First Successors of St. Augustin — Pagan Reaction

FIRST SUCCESSORS OF ST. AUGUSTIN - PAGAN REACTION. Special characteristics of the conversion of England. — All the details of it are known: it has neither martyrs nor persecutions; it has been the exclusive work of Benedictine or Celtic monks. — All the Roman missionaries were monks; their monasteries served for cathedrals and parish churches. — Laurence, first successor of Augustin. — Mellitus at the council of Rome at GIO; Pope's letter to Ethelbert; monks of Saxon origin. —Efforts of Laurence to reconcile the British; his letter to the Irish bishops. — Conversion of the kings of East Anglia and Essex. — Foundation of AVestminstcr; legend of the fisher; King Sebert the first to be buried there; monastic burials; Nelson and Wellington. — Canterbury and Westminster, the metropolis and national necropolis of the English, due to the monks. — Death of Bertha and of Ethelbert; the abbot Peter drowned. —Eadbald, the new king of Kent, remains a pagan; his subjects, as also the Saxons of the East, return to paganism. — Flight of the bishops of London and Rochester; Archbishop Laurence held back by St. Peter. — Conversion of Eadbald. — Apostasy of the king of East Anglia; he admits Christ among the Scandinavian gods. — Mellitus and Justus, the second and third successors of Augustin.

The preaching of the Gospel in England is f^^f^l^^, marked by several characteristics altogether pe- istics of the culiar to itself, and distinguishing it from those of'^ugiand.

"5 " Qui genti Anglorum a praefato Papa et patre nostro missus.. • scientiam fidei, baptism! sacramentum et coelestis patriae notitiam primus attulit." — Concilium Cloveshoviense, anno 747. revolutions which introduced Christianity into the western nations previously converted to the faith.

In Italy, Gaul, and Spain, the propagation of the Gospel and the extinction of paganism are surrounded with such obscurity that it is impossible to be sure of the date at which the first evangelists of most of the dioceses lived.

^^ England, on the other hand, nothing is vague qj. uncertain. Year by year, and day by day, we

witness the various phases of the grand event. We take

part, as it were, in the very work— the conversion of a great country — which it is so rarely possible to study in detail. We can follow it in all its changes of fortune with the same certainty and precision as if it were an incident in our contemporary missions.

Neither Morcovor, in the great lands and illustrious churches which have just been named, the baptism Qf blood everywhere accompanied or preceded the conversion of the people. Like the apostles at Rome and in the East, the missionaries of the Gospel in the West had, for the most part, to water with their blood the first furrows that they were honored to draw in the field of the divine Husbandman. Even after the great imperial persecutions had come to an end, martyrdom often crowned the apostolate of the first bishops or their auxiliaries.

In England there was nothing at all like this: from the first day of St. Augustin's preaching, and during the whole existence of the Anglo-Saxon Church, there was neither martyr nor persecutor there. When brought within the circle of the pure and radiant light of Christianity, and even before they acknowledged and worshipped it, these fierce Saxons, pitiless as they were to their enemies, showed themselves very much more humanely disposed and accessible to the truth than the enlightened and civilized citizens of Imperial Rome. Not one drop of blood was shed for the sake of religion, or under any religious pretext; and this wonder occurred at a time when blood flowed in torrents for the most frivolous motives, and in that island where afterwards so many piles were to be lighted, and so many scaffolds raised, to immolate the English who should remain true to the faith of Gregory and Augustin.

A third distinctive feature of the conversion of England is that it was exclusively the work of work of the monks ) first, of Benedictine monks sent from Rome monks. — ^jj^ afterwards, as we shall see, of Celtic monks, who seemed for a moment about to eclipse or supplant the Italian monks, but who soon snifered themselves to be absorbed by the influence of the Benedictines, and whose spiritual posterity is inseparably connected with that of the Roman missionaries in the common observance of the rule of the great legislator of the monks of the West.

The monastic profession of these first missionaries has been the subject of frequent and long dispute. While it has been admitted that many were of the order to which he himself belonged, it has been denied that all the monks sent by St. Gregory the Great were Benedictines. But the unerring and unrivalled learning of Mabillon has settled the question by irrefutable arguments.^i^ It is possible that some clerks or secular priests were to be found among the assistants of the first Archbishop of Canterbury; but it is distinctly proved, by the authority of Bede and of all the earliest records, that Augustin himself and his successors, as well as all the religious of his metropolitan church and the great abbey which bore his name, followed the rule of St. Benedict, like the great Pope whose mission they carried out, Gregory, as has been seen, was desirous of taking advantage of the new ecclesiastical organization of England to introduce "® In the preface of the first century of the Ada Sanctorum Ordinis S. Benedicti, paragraph 8, Mabillon has completely proved against Baronius and Marsham, one of the editors of the Monasticon Anglicanum, that Gregory, Augustin, and their disciples belonged to the order of St. Benedict. The brethren of Saint-Maur, in the life of Gregory placed at the beginning of their edition of his works, have completed the proof (book iii. c. 5, G, 7). These brief but weighty pages say more on the subject than the folio entitled Aposiolatus Benedidinonim in Anglia, sive Disceptatio Historica de Antiqu'itate Ordinis Congregationisque 3Ionachorum, Nigrorum in Regno Angliez, opera R. P. Clementis Reyneri, Duaci, 1626. This ill-arranged and tedious compilation is nevertheless important for the later history of England, on account of the numerous and curious articles which it contains. One of the most curious is the note asked and obtained by the author from the four most celebrated and learned English Protestants of his time, Cotton, Spelman, Camden, and Selden, who unanimously declare that all their researches have led them to the conclusion that St. Augustin, his companions, and his successors, were Benedictines. The English text of this is to be found in Stevens, Continuation of Ditgdalc, vol. i. p. 171. A modern Anglican, Soames, has recently asserted that the Benedictines did not arrive till the tenth century with St. Dunstan; but he has been refuted by the two most distinguished of modern English archajologists, the Protestant Koniblo and the Catholic Lingard. The latter, however, is in error in supposing {History and Antiquities of the Anglo-Saxon Church, vol. i. p. 152) that Augustin placed in the Cathedral of Canterbury clerks and not monks. He has mistaken the early synonymy of the words clerici and monachi, in modern times used to express two entirely distinct ideas, but which were employed indifferently from the days of Gregory of Tours to those of the Venerable Bede, and even later. there that close alliance of the monastic and ecclesiastical life which, to his mind, realized the ideal of the apostolic church. For more than a century that alliance Avas universal and absolute. AVherever the pagan temples were transformed into churches— wherever the old churches of the time of the Romans and Britons rose from their ruins— there monastic life prevailed among the missionaries who served the cures. The converted country was thus, little by little, overspread by monasteries; the small ones for a long time held the place of rural parish churches; the large served for cathedrals, chapter-houses, and residences for the bishops, who were all produced by the monastic orders.

The first thirty-eight archbishops of Canterbury firTt'suc-^' were all monks; and the first four successors of St. Au^'iwtin. Augustin were taken from among the monks of the eVeio Monastery of St. Andrew at Rome, whom Pope

Gregory had appointed to be his fellow-workmen. During his life, Augustin had chosen as his successor in the primacy his companion Laurence, and had procured his consecration beforehand, thus meaning, with fatherly anxiety, to make the best provision for the frail fortunes of the new-born Church of the English.^i^ The new archbishop did honor to the choice which had honored him. He devoted himself nobly to the consolidation of the Church which he had seen founded; he conciliated all hearts, and increased the number of the faithful by the unwearied activity of his preaching no less than by the saintly example of his life.

Laurence lived for ten years in an intimate union with the good king Ethelbert, and acted as the medium of communication between that prince and the Holy See. The third successor of Gregory, Boniface IV. — he who consecrated the Roman Pantheon to Christian worship in memory of all the martyrs— exhibited towards the king and the missionary monks of the kingdom of Kent a goodwill and confidence worthy of his illustrious predecessor.

'" " Ne se defuncto adhuc status ecclesiaj tarn rudis, vel ad horam pastore destitutus, vacillare inciperet." — Bede, ii. 4. The last historian of the archbishops of Canterbury, Dr. Hook, maintains that Laurence was not a monk, taking as his ground the passage in which Bede describes him as priest to distinguish him from his companion Peter the monk: " Misit continue Romam Laurentium presbyterum et Petrum monachum." — i. 27. He forgets that this same Peter is himself described as priest some pages farther on: "Primus ejusdem monasterii abbas Petrus presbyter fuit." — i. 33. The title of priest was not at all incompatible with the monastic profession. That point was settled at the Council of Rome in 610 — only then, as now, all monks were not in priest's orders.

OF CANTERBURY. 191

Mellitus, the new bishop of the East Saxons, was sent by- Laurence to Rome to consult the Pope upon different matters affecting the interests of the Church of England. He was one of the members of the Council of Rome, in which were promulgated the canons which confirmed the rule of St. Benedict, and accorded to the monks the right of administering the sacraments and of being admitted to all the grades of the priesthood.^i^ Mellitus brought back to England the decrees of this council, which he had himself signed along with the other bishops; he brought likewise very gracious letters from the Pope to the archbishop and to the king. '' Glorious king," Boniface wrote to Ethelbert, " we accord to you with right good will that which you have demanded of the Apostolic See through our co-bishop Mellitus: to wit, that in the monastery which your holy teacher Augustin, the disciple of Gregory, of blessed memory, consecrated under the name of the Holy Saviour, in your city of Canterbury, and over which our very dear brother Laurence now presides, you should establish a dwelling for monks, living together in complete regularity; and we decree, by our apostolic authority, that the monks who have preached the faith to you may take this new monastic community into association with themselves, and teach its members to live a holy life." ¹¹⁹

Through the obscurity of this language it seems natural to conclude that the introduction of new monks, probably of Saxon origin, into the Italian community founded by Augus-

tin, is here indicated. A century passed, however, ere an

abbot born in England could be chosen to preside over it.

Like Augustin, Archbishop Laurence was not Efforts of content to labor for the salvation of the Saxons with his monkish brethren only: his pastoral anxiety urged him to search for the means of bringing the Christians of the ancient British race into unity

"^ " Cum idem Papa cogeret synodem opiscoporum Italiae, de vita monacliorum et quiete ordinaturus." — Bede, loc. cit.

¹¹⁹ u Yi\[ glorioso, quod ah Apostolica sede per coepiscopum nostrum Mellitum postulatis, libcnti aninio concedimus; id est, ut vestra bcnignitas in inonastcrio in Uorobernensi civitate constituto, quod sanctus doctor vester Augustinus, beatse nienioriie Gregorii discipulus, sancti Salvatoris nomini consecravit, cui ad prtoscns praeesse dignoscitur dilectissiinus frater noster Laurentius, licenter per omnia monachorum regulariter viventium liabitationem statuat, apostolica auctoritate deccrnentes ut ipsi vcstri pricdicatores nionachi monachorum gregcm sibi associent et corum vitam sanctitalum {sic) moribus exornent." — GuirxELiius Malmesbcr., De Gestis rontificum Anglorum, lib. i. p. 118, ed. Savile. with Rome, so that lie and they might work together for the conversion of the pagans. His experience of the conditions under which the Christian religion might be successfully extended made him bitterly deplore the hostile attitude of the Celtic monks, and the polemical rancor which broke out in them whenever they sought or consented to discuss the matters in dispute. It was at the same moment that the illustrious Columbanus impaired the effect of the admirable example which he set to France, Burgundy, and Switzerland, by his extraordinary eccentricities. The rumor of them had reached even Laurence, who could not forbear referring to it in an epistle which he addressed to the bishops and abbots of all Scotia— that is to say, of Ireland — the chief centre of the Celtic Church. Having failed, like Augustin, in a direct advance which, with his two suffragans, he had made to the clergy of the Welsh Britons, he sought to ascend to the source of the evil by writing to their brethren in the neighboring island to expostulate with them on their universal intolerance. His letter begins thus: —

" To our very dear brethren, the lords, bishops, and abbots of Ireland, — we, Laurence, Mellitus, and Justus, servants of the servants of God, greeting. The Holy See having directed us, as is its wont, to these western regions, there to preach the faith to the heathen, we have entered this island of Britain, not knowing what we did. Behoving that they all followed the rules of the universal Church, we held in great veneration the piety of the Britons and the Scots. "\^ien we came to know the Britons, we thought the Scots were better than they. But now, when the bishop Dagan has come to us from Ireland, and when the abbot Columbanus has betaken himself to Gaul, we know that the Scots differ in nothing from the Britons; for the bishop Dagan has not only refused to partake of our hospitality — he has not even deigned to eat in the place which serves as our dwelling." ¹²⁰ Dagan Avas a monk of the great Irish Monastery of Bangor: he had come to confer with the mission at Canterbury, and he had undoubtedly been offended by the firm determination of the Roman prelates to maintain the conditions of liturgical unity. No trace has survived of any overtures towards reconciliation on his part, or on that of any other representative of the Celtic Churches.

The Roman monks were for some time more suc-

¹²⁰ Bede, loc. cit.

cessful among the Saxon settlements— neighbors conversion or vassals of the monarchy of Ethelbert. The most eastern district of the island — that which, fndo'f"""* lying between the Thames and the sandy outlets of the Ouse, forms a sort of circular projection looking towards Scandinavia— was occupied, towards the north, by the tribe of East Angles, or English of the Bast. Their king, Redwald, who had paid a visit to the king of Kent, received baptism like him; and his conversion awakened hopes of the conversion of his people — a population much more numerous than that of the country already won for Christ, occupying as it did the large modern countries of Norfolk and Suffolk, with a part of the shires of Cambridge, Huntingdon, Bedford, and Hertford. Between East Anglia and Kent lay the kingdom of Essex, or of the Saxons of the East, already converted during Augustin's life, thanks to its king Sebert, the nephew of the Bretwalda Ethelbert. This kingdom was particularly important on account of its capital, the ancient Roman colony of London, where Mellitus had been appointed bishop by Augustin.

He had founded there, as we have seen, on the Foundation ruins of an ancient temple of Diana, a monastic cathedral dedicated to St. Paul. Soon after, to the west of the episcopal city, and on the site of a temple of Apollo, which had supplanted, after the Diocletian persecution, a church occupied by the first British Christians,^^! ^he new bishop of Loudon built, with the concurrence of Sebert the king, another church and a monastery dedicated to St. Peter. Thus on the banks of the Thames, as on those of the Tiber, and in expressive and touching remembrance of Rome, the two princes of the apostles found in these two sanctuaries, separate yet near, a new consecration of their glorious brotherhood in the apostolate and martyrdom.

This modest monastic colony established itself on a frightful and almost inaccessible site,i^ in the middle of a deep marsh, on an islet formed by an arm of the Thames, and so covered with briers and thorns that it was called Thorney Island. From its position to the Avest of London it took a new name, destined to rank among the most famous world — that of Westminster, or Monastery of the West.

As far as our history can extend, it will always find the **' DuGDALE, Monasticon Anglicanum, vol. i. p. 55.

'22 " In loco terribili."— Charter quoted by Ridgway, The Gera of ney Island, p. 4.

194 ST. AUGUSTIN

national sanctuary of England encircled with growing splendor and celebritj. But at present our business is only to record the legend which brightens its humble cradle — a legend which we have already met with among the British at Glastonbury, and which we shall find among other nations at the beginning of other great monastic foundations— in France at that of St. Denis, in Switzerland at Einsiedlen —and which has exercised on the imagination of the English people an influence more durable and powerful than is generally produced by the best authenticated facts. Up to the sixteenth century it was still told from generation to generation that in the night preceding the day fixed for the consecration of the new church, and while Bishop Mellitus, within his tent, was preparing for the ceremony of the morrow, St. Peter, the great fisher of men, appeared under the form of an unknown traveller to a poor fisherman whose boat was moored on the bank of the Thames opposite the Isle of Thorns. The water was rough, and the river in flood. The stranger persuaded the fisherman to row him across to the opposite bank, and when he landed he made his way towards the new church. As he crossed its threshold, the fisherman with amazement saw the interior of the edifice lighted up. From floor to roof, within and without, a chorus of angelic voices filled the air with a music such as he had never heard, and with the sweetest odors. After a long interval the music ceased, and all disappeared except the stranger, who, returning, charged the fisherman to go and tell the bishop what he had seen, and how he, whom the Christians called St. Peter, had himself come to the consecration of the church which his friend king Sebert had raised to him.123

This king Sebert and his wife were buried at Westminster and subsequently, through many vicissitudes, the great abbey, becoming more and more dear to the Church, to the

'=3 " Ecce subito lux coelestis emicuit.... Affuit cum apostolo multitude civium supernorura... aures angelicee voces mulcebat sonoritas, nares indicibilis odoris fragrantia perfundebat.... Nova Dei nupta, consecrante eo qui ccelum claudit et aperit, coelestibus resplendet luminaribus.... Fixis tentoriis a dimidio milliario.... Kediit ad piscatorem piscium egregius piscator hominum.... Ego sum quem Christiani sanctum Petrum apostolum vocant, qui banc ecclesiam meam liac nocte Deo dedicavi... quam mihi ille meus amicus Sebertus fabricavit." — Ric. Cirencester, Speculum Hist, de Gestis Reg. Angl., ii. 27. Dugdale quotes no less than four original versions of this miracle, extracted from ancient English chronicles. Compare Baronius, Annal., an. 610, c. 10, and Acta SS. Bolland., January i.

p. 240. Hook gives a plausible enough explanation of the tradition. princes, nobles, and people, was the chosen burial-place of the kings and the royal family. It is still, in our time, as every one knows, the Pantheon of England, who has found no nobler consecration for the memory of her heroes, orators, and poets, her most glorious children, than to give them their last resting-place under the vaults of the old monastic sanctuary.^^^ Near that sanctuary the royalty of England long sojourned; in one of its dependent buildings the House of Commons held its first meeting; i^s under its shadow the English Parliament, the most ancient, powerful, and glorious assembly in the world, has always flourished, and still remains. Never has a monument been more identified with the history of a people. Each of its stones represents a page of the country's annals!

Canterbury embodies the religious life of England, Westminster has been the centre of her political life and her real capital; and England owes Canterbury, as she owes Westminster, to the sons of St. Benedict.

Meanwhile a shadow was about to fall on the ^^^^^ ^^ dawn of the faith in England. The noble grand- Queen daughter of Clotilda, the gentle and pious Queen " "' Bertha, was dead. She preceded her husband in her death, as in her faith, and was buried beside the great Roman missionary who had given her the joy of seeing her husband's kingdom, and her husband himself, converted to Christianity.

When the first successor of Augustin celebrated the solemn consecration of the great monastic church which was to be the burying-place, or, as they said then, the bed of rest (thalamus) for Christian kings and primates, the remains of the queen, and of the first archbishop of Canterbury, were transferred thither; those of the queen were laid in front of the altar sacred to St. Martin, the great

'-^ Chatham, Pitt, Fox, Sheridan, Grattan, Canning, Peel — all the great modern orators and statesmen, the poets, the admirals, the generals slain on the battle-field — there repose by the side of Edward the Confessor, and the kings and heroes of the middle ages. The words of Nelson at the moment of beginning the battle of Aboukir, " Now for a peerage or Westminster Abbey! " will be remembered by our readers. In our day the custom lias been introduced of burying the great military chiefs at St. Paul's. Nelson and Wellington both rest in the vaults of the church which bears the -name and occupies the site of the first foundation of Augustin's companion.

^^^ It was in the fine cluiptcr-house of Westminster Abbey that the Commons sat. Although their violent debates were lamented as disturbing the monastic worship, they remained there till the Reformation; when St. Stephen's Chapel, on the site of which the present House of Commons is placed, was allotted to them. wonder-worker of Gaul, and those of the primate before the altar of his father and friend, St. Gregory.i^s Three years later, Ethelbert, who had married again, also died, and was buried by Bertha's side in the Church of St. Augustin. He reigned fifty-six years, twenty *'^''' of which he had been a Christian. " He was," says Bede, " the first English king who ascended to heaven, and the Church numbered him among her saints." ^^

Laurence thus remained the sole survivor of all who had taken part, twenty years before, in the famous conference in the isle of Thanet, at which the Saxon king and Prankish queen met the Roman missionaries. His companion, Peter, the first abbot of the monastery of St. Augustin, was drowned on the Prench coast, some time before, while fulfilling a mission on which King Athelbert had sent him. Laurence had thus to encounter all alone the storm which burst forth immediately after the death of Ethelbert. The conversion of that monarch had not insured that of all his people; and Eadbald, his son who succeeded to the throne, had ^^^ embraced Christianity along with his father, The looseness of his morals had helped to keep him in idolatry. When he became king he wished to marry his father's widow, the second wife whom Ethelbert had married after the death of Bertha. This kind of incest, with which St. Paul reproached the first Christians of Corinth,!-'^ was only too consonant with the usages of several of the Teutonic races; ^^^ but such a case had been anticipated, and formally forbidden in Gregory's reply to Augustin, when consulted as to the matrimonial relations of the Saxons. This was not Eadbald's only crime. He gave himself up to such transports of fury that he was commonly regarded as beside himself, and possessed with a demon. But his example sufficed to draw into apostasy those who had embraced Christian faith and chastity only from motives of fear, or from a desire to stand Well with King Ethelbert.

The tempest which threatened to ingulf the recent Christianity of England, became more and more formidable when

*^^ GuiLLELM Tho-rse, Ch7-on. S. August., -p. 1765; Thomas de Elmham, Hist. Monast. S. August., p. 432, ed. Hardivicke; Stanley, Memorials of Canterbury, p. 26.

>" Act. SS. Bolland., vol. iii. February, p. 470.
'28 ¹ Corinth, v. 1.
'^* Kemble, Saxons in England, ii. 407.

or CANTERBURY. 197

the death of Sebert, nephew of Ethelbert, and founder of Westminster, raised to the sovereignty of the kingdom of Essex his three sons, who, like the son of the king of Kent, had remained pagans. They immediately resumed the public practice of the idolatry which they had heat'heTism but for a short time foregone during the life of their father, and gave full liberty to all their subjects to worship idols. At the same time they still went occasionally to witness the ceremonies of the Christian worship; and one day, when the bishop Mellitus was administering, in their presence, the communion to the faithful, they said to him, with the freedom of their barbarian pride, " Why do you not offer us that white bread which you gave to our father, and which you continue to give to the people in your church? " " If you will be washed," answered the bishop, " in the fountain of salvation, as your father was, you may, like him, have your share of the holy bread; otherwise, it is impossible."

" We have no desire," replied the princes, '' to enter your fountain — we have no need of it; but we want to refresh ourselves with that bread: " and as they insisted on the bishop repeated again that it Avas needful that they should be cleansed from all sin before being admitted to the communion. Then they flew into a rage, and ordered him to quit their kingdom with all that belonged to him: " Since you will not gratify us in a matter so simple, you shall stay no longer in our country." i^o

The Bishop of London thus driven away, crossed the Thames, and came into the kingdom of Kent, in order to confer with the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Rochester as to the course he should pursue. These were the only three bishops of the Christian church in England, and all three lost courage in presence of the new peril which threatened them. They decided that it was better that they should all return to their own country, there to serve God in freedom, than that they should remain

11 II- 111, -, n

uselessly among barbarians who had revolted from the faith. The two bishops were the first to fly, and crossed over to France. Laurence prepared to

"•^ "Auxit proccllam Imjus perturbationis mors Sabercti... Barbari inflati stultitia dicebant: Quare non et nobis panein nitidum porrigis.... Si vultis ablui fonte illo salutari.... Nolumus fontem ilium intrare... pi non vis adscntire nobis in tarn facili causa quam petimus, non potcris jam in nostra provincia demorari." — Bede, ii. 5.

17^ follow them, but in the night before his intended departure, wishing to pray and to weep without restraint over that English Church which he had helped to found a quarter of a century before, and which he was now obliged to abandon, he had his bed placed in the church of the monastery where reposed Augustin, Ethelbert, aud Bertha. Scarcely had he fallen asleep when St. Peter appeared to him, as Jesus Christ had erewhile appeared to St. Peter himself when the prince of the apostles, flying from Nero's persecution, met on the Appian Way his divine Master coming towards Rome, there to be, in his default, a second time crucified.i^i The prince of the apostles overwhelmed with reproaches, and even scourged till the blood came, the bishop who was ready to abandon Christ's flock to the wolves, instead of braving martyrdom to save it.

On the morrow Lawrence showed his bruised and bleeding sides to the king, who, at the sight, asked who had dared thus to maltreat such a man as he. " It was St. Peter," said the bishop, " who inflicted on me all these blows and sufferings for your salvation." ^^^ Eadbald, moved and terrified, renounced idolatry, gave up his incestuous marriage, ^^^ promised to do his best for the protection ' °^ ^^^ Church. He called the two bishops, Mellitus and Justus, back from France, and sent them back to their dioceses to re-establish the faith in ^11 freedom. After his conversion he continued to serve God with his people; he even built a new church dedicated to the Holy Virgin, in the monastery founded by St. Augustin, where he reckoned upon being buried beside his father and mother.

But he had not the same authority over the other Saxon realms with which Ethelbert had been invested in his capacity of Bretwalda, or military chief of the Saxon federation. He could not succeed in restoring Mellitus to his diocese. The princes of Essex who had expelled him had ail perished in a war with the Saxons of the West; but their "' Every one has seen at Rome, on the Appian Way, the church called Domine quo vadis, built on the spot where, according to tradition, St. Peter put that question to the Lord, who answered him, Vado Romam iterum crucifigi. — S. Ambr., Contra Auxentium.

132 u j-'iagellis arctioribus afficiens.... An mei, inquit, oblitus es exempli qui pro parvulis Christi... vincula, verbera, carceres, afflictiones, ipsam postremo mortem, mortem autem crucis, ab infidelibus et inimicis Christi ipse cum Christo coronandus pertuli.... Eetecto vestimento... quantis esset verberibus laceratus ostendit. Qui... inquirens quis tanto viro ausus esset plagas infligere."— Bede, ii. 6. subjects persevered in idolatry, and the people of London offered the most determined resistance to the re-establishment of the Roman bishop, declaring that they greatly preferred their idolatrous priests.^^^

The kingdom of Essex seemed thus altogether Defection lost to the faith; and as to East Anglia, the conver- of East sion of its king, Redwald, had not been serious and permanent. No sooner had he returned from the visit to Ethelbert, during which he received baptism, than he allowed himself to be brought back to the worship of his fathers by the influence of his wife and his principal councillors; but he made the same concession to the new religion which had been already accorded to it by a Roman emperor — a concession much more worthy of a Caesar of the Roman decadence than of the impetuous instincts of a barbarian king. He vouchsafed to assign to the Son of the only true God a place by the side of his Scandinavian deities, and established two altars in the same temple — the one for the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, and the other for the victims offered to the idols.i-^

Of all the conc^uests made by the envoys of Gregory, there remained now only a portion of the country and of the people of Kent surrounding the two great monastic sanctuaries of Canterbury, — the metropolitan church dedicated to Christ, and the abbey of St. Augustin, then bearing the names of St. Peter and St. Paul. Roman missionaries, one after another, succeeded to the government of these two monasteries, which were now the only centres in which the fire of Christian life still burned in England. During more than a century all the abbots of St. Augustin's monastery were chosen from among the Roman monks, and probably from those who came from Mount Coelius to follow or join him.i^

¹³³ ««Nec, licet auctoribus pcrditis, excitatum ad scelera vulgus potuit recorrigi.... Londonicnses cpiscopum recipere noluerunt, idololatris magis pontificibus servire gaudentes. Noii cnim tanta erat ei, quanta patri ipsius regni potestas, ut etiam nolcntibus ac contradicentibus paganis antistitem sua; posset ecclesiiB reddere." — Bede, ii. 6, 7.

'^* "Rediens domum, ab uxore et quibusdam perversis doctoribu,s seductus, in codem fano et altare haberet ad sacrificium Christi et arulani ad victimas dcnioniorum." — Bede, iii. 15. Bede adds tbat in his lifetime there was a king of East Anglia who in his childhood had seen that temple still standing.

"* The succession of these abbots, as given by Thomas Elmham in his chronicle of the Abbey of St. Augustin, is as follows: John, fClS; Rufinianus, t G2G; Gratiosus, f G38; this last, Eamanus natione, as well as his

In tbe arcniepiscopal see, Laurence, who died three years after his reconciliation to the new king, was succeeded by Mellitus, who thus finally renounced all idea of again settling among the Saxons HonorkiT'* of the oast. After Mellitus, who, though tortured companions j^y i\^q gout, showed an indefatigable devotion to his apostolic duties, Justus, the bishop of Rochester, beQajj^e archbishop. Like Augustin, he received terbury. ^^^ polUum, along with the privilege of ordaining bishops at his pleasure, a privilege conferred upon him by the Pope Boniface V., careful, as his predecessor Boniface IV. had been, to maintain the mission which Gregory had bequeathed to the special charge of the Pontiff. The Pope had received letters from King Eadbald which filled him with comfort and hope; and in placing under the jurisdiction of Archbishop Justus the English not only of Kent but of all the neighboring kingdoms, he exhorted him to persevere with commendable patience in the work of the redemption of the English people.^^^

Justus occupied the archbishop's throne for three years only, and was succeeded by Honorius, also a disciple of St. Gregory and St. Augustin, and the last of the companions of the great missionary who was to fill his place in the primacy of the new Christian kingdom.

^° ^^® midst of thcso mistakes, perils, and difKcultics, and whilo the third successor of Augustin maintained, as best he could, the remains of the Roman mission in the still modest and often menaced metropolis of Canterbury, the horizon suddenly brightened toward the north of England. An event occurred there which seemed to realize the first designs of St. Gregory, and to open new and vast fields for the propagation of the gospel. It is in this northern region that the principal interest of the great drama which gave England to the Church is henceforth to be concentrated.

successor Petronius, f ⁶⁵⁴; Nathaniel, " quondam cum Mellito a Justo a Roma ad Angliam destiuatus," f 667; after him the celebrated Adrian, the African, whose successor Albin, elected in 708, was the first de genie nostra, says the historian, and was, moreover, the disciple of Adrian, a great Latinjst, Hellenist, aud collaborateitr of Bede.

¹³⁶ u pjqc iijr^ repensatione vobis coUatura est, qua injuncto ministerio jugiter persistentes, laudabili patientia redemptionem gentis illius expectastis." — Bede, ii. 8.

OF CANTERBURY. 201