How Pope Gregory and Bishop Augustin Governed the New Church of England (part 2 of 2)

There is nothing more painful than to meet in history with endless and passionate contentions upon questions and causes which, after some time has passed, are interesting or even intelligible to no human creature. But it is not Christian antiquity alone that offers us such a spectacle: we find it in all ages. And to those who profess to be scandalized at the overweening importance that the most pious minds of their time have attached to equal trifles, it should be enough to recall the determined obstinacy which prompted great nations, such as the English and the Russians, to resist the reform of the Gregorian calendar— the one for nearly two centuries, the other amidst the complete uniformity of the entire civilized world.

It is no less true that, by that obstinate fidelity to a venerable, though false, computation, the British set themselves at variance on this question of Easter, not only with Rome and the whole West, but also with the East, which celebrated that festival, like the Jews, on the precise day of the week on which it fell, while the British, in common with the whole Western Church, always held the celebration on Sunday. But this Sunday was, or might be, another day than that kept as Easter-day at Rome.

Who could imagine that this pitiful and absurd difference should have kept the two Churches for two centuries on a footing of direct hostility? Since the British Celts received their ancient custom from Rome itself, why could they not follow Rome in her perfected reckoning as all the rest of the West did? Why should they have positively decided to hold festival while the Romans fasted; and to fast while at Rome they chanted the Hallelujah?

®^ DoLLiNGEK, p. 217. Rees, Welsh Saints, p. 288.

Was there not a more serious, a deeper cause for this dissension, of which the Pascal controversy was but the outward aspect? It is impossible to doubt it; and of all causes it was the most natural and excusable — the instinct of national preservation, exasperated by hatred of the triumphant enemy, and expressing itself in distrust of the stranger, who seemed to be an accomplice of that enemy.

Augustin knew well that he needed the aid of the Celtic Christians in order to carry on successfully the great work which the Papacy had intrusted to him. Trained in the conciliatory and moderate school of St. Gregory the Great, fresh from his recent instructions, he was very far from being exclusive in regard to local personages or customs; and in order to effect the conversion of the Saxons, he claimed in all good faith the co-operation of the numerous and powerful clergy who, for more than a centur}^, had been the very soul of the resistance to the heathen, and who peopled those great cloisters of Wales, into which the sword of the invader had never penetrated.

But the British resisted him with a jealous and obstinate opposition. They would not join him in evangelizing their enemies; they had no wish to open to them the gates of heaven.^^

Augustin, however, succeeded in obtaining the consent of the principal bishops and doctors of Wales to a conference with him. It was arranged that they should meet on the confines of Wessex, near the banks of the Severn, which separated the Saxons from the Britons. The interview, like that of Augustin with Ethelbert, after his landing in Kent, took place in the open air, and under an oak, which for a long time afterwards v/as known as Augustin's oak. He began, not by claiming the personal supremacy which the Pope had conceded to him, but by exhorting his hearers to live in Catholic peace with him, and to unite their efforts to his ibr the evangelization of the pagans— that is to say, the Saxons. But neither his entreaties, nor his exhortations, nor his reproaches, nor the eloquence of his attendant monks joined to his own, availed to bend the Britons, who persisted in appealing to their own traditions in opposition to the new rules. After a long and laborious disputation, Augustin at last said, "Let us pray God, who maketh brethren to dwell together

*" VAraN, Memoir cited.

in unit}', to show us by a sign from heaven what traditions we ought to follow. Let a sick man be brought hither, and he whose prayers shall cure him shall be the one whose faith is to be followed." The British consented reluctantly. An Anglo-Saxon blind man was brought, whom the British bishops could not cure. Then Augustin fell on his knees, and implored God to enlighten the conscience of many of the faithful, by giving sight to this man. Immediately the blind man recovered his vision. The British were touched; ^"^ they acknowledged that Augustin's course was just and straightforward, but that they could not renounce their old customs without the consent of their people, and demanded a second assembly, in which their deputies should be more numerous.

The second conference was held soon after. Augustin there found himself in the presence of seven British bishops and of the most learned doctors of the great Monastery of Bangor, which contained more than 3000 monks, and which was, as we have seen, the centre of religious life in Wales, Before this new meeting, the Britons went to consult an anchorite, much famed among them for his wisdom and his sanctity, and asked him if they ought to give heed to Augustin, and abandon their traditions. " Yes," said the hermit, '' if he is a man of God." " But how shall we know that? " " If he is meek and lowly of heart, as says the Gospel, it is probable that he carries the yoke of Jesus Christ, and that it is His yoke he offers you; but if he is hard and proud, he comes not from God, and you ought to give no heed to his discourse. In order to prove him, let him arrive the first at the place of council; and if he rises when you approach, you will know that he is a servant of Christ, and you will obey him; but if he rises not to do you honor, then despise him, as he will have despised you." ^^

The instructions of the anchorite were obeyed. Unfortunately, on arriving at the place of council they found Augustin already seated, more Romano, says an historian, and he did not rise to receive them.^^ This was enough to set them

*" "Ut pace catliolica secum habita, coramunem evangelizandi gentibus pro domino laborem susciperent.... Laboriosi atque longi certaminis finem fecit.... Quidam de genere Anglorum, oculoruni usu privatus.... Confitentur intellexisse se verani esse viam justitiae quam prajdicaret Augustinus." — Bede, ii. 2.

^' " Sin autem vos spreverit, nee coram vobis adsurgere voluerit, cum sitis plures, et ipse spernatur a vobis." — Bede, ii. 2.

*- "Cum ergo convenisset, et Augustinus Romano more in sella residens iis non assurrexisset." — Henr. Huntingdon, iii. 186, ed. Savile. against him. " If this man," said they, '•' deigns not to rise at our arrival now, how will he slight us when we shall have acknowledged his authority! " From that hour they became intractable, and studied to thwart him at every point. Neither then nor at the first conference did the archbishop make any effort to induce them to acknowledge his personal authority. Let it be added, to the honor of this headstrong race, and rebellious but earnest and generous clergy, that Augustin did not reproach them with any of those infringements of the purity of the priestly life which some authors have imputed to them.'^^ With moderation, in scrupulous conformity to the instructions of the Pope, he reduced all his claims to three main points. " You have," said he, " many practices which are contrary to our usage, which is that of the universal Church; we will admit them all without diflSculty, if only you will believe me on three points: to celebrate Easter at the right time; to complete the sacrament of baptism '^^ according to the usage of the holy Roman Church; and to preach the word of God along with us to the English nation," To this threefold demand the Celtic bishops and monks offered a threefold refusal, and added that they would never acknowledge him as archbishop.^^ In thus refusing to recognize the personal supremacy of Augustin, they in nowise rejected that of the Holy See. What they dreaded was not a Pope at a distance from them, impartial and universally respected at Rome, but a kind of new pope at Canterbury, within the territory and under the influence of their hereditary foes, the Saxons.^*^ And, above all else, they objected to ^^ "Errorem Bretonum... quo alia plura ecclesiasticae castitati et paci contraria gerunt." — Bede, v. 18. Compare Gildas, Be Excidio, p. 23. Dollingor believes that he refers liere to the subintroductcB, so often denounced by the councils. He notices elsewhere that the British priests alone have been the object of these accusations, which have never been brought against the other branches of the Celtic Church.

^* He referred probably to Confirmation.

^* " Quia in multis quidem nostra3 consuctudini, immo universalis Ecclesia3 contraria) geritis; ct tamen si in tribus his mihi obtemperare vultis; ut Pascha suo tempore cclebretis, ut ministerium baptizandi, quo Deo rcnascimur, juxta morem sancta) Romans et apostolicae Ecclesioe comploatis, ut genii Anglorum una nobiscum verbum Domini pra^dicetis, cictera qua; agitis, quamvis moribus nostris contraria, ajquanimiter cuncta tolcrabimus."— Bede, V. IS.

"*' Hook, the most recent English historian of the archbishops of Canterbury, acknowledges this fact with an impartiality which is not always habitual to him. "\Yc shall be excused discussing the pretended anti-papal reply of the orator of Bangor, an English invention, published in the coilecnons of Spelman and AVilkins, and complacently repeated by M. Augustin Thierry. Lingard, Dollinger, op. cit., p. 218, and Professor Walter, have demonstrated 180 ST. AUGUSTIN

be told of the duty of laboring for the conversion of the odious Saxons, who had slaughtered their forefathers and usurped their lands. " No," said the abbot of Bangor, " we will not preach the faith to this cruel race of strangers who have treacherously driven our ancestors from their countr}^, and robbed their posterity of their heritage." ^'^ Threaten- It is easy to SCO which of the three conditions Augustin had most at heart by the threatening prediction with which he met the refusal of the British monks. " Since you will not have peace with brethofBaugor. rm^^ yg^ gj^jji] j^^ve War with enemies: since you will not show to the English the way of life, you shall receive from their hands the punishment of death."

, This prophecy was only too cruelly fulfilled some

years later. The king of the northern English, Ethelfrid, still a pagan, invaded the district of Wales in which stood the great Monastery of Bangor. At the moment when the battle began between his numerous army and that of the Welsh, he saw at a distance, in an elevated position, a body of men, unarmed and on their knees. " Who are these? " he asked. He was told they were the monks of the great Monastery of Bangor, who, after fasting for three days, had come to pray for their brethren during the battle. " If they pray to their God for my enemies," said the king, " they are fighting against us, unarmed though they be." And he directed the first onslaught to be made against them. The Welsh prince, who should have defended them, fled shamefully, and 1200 monks were massacred on the field of battle, martyrs of Christian fJiith and of Celtic patriotism.^^ Thus ended, say the annals of Ireland, the day of the slaughter of the saints.'^-^

its falsity, already exposed by Turberville in his 3Ianuale Control-ersiarum; fees, Stephenson, Hussey, and all the modern English writers of any weight, have agreed to renounce it. Let us recall here the learned and deeply-to-be-lamented Abbe Gorini's excellent refutation of the inexcusable errors committed by M. Augustin Thierrj' in his narrative of the mission of St. Augustin.

"^ Welsh chronicle, entitled Brut Tysilio, and Galfkid. Monmoutho, xi. 2, ap. Walter, op. cit., pp. 225, 227.

^* " Cum videret sacerdotes... seorsum in loco tutiore consistere, sciscitabatur quid essent hi, quidve acturi illo convenissent.... Ergo si adversum nos at Douni suum clamant, profecto et ipsi quamvis arma non ferant contra nos pugnant. Itaque in hos primum arma verti jubet, et sic ca3teras nefandiB militiaj copias... delevit.. • ut etiam temporalis interitus ultione sentirent perfidi, quod oblata sibi perpetu^ salutis consilia spreverant." — Bede, v. 18.

"' Annates Tighernach, ad. ann. 606.

An old calumny, revived in our day, makes Augustin answerable for this invasion, and accuses him of having pointed out the monastery of Bangor to the Northumbrian heathens.io^ But the Venerable Bede expressly states that he had been for a long time a saint in heaven when this invasion took place. It is enough that Bede himself, much more Saxon than Christian whenever he treats of the British, applauds this massacre more than a century afterwards, and sees in it Heaven's just vengeance on what he calls the infamous army of the disloyal Welsh— that is to say, on the heroic Christians who, in defence of their hearths and altars, fell beneath the sword of the pagan Anglo-Saxons, under the orders of a chief who, according to the testimony of Bede himself, slew more of the native population than any of his predecessors.i*'^

After such an explosion of his own national antipathies, he seems to be singularly little entitled to reproach the Celts of Wales with the steadfastness of their resentment, as he does in stating that even in his time they made no account of the religion of the Anglo-Saxons, and would hold no more communion with them than with pagans.i'^^

It is possible, as an ingenious critic has said, that Augustin and his companions did not treat with sufficient tact the national and insular pride of the British, heightened by a long warlike resistance, by the traditions of the monks, and the patriotic songs of the bards.^^^ But nothing, I repeat, indicates the slightest departure on his part from the counsel and example of the glorious pontiif whose disciple and emulator he was. Condemned by the obstinacy of the British to deprive himself of their assistance, he none the less continued his " hunt of men," as his biographer calls it, by evangelizing the Saxons, who at least did not wear him out,

'°° This false imputation can be traced back to Geoffrey of Monmouth, bishop of St. Asaph in the twelfth century, and mouthpiece of the national rancors of Wales. Certain obscure writers, unworthy descendants of the Anglo-Saxons, such as Goodwin and Hammond, have adopted it out of hatred of the Romish Church, and not knowing how to reconcile it with Bede's positive assertion of the prior death of Augustin, have pretended that this passage of the Veneral)le historian had been interpolated. But all the modern editors of Bede have been obliged to acknowledge that the contested passage existed in all the MSS. of that author ivithout exception. Compare LiNGARD, Anglo-Saxon Church, vol. i. p. 7-t; Varin, Fremier Memoire, pp. 25-20; GoRiNi, op. cit., vol. 11. p. 77.

'01 Bede, i. 34.
'°2 Bede, ii. 20. See the text already cited, p. G87.
'O-* OZANAM, p. 153.

182 ST. AUGUSTIN

like the Welsh, with their wordiness and their endless discussions.io* And yet, even among the former he sometimes encountered an opposition which expressed itself in insult and derision, especially when he passed beyond the bounds of Ethelbert's kingdom. On one occasion, while traversing that region of the country of the West Saxons which is now called Dorsetshire, he and his companions found themselves in the midst of a seafaring population, who heaped on them affronts and outrages. These heathen savages not only refused to hear them, but even drove them away with acts of violence, and in hunting them from their territory, with a rude derision truly Teutonic, fastened to the black robes of the poor Italian monks, as a mark of contempt, the tails of the fish which formed their livelihood.i*^'^ Augustin was not a man to be discouraged by such trifles. Besides, he found in other places crowds more attentive and more impressible. And thus he persevered for seven entire years, until his death, in his apostolic journeys — travelling after, as well as before, his archiepiscopal consecration, like a true missionary, always on foot, without carriage or baggage, and adding to his unwearied preaching good works and miracles — here making unknown springs gush from the ground, there healing by his touch the sick believed to be incurable or dying.^^^

Meanwhile Ethelbert did not fail in solicitude for and generosity to the Church of which he had become the ardent disciple. Not content with the and rS gifts which he had bestowed on the two great monasteries of Canterbury — on that which surrounded the metropolitan church, and on the Abbey of St. Peter and

104 '< Vix crediderim Augustinum a quoquam paganorum majori fatigatum verborum ambage. ... In occidentalem ab Aquiloni plagani divertit, non tarn viatoris quarn venatoris aut aucupis morem gerens." — Gotselinus, Hist. Maior, c. 32, 41.

105 u j>iebs inipia... tota ludibriorum et opprobriorum in sanctos debacchata... nee manu pepercisse creditur.... Fama est illos effulminandos provenientes niarinorum pisciuui caudas Sanctis appendisse." — Gotselinus, c. 41.

1C6 u-pam post praesulatum quara ante, sempfer pede, absque vehiculo, patiens ambulando, liber et expeditus prsedicationi evangelicae." — Elmham, Hist. Monaster. S. Augustini, p. 106. Compare Gotselinus, c. 44 and 49. This historian reproduces the story of an old man M'hose grandfather had, •while still young, been a scoflFer at the wonderful stranger whom the crowd followed and surrounded as though he were an angel from heaven, because he went about healing all their infirmities. " Cum vero audissem ilium omnium debiiium ac nioribundorum curare corpora, ampliori incredulus cachinnabam vesania." He ended, nevertheless, in being baptized by the hand of Augustin himself.

OF CANTERBURY. 183 St. Paul without the walls — he seconded with all his might the introduction of Christianity into a kingdom adjacent to his own and placed under his suzerainty — that of the Saxons of the East, or of Essex, the king of which was the son of his sister, and which was only separated from Kent by the Thames. Augustin having sent thither as bishop the monk Mellitus, one of the new missionaries sent to him by Gregory, Ethelbert built at London, the chief city of the West Saxons, a church, dedicated to St. Paul, intended for a cathedral, which it still is. In his own kingdom of Kent he authorized the erection of a second bishopric, situated at Rochester, a Roman city, twenty miles west of Canterbury; Augustin placed there as bishop another of the new missionaries, Justus by name; and the king caused a cathedral to be built there, which he named after St. Andrew, in memory of the Roman monastery whence Pope Gregory had drawn all the apostles of the Anglo-Saxon race.^'^''

All these foundations, destined to last to our own times in spite of so many strange and unhappy changes, invest him with an imperishable claim on the gratitude of Christian posterity; and long afterwards, when the Norman nobility had in their turn seized upon the supreme power and changed the aspect of the Church of England, King Ethelbert became apparent to her as the first who had provided with seignorial strongholds, in the shape of bishops' seats and monasteries, the kingdom which he desired to hold in fee for the Lord God.ios

He did yet more for the Church of his country -^^^^^^^ by securing for her property and her liberties what Ethelbert we may call, in modern rather than just terms, a h"g'the^'^° legal and parliamentary sanction, hi one of those P°^^peace°^ periodical assemblies of the sages and chief men of ^f the the Saxon people, which bore the name of Witenagemot, and which were the origin of the modern Parliament, he caused certain laws — the text of which is still preserved — to be committed to writing and published in the Anglo- Saxon tongue. They confirmed at once the old rights of the people, and the new rights conceded to the now Church. The first of the ninety articles of that legislative act enacts that those who should rob the goods of the Church, of the bishops, »" Bede, ii. 3.

los u'pmjj episcopia ct monastcria tanquam doiuinica castelia, quibus Dominicum regnum teneatur, liberalitcr ac rcgaliter passim macbinutur." —GoTSELiNUS, Hist. Maior, c. 23.

01' other orders of the clergy, shall make restitution eleven or twelve times beyond the value ©f the robbery .i^a The same article sanctioned implicitly what the English have since named the right of sanctuary— that is, the right of asylum and protection recognized as belonging to the precincts of Churches and monasteries — by visiting the violation of that peace of the Church with a penalty the double of that incurred by violation of the public peace. The whole nation thus sanctioned and ratified the work of its king by placing under the safeguard of penal laws the property and safety of the ministers of the religion which it had adopted.^^*^ These laws, long known by the name of Dooms or Judgments of Ethelbert, are the first written laws known to us, not only of the English, but perhaps of any of the Germanic races. The best informed critics attribute to the influence of the Roman monks on the Anglo-Saxon king, this commencement of the national, or rather penal code.^^^ For its enactments were chiefly penal, and we cannot but admire the wisdom of those missionaries who, trained in the traditions of Roman jurisprudence, nevertheless established and sanctioned the principle of pecuniary compensation universafly adopted by the Germanic races. In these laws of Ethelbert a classification of social position is clearly apparent from the minutely exact enumeration of crimes committed against the life or safety of men, the honor of women, religion, and public peace. Every trespass is punished b}^ a penalty proportionate — first, to the gravity of the offence, and next, to the rank of the victim. In case of murder, the compensation is due not only to the family of the deceased, but also to the community of which he was a member, and to the king who was his sovereign. This system, applied for the first time to the defence of the Christian Church by the Saxons ^°^ '• Ut ecclcsia3 i^eculium duodecies, episcopi undecies emendaretur." —According to the instructions given by Gregory to Augustin, this surplus value of the restitution did not profit the Church, which was bound to be content with the simple restoration of what had been taken.

no ^{4 1} Inter castera bona quaj genti sua; conferendo conferebat, etiam decreta illi judiciorum juxta exenipla Komanoruui, cum concilio sapientium constituit.... Volens scilicet tuitionem eis quos et quorum doctrinani susceperat, priBstare." — Bede, ii. 5. Compare Kemble, Saxons in England, ii. 205; Hook, op. ciY., p. 59; Wilkins, Concilia, p. 25; Thorpe, Ancient Laws and Institutes of England, 1840, c. 1. This last publication, executed by order of the English Government, gives the Saxon text of the laws of Ethelbert, with a very intelligent commentary.

"' Lappenbekg, vol. i. p. 142; Lingakd, Hist, of England, c. 11; Lord Campbell, Lives of the Chancellors, art. Angemundus; especially Phillips, Geschichte dcs Angelsachsichschen Eechts, p. 61. of Kent, and for the first time reduced to a written form under the guidance of the Roman monks, will be found in all the subsequent legislation of the Saxon kingdoms, which the bishops and monks, successors of Augustin, continued to guide with a strong yet gentle hand into the ways of Christian civilization.

Great men, commissioned by God to begin works which are to be truly great and enduring, seldom live to old age and when one of them disappears, it often happens that he carries with him on his way to a better world those who have been on earth his companions, servants, and friends. St. Gregory the Great, whose pontificate has left an ineffaceable impression upon the memory of Christendom, and a peerless example in the annals of the Church, reigned only fifteen years, mh^farch. He died in the early month of the year G05, and lot^li^y. two months after Augustin followed his father and friend to the tomb.^^^ The Roman missionary was interred, after the Roman custom, by the side of the public way, the great Roman road which led from Canterbury to the sea, and in the unfinished church of the famous monastery which was about to assume and to preserve his name.

The name of Gregory will remain always identified with that conversion of England which was the labor of love of his whole life, and the greatest glory of his pontificate. His large and tender heart had been the first to conceive the thought of that conquest. His patient and conciliating genius, at once ardent and gentle, prudent and resolute, revealed to him the conditions of success. It is to him that the English race — at this day the most numerous and powerful of all Christian races — owes the revelation of the light of the Gospel.

He was the true apostle, the conqueror of England for God, and, through England, of immense countries which she has subjected to her laws, to her language, and to her religion. It is, then, with good reason that the first English historian claims for him this title. " Called," says Bede, " to a supreme pontificate over all the nations already converted to the faith, to our nation which Avas in bondage to idols, and out of which he has formed a Christian Church, he has been

¹¹² xiiere has been much dispute about the date of the death of Augustin, which Mabillon had fixed in G07. Buttlie majority of English historians are now agreed upon the date C05. Wharton would even place it as early as 604. Anglia Sacra, vol. i. p. 91. something more. We may well say of Gregory what Paul said of himself to the Corintliians — that if he has not been the apostle of others, he has been our apostle. Yes, we are the seal of his apostleship in the Lord— we, the people whom he rescued from the fangs of the old enemy, to make us partakers of the eternal freedom." ^^^

The nature of the means that Gregory employed to accomplish his work, and the moral perfection of the arrangements which he brought to bear on it, are even more to be admired than the work itself; — zeal, devotion, wisdom, moderation, love of souls, and respect for their freedom, pity, generosity, vigilance, indomitable perseverance, divine gentleness, intelligent patience — nothing was awanting in him. We leave the history of his pontificate, and especially of his intercourse with England, with no other regret than that inseparable from witnessing the end of so noble a life; and in losing sight of him, are left uncertain which should be the most adnjired— his good sense or his good heart, his genius or his virtue.

The figure of St. Augustin of Canterbury naturally pales beside that of St, Gregory the Great; his renown is, as it were, absorbed into the brilliant centre of the Pontiff's glory. And recent English and German historians ^^"^ have taken delight in bringing out the inferiority of the man whom Gregory chose for his vicegerent and his friend. They have vied with each other in decrying his character and services— accusing him by turns of hauteur and of feebleness, of irresolution and of obstinacy, of softness and of vanity,— trying, especially, to heighten and magnify the indications of hesitation and of self-seeking which they discover in his life. Let it be permitted to these strange precisians to reproach him with having stopped short of the ideal of which they pretend to dream, and which no hero of theirs has ever approached. To our judgment, the few shadows which fall on the noble career of this great saint are left there to touch the hearts and console the spirits of those who are, like him, infirm, and charged sometimes with a mission which, like him, they judge to be beyond their strength.

i'3 "Quia etsi aliis non est apostolus, sed tamen nobis est; nam signaculum apostolatus ejus nos sumus in Domino.... Quod nostram gentem per praedicatores quos hue direxit, de dentibus antiqui hostis eripiens aiternse libertatis fecit esse participeni." — Bede, ii. 1.

'^^ Stanley, Hook, Lappenberg.

OF CANTERBURY. 187

Among the workers of great works who have changed the history of the world and decided the fate of nations one loves to meet with those infirmities, which give encouragement to the common average of men.

Let us, then, preserve intact our admiration and our gratitude for the first missionary— the first bishop and abbot of the English people. Let us give our meed of applause to that council which, a century and a half after his death, decreed that his name should be always invoked in the Litanies after that of Gregory, " because it is he who, sent by our father Gregory, first carried to the English nation the sacrament of baptism and the knowledge of the heavenly country." ^^^