S. John of Beverley, 285, 286 ; S. John of the Cross, 74 ; S. Ken elm, 154; S. Keyne, 303; S. Mar- tin, 95 n. 3", 284; S. Oswald, 134 n., 293; S. Oswin, 136 n. ; S. Richard of Chichester, 268; the holy boy Robert, 327 n. 3 ; Simon de Montfort, 271 n. i ; S. Swithun, 288-290; S. Thomas of Canterbury, 292, 293 ; Thomas, Earl' of Lancaster, 274; S. Werburga, 317; S. Wilfrith, 196; S. William of Norwich, 286, 287, 327; miracle told by Gregory of Tours, 330 n. i Missionary work, results of . modern, 9-15 ; importance of the teaching of the first preachers, 92 ; work of S. Boniface, 45-47 ; S. Columba, 120 ; English women saints, 46 n., 306, 309, 310; S. Francis Xavier, 85 ; S. Martin, 96, 97, 100 n. 2 ; S. Patrick, 100 n. 2, 101 ; S. Vladimir, 41, 42 ; of the other Russian saints, 43 ; in the Welsh Church, limited nature of, 102; of S. Wilfrith, 195-197; S. Willibrord, 46, 48 n. i Mommsen, Dr. Theodor, 113 n. Monastery for men and women at Whitby, 306-308 Mouasticism, 181-226 ; Irish, 185 ; Welsh, 100 n. 2 Modwen, Saint, 306 n. i Monica, Saint, 306 n. i Montalembert on S. Elizabeth, 50 n. i More, Sir Thomas, 70 n. i, 276 Miiller, F. M., witness to the power of Christ, 15 n. i Mungo, Saint, 117. See Kenti- gern Miinzer, Thomas, 359 Mystics, S. Teresa, 79 ; mystics among Englishwomen saints, 320 Nelson, Lord, 240 Nennius, quoted, 131 n. Neot, Saint, legends of, 150 n. i Nestor, Chronicle of, 40 n. i, 41 n. i, 3 Newbolt, Canon W. C. E., Priestly Blemishes quoted, 39 n. i New Guinea, effect of Chris- tianity on, 13, 14 New Testament conception of the saint, 19 Nicholas V., Pope, 22 Nicholas, Saint, 145 n. Ninian, Saint, 116-118; miracle of, 280 Norbert, Saint, example of equivalent canonization, 26 Norgate, Miss Kate, on Becket, 246 n. 2, 258 n. i ; value of her work, 256 n. 2 ; uses the form "a Becket," 238 n. 5 Norway, Olaf of, 41 Nova Legenda AngUe, 30-33, 44 n. i, 94 n. 3, 116 n. i, 3, 118 n. i, 128 n. 3, 130 n., 134 n., 141 n., 143 n., 146 n. i, 5, 147 n. i, 3, 148 n. i, 153 n. 2, 154 n. i, 155 n. i, 192 n. i, 196 n. 2, 199 n. 2, 207 n. 3, 210 n., 212 n. i, 219 n. i, 220 n. 3, 221 n. 2, 223 n. 2, 234 n. i, 236 n. 3, 239 n. i, 261 n. T, 267 n. 2, 287 n. i, 303 n. 2, 3, 304 n. 4, 305 n. 1,2, 306 n. 2, 310 n. 2, 312 n. 2, 4, 317 n. i, 318 n. i, 327 n. i, 7 Offa, King of the East Anglians, 139 n. i Olaf of Norway, 41 Olga of Russia, Saint, 40, 41 Olier, Lettres, quoted, 37 n. i Oquendo, Admiral, stor}- of, 75 n. 2 Order of Charity founded by S. John of God, 83 ; Order of the Garter, 88 n. 4, 89 ; Order founded by Gilbert of Sem- pringham, 210, 211; military Order in honour of S. Thomas, 240 n. 2. See Carmelites, Franciscans, Friars, Theatines Osgod Clapa, 147, 282, 292 Ositha, Saint, 306 n. i Osmund of Salisbury, Saint, reverenced before formal INDEX canonization, 22; omitted in Anglican Kalendar, 33 n. 6 ; canonization of, 263 ; miracles essential to his canonization, 278 Osthn'd, Queen of the Mercians, niece of S. Oswald, 132, 133 n. 3 Oswald, Saint, King of North- umbria, no n., 126, 128-136; | authorities, 128 n. 3 ; life and reign, 129-131 ; death, 131 ; i churches dedicated to him, ' 131, 132 ; foreign cult of, 132, 133 ; Sarurn collect for, 133 ; relics, 133 n., 193; miracles, 133 n. 3 ; his death day and permanent fame, 136 ; legends of, 358 n. 2 Oswald of York, Saint, anony- mous Life of, 228 n. Oswen, Saint, 306 n. i Oswestry, 131 n., 132, 133 n. 3 Oswin(e), Saint, King of Deira, j nephew of S. Oswald, no n., ! 126, 134-136; authorities, 134 n. ; life and reign, 134, 135 ; death, 136 ; friend of S. Aidan, 186 Oswiu, King of Bernicia, re- covers relics of S. Oswald, 133 n. ; attacks his nephew, S. Oswine, 135 ; orders him to be slain, 136 Padarn, Saint, 104 Pancras, bov martyr, 326 Paris, Matthew, on Stephen Langton, 265 Pater, Walter, quoted, 335, 357 11. 2 Patrick, Saint, 100, 101 Patriotism and hagiology in Russia, 43 ; in France, 64 Pattison, Mark, quoted, 280 Paulinus, the Apostle of North- umbria, 127, 128, 182, 306 Peirio, Saint, 108 Penda, King of Mercia, 133 n. ; besieges Bamborough, 186 Perrinchief's Royal Alartyr, 344, 345 Philip Neri, Saint, 70 n. 2 Philothea of Athens, Saint, 352 n. i Pictures, Sacred, their effect on S. Vladimir, 41 ; S. Elizabeth's opinion of, 52 ; an exciting cause of "dream" miracles, 293 ; Carpaccio's S. George, 87 n. i ; Giotto's S. Louis, 57 ; picture of Richard II. at Wilton House, 159; pictures of martyrdom of S. Thomas, 241 ; icons in Russia, 43 ; icons of S. Demetrius, 88 n. 3 Pilgrimages of S. Godric, 223, 224 ; the Canterbury pil- grimage, 242 ; pilgrimages to Little S. Hugh of Lincoln, 328 Pisa, relics at, 27 Pitt, William, 239 Plummer, Rev. Charles, editor of Bede and the English (Anglo-Saxon) Chronicle, his notes on Bede, 93 n. i, 100 n. 2, 114 n. i, 2, 120 n. i, 130 n. i, 13211. 2, 13311.3, 19711.5, 199 n. i, 200 n. i, 201 n. 3, 206 n. 3, 4, 219 n. i, 235 n. i, 314 n. i ; on the Chronicle, 138 n. i, 219 n. i, 327 n. i ; on King Alfred, 149 n. i, 2, 150 i, 3, 4 11. 2 ; on S. Edward the Martyr, 155 n. i, 2; on S. Kenelm, 153 n. 2 Pollock, Sir Frederick, on King Alfred, 150 n. 3 Popes, the, claim power to canonize, 23 ; Papal Bull issued in case of S. Elizabeth, 55 n. 2. See Canonization Portugal, national saints of, 82- 85; S. Elizabeth, Queen of, 53 n. 3 Powell, J. U., Fellow of S. John Baptist College, Oxford, on local legends of S. Thomas of Canterbury, 260, 261 n. Probus and Grace, Saints, 302, 303 n. i Purgatory, S. Catherine of Genoa's treatise on, 65 n. i Reformation, the, 70 n. i, 332, 333> 33.8, 357, 359 ; Formularies of Faith, 361 n. ; in Spain, 74; in England, 165; in Spanish church by S. Teresa, 79, 80; closes the canon of English saints, 334 THE ENGLISH SAINTS Reginald, a Durham monk, authority for Life of S. Os- wald, 130 n., 131 n. Regna, Saint, 306 n. i Relics, Eastern, brought home by Crusaders, 27 ; of King Alfred, 152; of S. Audrey (in- corruptible), 315, 316; of S. Cuthbert, 193; of S. Edmund, 143 n. ; King Edward the Martyr, 158; of S. Elizabeth, 56 n. i ; of S. Francis Xavier, 84 u. 2, 3 ; of S. Oswald, 133 n., !935 of S. Oswine, 136; of Venerable Bede, 193; of S. Werburga, 317 ; S. Hugh's treatment of, 214, 215 n. i Renaissance, the, 70 n. i, 357 Revelations of Divine Love, ed. Collins, 320 n. i Richard I. of England, 88, 336; and S. Hugh, 212 n. i, 214 Richard II. 's portrait and patron saints, 159 Richard (deWyche) of Chiches- ter, Saint, 267, 268 Robert, a boy murdered by Jews, 327 Robert of Knaresborough, Saint, 222 Roch, Saint, canonized by the Council of Constance, 24 n. Roman Catholic theory of canonization, 23 Roman Christianity in early Britain, 93 Roman us and David, Saints, 42 n. i Romwald, Saint, example of equivalent cononization, 26 Rosamund, Fair, 215 Roscarrok'sZ,r/t' of Saint Chris- tina, 30 11. 4 Round, J. H., on S. Thomas of Canterbury, 243 n. 2, 247 n. 2 Ruskin, John, quoted, 307 ; re- ference to, 87 n. i Russia, national saints of, 40-43 Sabatier, Paul, quoted, 66 n., 67 n., 69 n. Sacraments, value of, in mis- sions, 13 n. See Eucharist roughly at the Reformation, 334; cult of English saints Sadolet(o), Jacopo, 70 n. i Saint, the, what he is, 359; is the normal Christian, 18 ; not infallible, 342 ; his position in the life of the Middle Ages, 2 3 T > 358 ; in the fourteenth century saintship was the recognition of an honest poli- tical creed, 274 ; deterioration of the saintly ideal, 360 Saints, technical meaning of the word, 25 ; lives of the saints, 16-34; saints in the New Testa- ment, 18, 19, 25 ; their unity more important than their variety, 89, 90 ; their unity with Christ, 37 ; their lesson to the modern world, 356 ff. ; modern need of commemorat- ing saintly lives, 355, 356 , "The Age of Saints" in Wales, 105, 106 , the communion of, 3, 4, 34, 361 n. ; impossible outside the church, 24 -, the, in art. See Pictures, Statues , intercession of the, 360- 361 n. ; cf. 280-282 , invocation of, 316 n. 2 ; cf. H4, 145 by grace of the people 22, 26; by popular voice (the Cid), 72 ; by tradition (Ethel- red and Eadwine), 125 by succession or profession in the Welsh Church, 103, 105 n. i, 108 , local, 22, 27, 107, 153 n. i ; in Germany, 43 ; King Alfred, 152 ; S. David, 106 , National, 38 if. ; of Russia, 40-43 ; of Germany, 43-56 ; of France, 56-64 ; of Italy, 64-70 ; of Spain, 71-81 ; of Portugal, 82-85 ; of England, 86 , Patron, of Spain, Si, 82 n., 89 ; of England, 86-89 ; of Hereford, 153 n. i ; of Richard n., 159 , Royal and princely. See Elizabeth, Louis, Olga, Vladi- mir, and Saints, English , English, pre-Norman, 232; canon of English saints closes INDEX 383 abroad, S. Oswald 132, S. Thomas 260 ; English saints in 1 2th century Irish martyr- ology, no , , Children among the, 322-330 , , Political, how they first arose, 231-233 -, Royal, 125-166; S. Audrey, 315 ; SS. Frideswide and Etheldreda, 309 ; S. Wer- burga, 317 ; see also Cnth- burga, Fremundus , , Statesmen, 227-276; S. Margaret, 318 , , Women. See under Women S. Albans, S. Christina vener- ated at, 30 n. 4 ; gap in chroniclers of, filled by John of Tynemouth, 32 St. Cyres, Viscount, Fenelon, 322 S. John Baptist College, Oxford, MS. 96 printed, 167-180 Salisbury, Marquis of, on Queen Victoria, 354 Sanctity, medieval, not incom- patible with political responsi- bility, 231 Sanctus, meaning of the term, 25. See Saint(s] Sanday, Dr. William, on Per- sonality and Will, 298 Sarum Breviary, 133, 142, 159; Missal, 158 Savvatii, Saint, of Russia, 42 Saxons, the Old or Continental, Scrope, Archbishop, regarded as martyr, 275 Sculpture", 117 Sea, S. Columba's fearlessness of, I2i ; S. Edmund invoked at, 144, 145; sea and ship- wreck, S. John of Beverley's intervention, 285 Sebastian, Saint, 143 " Second Sight," 293 Seebohm, F., on Alfred, 150 n. 3 Sexburg, Saint, 304, 306 n. i Shakespeare, 122 n. i, 165 n. 2 ; quoted, 335, 336 Siena, 65 Simeon of Durham, quoted, 131 n., 134 n. 3 Simon de Montfort, 163, 239, 269-272 Sincerity, of Bede, 202; of S. Hugh, 213-215 Spain, austerity of the national character, 75, 76; national saints of, 71-81 ; reformation of Spanish Church byS. John of the Cross, 73 ; Philip II. of, 72 n. i Spinoza, quoted, 6 Springs, cult of, 62 ; Druid veneration of, 120-1 ; miracles connected with, 303, 312-313 Statue of Henry VI., 162; of S. Vladimir, 41 n. i. See Sculpture Stephen of Hungary, 41 Stevenson, R. L., on Missions, 14, 15 Stigmata, borne by S. Francis, 68; borne by S. John of the Cross, 74 Stokes, Professor G. S., on S. George, 86 n. i Strong, Dr. T. B., Dean of Christ Church, quoted, 358 3' 359 " 2 Stubbs, Dr. C. W., Dean of Ely, 312 n. 4, 316 n. 2 Stubbs, Dr. W., Bishop of Oxford, quoted, 17 n. i, 48 n. 2 and 3, 93 n. i, 108 n. 2, 149 n. i, 161 n. 3, 199 n. i, 201 n. 8, 9, 227 n. i, 228 n. 2, 230, 271 n. i, 274 n. 3, 4, 5, 303 n. 3, 304 n. 2, 317 n. i, 328 n. i, 355 n. i. See Haddan Surius, Laurence, of Cologne, 33, 116 n. i Sutton, H. S., A Preacher's Soliloquy, quoted, 19 n. i Sviatopolk murders SS. Boris and Glyeb, 41 Swegen, King, 281, 291, 294 Swithun, Saint, 287-290 Tata, 304. See Ethelburg Tecla, Saint (Thecla), 46 n. i, 310 Teilo, Saint, 104 Tennysor, quoted, 16 Teresa, Saint, 71, 320, 334; authorities, 76 n. 2; auto- biography, ibid. ; childhood, 77 ; her inner life, 78, 79 ; her THE ENGLISH SAINTS writings, 80 n. 2 ; joyfulness of her devotion, So n. 4 ; canonized, 81 n. i ; quoted, 6- 7 n., 75 n. i ; Life of, quoted, 34 ; attempt to make her patroness of Spain, 81 n. Tertullian, quoted, 353 n. 2 Teutonic races, effect of Chris- tianit}- on, 8, 9, 300; purity akin to Christian morals, 113 Theatines, founded by S. Caje- tan, 70 n. i Thecla (Tecla), Saint, 46 n. i, 310 Theobald, Archbishop of Can- terbury, 243, 247 Theodore of Tarsus, Archbishop of Canterbury, 113 n., 209 Theodorite, Saint, of Russia, 43 Thietmar, Chronicon, quoted, 40 n. 2, 234 n. i Thomas of Canterbury, Thomas the Martyr, Saint (Thomas Becket), 27, 29, 146, 152 n. 4, 213, 225, 230, 233, 234, 238-266, 326 ; authorities, 239 n. i, 246 n. 2 ; canonization, 240, 262 ; church dedications, 240 n. 3 ; early relics, 240, 241 ; shrine, 241 ; his life, 242 ; Chancellor, 243 ; relations with Henry II., 244 ; his magnificence, "245 ; Archbishop, 247 ; contention with Henry II., 247-250; flight, 250; return, 251, 252; further quarrel, 253 ; martyrdom, 254, 255 ; miracles, 256, 260, 262, 280, 284, 292-294; Canterbury water, 284, 294 ; national hero, 256; greatness, 257; his letters, 258 ; shrine rifled, 258 ; con- trasted with S. Anselm, 259- 264 ; legends, 260, 261 ; trans- lation, 265 ; compared with Simon de Montfort, 270, 271 Thomas of Cantilupe, Saint and Bishop, 153 n. i Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, re- garded as a saint, 274 Thuringia, Saint Elizabeth of, 48-56 Tibba of Peterborough, Saint, 306, 306 n. i Trees, cult of, 46, 62, 98, 312- 313 Trier, martyrology of, 28 n. ; saints honoured in the dio- cese, 43 n. 3 Triphon, Saint, of Russia, 43 Turgot (or Theodoric), chaplain of S. Margaret, Queen of Scots, 317, 318 n. i ; his Lift of her quoted, 161 n. i, 278, 279 Udalric, Saint, the first case of formal canonization (?), 23 n. 3 Ugolino, Brother, author of the Fioretti of S. Francis, 66, 67 ; contrasted with Fray Caspar de la Annunciacion, 74 Unity in the Church, need of, 359-361, 365,366; thoughts on, 90 ; of the saints, 37, 89, 90 Unthane, Saint, 306 n. i Urban VIII., Pope, insists on formal canonization, 23 n. 3 Ursula, Saint, 306 n. i Usuard, ninth century martyro- logy, 29 "Venerable," the title, 198 n. 2; applied to Bede, 199, 200 Victoria the Great, Queen, of blessed memory, 353 - 355 ; speech at prorogation of first Parliament, 353, 354; Jubilee message, 1897, 354 Virginit}', of Edward the Con- fessor, 160; of S. Edmund, 143 n. 2 ; of S. Frideswide, 310 - 312 ; S. Elizabeth's thoughts on, 50 ; of Joan of Arc, 62 ; S. Mildred, 304 Virgin saints among Celts, Irish and Welsh, 303 Visions seen by Alfred, 149 ; Cuthbert (of temptation), 192; Guthlac, 221 ; a nun of Hack- ness, 308, 309; a Jewish boy, 330 n. i; S. Keyne, 303; S. Oswald, 128 ; S. Teresa, 79. See Dreams Vladimir the Great, Saint, 40, 41 Waggett, P. N., on Kafir mis- sions, 12 n. 2 Walburga, Saint, 46 n. i, 306 n. i Wales, saints of, 102 ft". ; authori- ties, 103 n. 2 ; monasteries in, loo n. 2. See Welsh Ward, Miss Gertrude, on East INDEX 385 African mission work, n n. 1-3, j 12 n. i Ward, Bishop Seth, on Charles ! 352 Warren, Canon, F. W., Leofric Missal, 28 n. i, 48 n. 3 ; on the Anglican Kalendar, 33 n. 4 Warren, T. Herbert, President of Magdalen College, Oxford, 267 n. 2, 268 Welsh line of influence in early English Christianity, 93 ; Welsh saints, 29 ; general character not high, 105 ; stories of, conspicuous for miracles of vengeance, 291 ; the Welsh attachment to dogma, 109. See Wales Werburgh (Werburga), Saint, lion., 306 n. i, 316, 317 Westcott, Dr. B. F., Bishop of Durham, quoted, 91, 181 n. i, 205 n. i, 364 n. 2 Whitby, Saint Hilda at, 307 Whytfbrd's Martiloge, 144 n. i, 146 n. 7, 152 n. 2, 161 n. 2 Wibert of Nogent, 279, 292 Wigbert, Saint, 46 n. i Wilberforce, The Incarnation, quoted, 37 n. 3 Wilfrith, Saint, no n., 185, 195- 197, 305, 3o8, 312, 315 William II. (Rufus), 236, 248 n. i William of Malmesbury, quoted, 36 n. i, 88 n. 2, 122 n. 2, 149 n. 3, 155 n. i, 156, 157, 200, 201, 208 n 1-3, 209 n. i, 292, 310, 312 n. i. William of Newburgh, quoted, 58 n. 2, 94, 210, 211, 226 William of Norwich, Saint, 286, 287, 323 n. 2, 324-327, 329 Willibald, biographer of S. Boni- face, 44 n. i, 2, 46 n. i ; quoted, 47 n. i, 2 Willibrord, Saint, Apostle of the Frisians, 45 n., 46, 48 n. i. Wine, miracles connected with, 285 Winfrith, no n. See Boniface and Wynfrith Winifred (Winifrith, Wenefride) of Holywell, Saint, 306 n. i, 313 ; omitted in Anglican Kalendar, 33 n. 6 Wistan, Saint, 153 n. i Withburga, Saint, 306 n. i Woman, position of, in heathen- dom and under Christianity, 299 Women and children among the saints, 299-330; saints of England free from hysteric excesses of foreign women saints, 321 ; Women Saints, Lives of, 33 n. 3, 301-303 n. 3, 304 n. i,. 3, 4, 305 n. i, 2, 306 n. i, 314 n. i, 317 n. i, 318-319 Woods, Mrs., The Builders, quoted, 363 Wulfhilde, 306 n. i Wulfstan of Worcester, Saint, 33 n. 6, 36 n. i, 122 Wulfstan, Archbishop of York, Homilies, 155 n. i Wunibald, Saint, 46 n. i Wyclif, resemblance of his views to those of Grosseteste, 273 Wynfrith, Saint, 44. See Boni- face Wynkyn de Worde, 29, 30 n. 4, Zosima, Saint, of Russia, 42 ERRATUM. Page 295, line 4 from bottom, for "the saint does act," read "the saint does not act." WELLS GARDNER, DARTON AND CO., LONDON. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY BERKELEY Return to desk from which borrowed. This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. STACKS 1966 tiNov' BftAftV HIT JAN 7 ,:81 REC'D LU SEP 2 8 1961 29j an '63WV J JAN 7196S67 REC'D LD JAN 2 7 '66 -2 PI OCT121966 MAR 2 '67 -2PM LOAN D'- LD 21-100m-9,'47(A5702sl6)476 444S4 545^)09 8X-H51 GiHs UNIVERSITY OF CAUFORNIA LIBRARY