St. Oswald and the Revival of Christianity in Northumbria

The Celtic monks revive, in Northumbria, the work of conversion abandoned by the Roman monks. — Oswald, son of Ethelfrid, the Ravager, an exile among the Scots, is baptized according to the Celtic rite. — He returns to Northumbria, plants there the first crciss, and gains the battle of Denisesburn over the Mercians and Britons. — He reigns over the whole of Northumbria, and makes it the predominant power in the Anglo-Saxon Confederation. His desire to convert his kingdom to Christ. — The Italian deacon, James, keeps Christianity alive in Defra; but in Bernicia everything has yet to' be. — Oswald begs for missionaries from the Celtic monasteries. — Failure of the first missionary from lona: he is succeeded by ATdan. — Bede's eulogy of the Abbots of lona. — The religious capital of the north of England is fixed in the monastic isle of Lindisfarne: description of that island: its resemblance to lona. — Authority of the abbots of Lindisfarne even over the bishops. — Virtues of the monk-bishop Atdan: his disinterestedness: his care of children and slaves. — King Oswald acts as assistant and interpreter to the missionary ATdan. — Oswald marries the daughter of the King of Wessex, and converts his father-in-law. —Note regarding the local and provincial opposition of the monks of Bardeney. — War with Penda, chief of the coalition of the Britons and Mercians. — Battle of Maserfeld: Oswald is killed there at the age of thirty-eight. —Venerated as a martyr. — Miracles wrought at his tomb. —Prediction of Bishop Afdan with regard to his hand.

The work of conversion among the English, though interrupted in the south by a pagan reaction, and buried, on the north, in the overthrow of the first Christian king of Northumbria, was to undergo but a momentary eclipse— the providential prelude of a more sustained effort and decisive triumph. The spiritual conquest of the island, abandoned for a time by the Roman missionaries, was now about to be taken up by the Celtic monks. The Italians had made the first step, and the Irish now appeared to resume the uncompleted work. What the sons of St. Benedict could only begin, was to be completed by the sons of St, Columba. The great heart of the first abbot of lona, inspiring his spiritual descendants, Avas thus to accomplish the noble design of the holy Gregory. The spirit of unity, submission, and discipline, was to be instilled into their minds, somewhat against their will, by Wilfrid, a Saxon convert; and their unwearied activity and invincible perseverance were destined to triumph over every obstacle, stimulating and seconding the zeal of the Italian missionaries and reviving the sacred fire amongst the Benedictine monks, into whose ranks they finally fell. Thus wrought upon, moulded and penetrated on every side by monastic influence, the whole nation of the Anglo-Saxons was soon to acknowledge the law of Christ. Its kings, its monks, its bishops and saints, were to take a foremost place among the children of the Church, the civilizers of Europe, the benefactors of mankind, and the soldiers of the Cross. The history of this transformation we shall attempt to set forth in the narrative which follows.

Forty-eight years after Augustine and his Roman monks landed on the shores of pagan England, an Anglo-Saxon prince invoked the aid of the monks of lona in the conversion of the Saxons of the north.

This prince was Oswald, son of Ethelfrid the Ravager, and of the sister of the martyred King Edwin. After the defeat ^^^ death of his father, the son of the great enemy and conqueror of the Scots had, while yet a child, sought a rcfugo, along with his brothers and a nu- Hierous train of young nobles, among the Scots themselves. He there found the same generous hospitality which, twelve centuries later, the descendants of the Anglo-Saxons showed to the French princes, descendants of a race continually and gloriously hostile to England. In that exile he passed the seventeen years of the reign of his uncle Edwin, as Edwin himself had lived in exile during the reign of his brother-in-law and persecutor Ethelfrid. But between these two representatives of the two dynasties which divided Northumbria, and succeeded each other in the sovereignty, there was this difference, that the young Edwin had sought and found an asylum among his pagan fellow-countrymen; while the banishment of Oswald led him into intercourse with people of a race and religion differing from his own. Since the apostolate of Columba, the Scots and Picts had become entirely Christian; and among

AND THE ANGLO-SAXONS. 227

them Oswald and his companions in misfortune He is bap-' learned the truths of Christianity, and were all baptized, but according to the rite of the Celtic Church, which differed from the Roman.'

After the overthrow of Edwin and the Deirian dynasty, of which he was the head, the princes of the Bernician family returned to Northumbria, from which they had been banished for seventeen years.^

The elder, Eanfrid, as has been stated, fell by the sword of the Briton Cadwallon, after having renounced the Christian faith. But his younger brother Oswald was a man of a very different stamp. At the head of a small but resolute band, of whom a dozen at most were Chris- ^keTtoTetians like himself, he undertook to reconquer his country, and did not hesitate to carry on the struggle against the immense forces of the formidable ^'^^ B"tish. Briton, nor even to attack him in pitched battle.

The two armies, so unequal in numbers, met near that great wall which the Emperor Severus had erected from sea to sea to keep back the Picts, and which divided Northumbria into two nearly equal parts. This rampart, which had neither restrained the Picts in their invasions of the south, nor the Saxons in their conquests to the north, was then, though not intact, still standing; as indeed even now its vast remains may be traced on the steep hill-tops and uplands, covered with heath, or strewn with basalt rocks, which give to that district of England an aspect so different from that of her ordinary landscapes. Flanked by a fragment of the Roman wall, the Anglo-Saxon prince occupied aheiglit where his feeble forces could defy the attack of the numerous battalions of Cadwallon.^ On that height, which was

^ " Filii prsefati regis... cum magna nobilium juA'entute apud Scotos sive Pictos exulabaiit ibique ad doctrinara Scotorum catechizati et baptismatis sunt gratia recreati." — Bede, iii. 1.

Fleury, Lanigan, and many other historians, have supposed that these expressions of Bede applied to the Irish, who, as we have seen above, bore the name of Scots long before that name had been communicated, by an Irish colony, to the inhabitants of Caledonia. But no valid proof is to be found in ancient authors to confirm this supposition.

- To help the reader to find his way through the labyrinth of the two Northumbrian dynasties, the history of which, here begun, will be largely followed up in this volume, we add (see Appendix VI., p. 752) a genealogical table, to which he will do well to make frequent reference.

^ See for the description of the battle-field a recent publication of the learned society which, under the name of a famous archaeologist, Surtees, has for thirty years devoted itself to bringing to light the monuments of Northumbrian history, viz., The Priory of Jlexham, edited by James Raixe, 1864; vol. i., preface, page xi., and app. ii. afterwards called Heaven's Field,^ and which still bcai's the name of St. Oswald, on the eve of the day of decisive battle, the young and ardent wartie wtth^'the i^it)r l^eld erect with his own hands a large wooden cross, which had been hastily made by his orders, while his companions heaped the earth round it, to keep it firm in its position; then prostrating himself before it, he said to his brothers in arms, " Let us all fall on our knees, and together implore the living and true and Almighty God in His mercy to defend us against the pride and fierceness of our enemy; for that God knows our cause is just, and that we fight for the salvation of our nation. Yes, it is for our salvation and our freedom that we must fight to-day against those Britons, whom our fathers gloried in challenging, but who now prophesy the extirpation of our race.'7 5

The Britons themselves might seem to have an equal right to offer this prayer, for they had long been Christians, and after all had only retaken their native soil from the grasp of foreign invaders.^ But a century of possession had given the latter a conviction of their right; and the bloody cruelties of Cadwallon had dishonored his patriotism. Oswald, moreover, represented the cause of advancing Christianity; for the Britons did nothing to convert their enemies, and the cross which he planted was the first which had been as yet seen in Bernicia.

^* "Vocatur locus ille in lingua Anglorum Hefenfdth, quod dici potest latine Coelestis Campus." — Bede, iii. 1. A chapel dedicated to St. Oswald marks the spot so well described by Bede, near the small town of the same name, a little to the north of Hexham and of the railway from Newcastle to Carlisle. The battle is known by the name of Denisesburn, from the brook on the bank of which the British king perished in his flight.

^* " Fertur quia facta cruce citato opere ac fo.vea praparata, ipse fide fervens hanc arripuerit ac fovea imposuerit, atque utraque manu erectara tenuerit, donee, adgesto a militibus pulvere, terras figeretur.... Flectamus omnes genua et Dominum oranipotentem vivum ac verum in commune deprecemur, ut nos ab hoste superbo et feroce sua miseratione defendat; scit enim ipse quia justa pro salute gentis nostras bella suscepimus." — Bede, iii. 2. The more recent historians throw especial light on the patriotic side of this struggle. " Exprobrandi pudoris rem ventilari allegans, Anglos cum Britannis tam iniquo marte confligere, ut contra illos pro salute decertarent quos ultro pro gloria consueverunt lacessere. Itaque pro libertate audentibus animis et viribus effusis decertarent, nihil de fuga meditantes: tali modo et illis provenire gloriara et annuente Deo patriae libertatem.... Casdwalluni, virum, ut ipse dictitabat, in exterminium Anglorum natum." — Wilh. Malmesb., i. 44; Eicard. de Cikenc, Sped. Uist. de Gest. Reg. Angl., ii. 36.

^ A. de la Bokdeeie, LuUe des Britons Insulaires, p. 221.

Ou the evening of the same day, and during the night which preceded the contest which was to fix his destiny, Oswald, asleep in his tent, saw in a dream the holy St. Columba, the apostle and patron of the country of his exile and of the Church in which he had received his baptism. The warlike abbot of lona, who had been dead for thirty-six years, appeared to him, shining with an angelic beauty; erect, and with that lofty stature that distinguished him in life, he stood and stretched his resplendent robe over the whole of the small army of exiles as if to protect it; then addressing the prince, he said, as God said to Joshua before the passage of the Jordan, " Be of good courage and play the man. At the break of day march to the battle: I have obtained for thee from God the victory over thine enemies and the death of tyrants: thou shalt conquer, and reign." The prince, on awaking, told his vision to the Saxons who had joined him, and all promised to receive baptism, like himself and the twelve companions of his exile, if he should return a conqueror.^ Early on the morrow the battle began, and Oswald gained a victory as complete as it was unlikely. Cadwallon, the last hero of the British race — victor, according to the Welsh tradition, in forty battles and in sixty cadwaiion. single combats — perished in this defeat. The Britons evacuated Northumbria never to return, and withdrew behind the Severn. Those who remained to the north of the Dee, in the territory which has since been divided into the counties of Chester, Lancaster, and Westmoreland, submitted to the Northumbrian sway, which henceforth extended from the Irish Channel to the North Sea, tracing the line of the east coast as far as Edinburgh. There still remained, however, out of Wales and to the south of the Wall of Severus, in the region adjoining Caledonia, a district bathed by

^ " Pridie ... in suo papiliono supra pulvillum dormions, sanctum Columbara in visu videt forma coruscantcm angelica; cujus alta proceritas vertice nubes tangere videbatur... suum regi proprium revelans nomen, in medio castrorum stans, excepta quadam parva extremitate, sui protegebat fulgida veste.... Confortare et age viriliter, ecce ego tecum: liac sequente nocte de castris ad bellum procede; hac cnim vice mihi Dominus donavit ut hostes in fugam vertantur tui.... Totus populus promittit se post reversionem de bello crediturum et baptismum suscepturum, nam tota ilia Saxonia gentilitatis et ignorantia tenebris obscurata erat, excepto ipso regc Oswaldo, cum duodecim viris, qui cum co Scotos inter exulante, baptizati sunt." —Adamnan, Vita S. Columba:, v. 1. lie obtained this fact from his predecessor at lona, the Abbot Failbe, who had heard it told by Oswald himself to the fifth abbot of lona.

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the waters of the Solway, full of lakes and hills like Caledonia itself, and then, as now, known by the name of Cumbria or Cumberland, where the Britons continued independent, relying on the support of the Scots, and in alliance with the people of their own race who dwelt on the banks of the Clyde. But they fell, and, though subdued, agreed in bestowing upon the son of the Ravager— the grandson of the Burner — the Saxon who had nobly vanquished them, the name of Lamn-Gwinn; which means, according to some, " the Shining Sword," according to others, " the Liberal Hand." ^

Nothing is known of the course of events which, after the defeat and death of the great British chief, Confirmed Oswald in the undisputed sovereignty of the whole of Northumbria and the temporary supremacy of the entire Saxon Heptarchy; but we find him entitled Emperor of all Britain, by a writer alfm^g most contemporary with himself.^ Not only, says Bcdo, had he learned to possess in hope the heaven-

— \y kingdom which his forefathers knew not; but in

this world God gave him a kingdom vaster than that possessed by any of his ancestors. He reigned over the four races who shared Britain among them— the Britons, the Scots, the Picts, and the Angles.^'' No doubt this supremacy was but partially acknowledged, especially beyond the limits of the Anglo-Saxon territory; but Northumbria, when united under one king, could not fail to become at once the chief power of the confederation. Oswald, who was the great-grandson of Ina on his father's side, and grandson of Ella on his mother's," had a natural right to unite the two realms of Deira and Bernicia, while at the same time delivering them from the humiliating and bloody yoke of the Britons and Mercians. He seems to have had a special affection for Bernicia, his father's country, in which he lived, and whose ancient boundaries on the Caledonian side he extended or re-established. But he succeeded, we are told by the Northumbrian Bede, in reconciling and binding into one state ® A DE LA BOEDERIE, Op. cU. LaPPENBERG, p. 157.

^ Cumineus, half a century prior to Bede, says, in his Life of Columia, c. 25 — " Totius Britannia imperator a Deo ordinatur."

^° " Non solum incognita progenitoribus suis regna coelorum sperare didicit; sed et... omnes provincias et nationes Britanniee, quaa in quatuor linguas, id est Britonum, Pictorum, Scotorum, et Anglorum, divisae sunt, in ditione accepit." — Bede, iii.

" See the genealogical table, Appendix I. the two tribes which, although of the same race, had lived in continual conflict. He made of the two a real nation.i^

Oswald was the sixth of the great chiefs or suzerains of the confederation who bore the title of Bretwalda^^ before whom was carried the tufa, or tuft of feathers, which was the emblem of supreme authority, and which after this was used by none save by the Northumbrian kings. It is supposed that this dignity was conferred or ratified by the suffrage, not only of all the kings of the Heptarchy, i3ut also of the principal chiefs or barons of each tribe. It was at first exclusively military; but it became under Oswald and his successors, as it had already been with Ethelbert of Kent, a means of exercising great influence in religious matters. For Oswald was not only a true king and a gallant soldier, but also a good Christian, destined to become a saint; and in the power with which he found himself invested he saw chiefly the means of defending and propagating the faith which he had received with his baptism from the hands of the sons of Columba.

As soon as Oswald was established on his father's throne, his first and dearest thought was to bring back and to procure the triumph in his own country of that religion which had been the consolation of his exile. For this end missionaries, ministers of the word of God, were necessary above all things. It did not occur to him to seek them in the Church of Canterbury, the mo- ^//J*?,™""' nastic centre which already existed on English soil, and whence ten years before had come Paulinus, the first apostle of Northumbria. He does not seem to have even thought of the noble and worthy Roman deacon, The deacon James, whom Paulinus, on abandoning his metropolitan see of York, had left alone behind him; and who, re-

'* " Hujus industria regis, Deirorum ct Berniciorum provinciae, quae eatenus ab invicem discedebant, in unam sunt pacem et velut unum compaginatae in populum." — Hist. Eccles., iii. G.

'^ The list of the Bretwaldas as given by Bede (ii. 5) may be quoted here:

560. Ella, King of the South Saxons.
579. Peawlin, King of the West Saxons.
596. Ethelbert, King of the Jutes of Kent.
616. Kedwald, King of the East Angles.

6oO. Edwin, King of the Northunil)rians, or Northern Angles. 635. Oswald, King of the Northumbrians.

642. Oswy, King of the Northumbrians.

To this list Lappenberg thinks should be added the name of Wulphere, King of the Mercians, or Angles of the Middle, from 656 to 675.

232 THE CELTIC MONKS

maining gallantly at his post during the storm of invasion and havoc, had continued to baptize and preach, and to snatch his prey from the old enemy.^* This deacon, however, was the lieutenant of a bishop to some extent identified with the De'irian dynasty, and the family of King Edwin, which had exiled, robbed, and supplanted the family of Oswald, and which he had just supplanted in his turn. Was it for this reason, as has been supposed,^'^ that Oswald sought no aid from the Roman missionaries? Is it not more natural to conclude that he was chiefly influenced by his remembrance of the generous hospitality which he had found among the Scots, and of the instructions of those from whom in early manhood he received baptism and the other sacraments of the Church? Be this as it may, it was to the Scotic Church that he addressed himself— that is to say, to the heads of monasteries ruled by the traditions and institutions of Columba, that great abbot of lona who appeared to him in his dream the night before the decisive battle, to promise him victory and a crown.i^

Under the influence of that Celtic patriotism which inflamed the Britons against the conquering strangers, and which was no less unwilling to concede to them a share in eternal salvation than in the British soil, the Scotic or Irish Church seems up to this time to have refrained from all effort to spread the Gospel among the Saxons. But the time had come to adopt a different course. As though it had only awaited the signal given by Oswald, the Celtic Church, aided by the brave missionaries who sprang from that monastic reformation of which lona was the centre, immediately began to light np with its radiance the whole northern region of Saxon Britain, from whence it went on into the territory where it had been preceded by the Roman missionaries, and where the two apostolic agencies finally met.^'^

The Scottish monks replied with heartiness to the appeal of the exile, now a conqueror and sovereign. But the first u <'Virum utique industrium acnobilem in Christo etEcclesia... virum utique ecclesiasticum et sanctum, qui multo ex hinc tempore in ecclesia manens, magnas antiquo hosti prredas, docendo et baptizando, eripuit."—Bede, ii. IG, 20.

¹⁵ Varin. — Fabek, Life of St. Oswald.

i*^ " Mox ubi regnum suscepit, desiderans to tamgentem Christianae fidei gratia imbui.... Misit ad majores natos Scotorum, inter quos exsulans ipse baptismatis sacraraenta cum his qui secum erant militibus, consecutus erat, petens, ut cujus doctrina ac ministerio gens quam regebat Anglorum doniinicte fidei et dona disceret et susciperet sacramenta." — Bede, iii. 3.

"^ Varin, Deuxi^me Memoire, p. 9. effort of their zeal was not fortunate. Their first representative seems to have been animated by slttmh that spirit of pedantic rigor, by that stubborn and missionary, intolerant austerity, which have often shown themselves in the national character of the Scots along with Christian devotion and self-denial, and which culminated in the too celebrated Puritans. This missionary, by name Gorman, attempted in vain to preach the Gospel to the Northumbrians, who heard him with opposition and dislike. After some time he returned to lona; and in rendering an account of his mission to those who had sent him— that is to say, to the elders of the monastery— he declared that he could make nothing of the Angles, that they were a race of untamable savages, and of a stubborn and barbarous spirit. This report greatly disquieted and perplexed the fathers of the synod, who ardently desired to impart to the English people the gift of salvation which had been asked from them.^^ They deliberated for a long time, until at length one of the assembly, Aidan, a monk of lona, said to the discomfited preacher, " It seems to me, my brother, that you have been too hard upon these ignorant people: you have not, according to the apostolic counsel, offered them first the milk of gentle doctrine, to bring them by degrees, while nourishing them with the divine Word, to the true understanding and practice of the more advpaiced precepts." ^^ At these words every eye was turned to A'idan: his opinion was thoughtfully discussed, and the debate ended in an acknowledgment that he was the man wanted for the mission, since he was endowed with that discernment which is the source of all virtues. There was, as we have seen, a bishop in the Monastery of lona, so that Aidan was at once consecrated missionary and bishop of Northumbria.20

He received his mission from the whole brotherhood and from the Abbot of lona, Seghen, the fourth successor of Co-

^** " Austerioris animi vir qui cum... praedicans nihil proficeretur, nee libenter a populo audiretur ... in conventu seniorura retulerit, quia nil prodesse docendo genti... potuissct, eo quod essent homines, indomabiles, et durte ac barbarae mentis. ... At illi... tractatum magnum in concilio quid esset agendum, habere cccperunt, desidcrantes quidem genti quam petebant solutem esse, sed de non recepto prajdicatore dolentes." — Bedk, iii. 6.

'^ "Lac moUioris doctrinal... donee paulatim enutriti verbo Dei, ad capienda perfectiora et ad facienda sublimiora Dei pra>cepta sufficerent."

*" " Omnium qui considebant ad ipsum ora et oculi convcrsi... ipsum esse dignum episcopatu, ipsum ad crudiendos incredulos et indoctos mitti debere decernunt, qui gratia discrotionis, qua; virtutum mater est, ante omnia probatur imbutus, sicque ilium ordinantes, ad praedicandum miserunt."

20-^

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lumba^n the monastic metropolis of the Hebrides, the fourth of these great monks to whom Bede himself, somewhat prejudiced as he was against their holy founder, could not refuse the testimony that they were as illustrious for their self-denial as for their love of God and of strict monastic order. The venerable historian could find but one grievance wherewith to charge them and their delegate Aidan — viz., their fidelity to Celtic observances as to the celebration of Easter, which the clergy of the south of Ireland had abandoned, to conform to the new usage of Rome,^^ but which the Scots of the north of Ireland and of all Caledonia obstinately preserved as they had received it from their fathers.^^

Everything had to be done, or done over again, in the once Christian Northumbria. To the south, in Deira, the ravages of Cadwallon and Penda do not seem to have left any traces of the mission of Paulinus except the solitary church at York, where the deacon James had maintained the celebration of Christian worship, and which, begun by Edwin, was completed by Oswald. In Bernicia we must conclude that the Roman Bishop restricted himself to itinerating missions, followed by those general baptisms of which we have spoken, but that he had not founded there any permanent station, since, until the cross was planted by Oswald on the eve of his victory over the Britons, it is said that no one had ever seen a church or an altar, or any emblem of the Christian faith.23

It was thus a hard task, and one well worthy of a follower of Columba, which presented itself to the monk of lona, trained in the school of that great missionary .^^

-' In 630, at the Synod of Leighlin, thanks to the efforts of two monks, Laserian, superior of the 1500 monks of Leighlin, and Cummian, the disciple of Columba, and author of a famous letter, of which we shall presently hear more, ia connection with this wearisome discussion. Compare Lani- GAN, Ecclesiastical History of Ireland, Tol. ii. chap. 15.

-^ " Qualiscumque fuerit ipse... reliquit successores magna continentia ac divino amore regularique institutione insignes.... Ab hac ergo insula, abhorum coUegio monachorum, ad provinciam Anglorum instituendam in Christo, missus est ^dan, accepto gradu episcopatus." Bede, iii. 4. 5.

^^ "Nullum Christians fidei signum, nulla ecclesia, nullum altare in tota Berniciorum gente erectum est, priusquam hoc sacrjB crucis vexillum novus militise ductor, dictante fidei devotione, contra hostem immanissimum pugnaturus statueret." — Bede, iii. 2, 11.

^2* That is to say, under his successors, for although Aldan, ordained bishop in 635, might very well have seen and heard Columba, who died in 597, yet no proof can be found in support of Colgan's assertion, which ranks him, as well as his successors Finan and Colman, among the direct disciples of the great abbot {Trias Thaumaturga, pp. 487, 489). He bases this assertion

A'idan had brought with him several of his brethren, and the number of Celtic monks who came to help him increased from day to day. It became necessary to assign to them, or rather to create for them, a centre of operations. The king left to Aidnn the choice of the seat of his bishopric. Although his diocese comprised the whole of Northumbria, he does not seem to have thought of occupying the vacant see of York. Whether he yielded in this to the prejudices and dislikes which separated the Scots from Roman usages, or whether he was unwilling to quit the northern district, where the mission of Paulinus had left the fewest traces, and where, consequently, he had most work to do, it is certain that he chose to place his episcopal monastery at a distance from the churches founded by the Roman monks in the southern part of the country. He preferred a position a little more central, near the royal residence of Oswald, and on the coast, but much nearer the Firth of Forth than the mouth of the Humber, which mark the two extreme limits of Oswald's kingdom to the north and south.

This choice of a residence shows that, as a monk of lona, ambitious of following in every respect the nasti^capicxample of the great apostle of his race, founder of thlimbda'^" the sanctuary whence he issued, A'idan took pleas- {uffsleof lire in imitating St. Columba even in local particu- Liadislars. Like him he settled his community in an island near the shore, almost as small, as insignificant, and as barren as lona was when the holy exile from Ireland landed there. Its position was even in some sort a repetition, in the North Sea, and to the east of Great Britain, of the position of lona upon the opposite coast, and on the shore of the Atlantic.

Amid the waves of the Northern Sea, opposite the green hills of Northumberland and the sandy beach which extends between the border town of Berwick on the north, and the imposing ruins of the feudal fortress of Bamborough on the south, lies a low island, flat and sombre, girt with basaltic rocks, forming a kind of square block, which terminates to the north-west in a long point of land stretching towards the mouth of the Tweed and Scotland. This Island bears the impress of melancholy and barrenness. It can never

simply on the mention of three persons bearing these names in the biography of Adamnan. Colgan himself deprives this argument of all weight by proving that there arc in the Irish calendar 23 saints of the name of Atdan, and lOU of the name of Colman or Colomban.

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have produced anything but the sorriest crops and some meagre pasturage. There is not a tree, not an undulation, Dot one noticeable feature, save a small conical hill to the south-west, now crowned by a strong castle of picturesque form, but recent construction. In this poor islet was erected the first Christian church of the whole district, now so populous, rich and industrious, which extends from Hull to Edinburgh. This was Lindisfarne— that is to say, the Mother Church, the religious capital of the north of England and south of Scotland, the residence of the first sixteen bishops of Northumbria, the sanctuary and monastic citadel of the whole country round — the lona of the Anglo-Saxons. The resemblance of Lisdisfarne to lona, of the colony to the metropolis, the daughter to the mother, is striking. These two isles, once so celebrated, so renowned, so influential over two great and hostile races, have the same sombre and melancholy aspect, full of a wild and savage sadness. Religion only could people, fertilize, and tranquillize these arid and desolate shores.

The island chosen by Aidan is, however, an island during only a portion of each day. As at Mont St. Michel in France, twice in the twenty-four hours the ebbing tide leaves the sands uncovered, and the passage can be made on foot to the neighboring shore,-'^ though not always without danger, for many stories are told of travellers drowned in attempting to cross to the holy isle at low water. From this new abode A'idan, looking southward, could descry far off the rock and stronghold of Bamborough, where Oswald, after the example of his grandfather Ida, had established his capital. His eye, like his heart, could there hail the young and glorious prince who M'-as his friend, his helper, and his rival.

Nothing is known of the early history of St. Aidan. When he first appears to us he is already a monk at lona, and clothed with a certain authority among his brethren. Even when raised to the episcopate, he remained always a monk, not only in heart, but in life. Almost all his Celtic fellowworkers, whether from Ireland or Scotland, were monks like himself, and followed the cenobitical rule of their order and country. A hundred years after A'idan, the system which he had established at Lindisfarne was still in full vigor; and, as

^'^ " Insula hsec, accedente reumate, quotidie his undis spiimantibus maris alluitur, totiesque refluis maris sinibus, antiqua terra relinquitur." — Reginald! MoxACHi DuNELMENSis, Libellus de Admirandis B. Cuthberti Virtutibus, c. 12.

AND THE ANGLO-SAXONS. 237

in his day, the bishop was either himself the abbot of the insular community, or lived there as a monk, subject, like the other religious, to the authority of the abbot, elected with the consent of the brotherhood. The priests, deacons, choristers, and other ofBcials of the cathedral church, were all monks.2<^ But this monastic discipline and order would have availed little if the missionary-head of the institution had not possessed the character common to great servants of the truth, and been endowed with those virtues which the apostolical office demands.

Bede,2'' who was born twenty years after the Apostolic death of the monk-bishop, and who lived all his thfmonk^- life in the country which was fragrant with the ^j^°p memory of Aidan's virtues, has made his character and life the subject of one of the most eloquent and attractive pictures ever drawn by the pen of the venerable historian. The praise which he awards to him is not only more expressive and more distinct than that given to any other of the monastic apostles of England, but also so much the less to be suspected of partiality, that it is qualified by the most

energetic protests against his Celtic peculiarities. "He

was," Bede tells us, " a pontiff inspired with a passionate love of goodness; but at the same time full of a surpassing gentleness and moderation." Faithful to all the noble teachings of his monastic cradle, he appeared to the future clergy of Northumbria as a marvel of self-denial and austerity. He was the first to practise what he taught, and none could ever reproach him with having failed to fulfil, to his best ability, all the precepts of the gospels, of the apostles, or the prophets.

Indifferent to all worldly possessions, Ai'dan expended in alms all that he received from the kings and rich men. To the astonishment of the Saxons, who were, like the modern English, excellent horsemen, and valued nothing more highly than the horse, it was always on foot that the bishop went through town and country, penetrating everywhere — now '^ " Monachi crant maxime qui ad prajdicandum vencrant.... Monaclius ipse episcopus iEdan."— Bede, Hist. Eccles., iii. 3. "Et monasticum cum suis omnibus vitam semper agerc solebat; undo ab illo onines loci ipsius antistites usque hodie sic episcopale exercent officium, ut regente monasterium abbate quem ipsi cum consilio fratrum elegerint, omnes... monasticam per omnia cum ipso episcopo regulam servent."— Bece, Vit. S- Cuthberti, c. IG.

" It is to Bede we owe all that is known of Aidan, as of so many other personages of the seventh century. — Compare Act. SS. Bolland., vol. vi. Augusti, p. 688

238 THE CELTIC MONKS among the rich, now among the poor — baptizing those who were still heathen, confirming in the faith those who were already Christians, and stimulating all to alms-giving and good works. All who accompanied him, monks or laymen, had to devote a certain portion of each day to meditation— that is to say, to reading the Bible and learning the Psalter. Unwearied in study, humble and peaceful, charitable and sincere, he was especially distinguished by zeal against the sins of the rich. Far from sparing any of their vices or excesses, he rebuked them with the greatest sharpness: and contrary to the received custom, he never made any present to the chiefs or nobles, restricting himself to simple hospitality when they came to visit him, and giving away to the first beggar whom he met the gifts which they heaped upon him. But the priestly courage which armed him against the pride of the powerful was transformed into tender and watchful solicitude when he had to defend the feeble, to relieve the needy, or to comfort the unfortunate. His, in a word, was the heart of a true priest and apostle, disdainful of all false grandeur and vain jDrosperity, and victorious over all the mean and perverse tendencies of his time, and of all times.^^

A'idan retained nothing for himself of all the gifts of land which the generosity of the Saxon kings and nobles bestowed upon the Church, whose doctrines they had just embraced. He was content with Lindisfarne and the scanty fields of his poor little isle. But he reserved for himself, wherever it was possible in the vast viUce of the kings and nobles, a site for a chapel, with a small chamber attached, where he prepared his sermons, and in which he lodged during his inces-

^^ " Scrips! hnec... neqiiaquam in eo laudans vcl eligens hoc quod de obsei-vantia paschse minus perfecte sapiebat, immo hoc multuni detestans... sed quasi verax historicus.... Quantum ab eis qui eum novere didicimus, summaj mansuetudinis et pietatis et moderaminis virum.... Unde (ab lona) inter alia vivendi documenta, saluberrimum abstinentiae et modestia3 clericis exemplum reliquit.... Cuncta et urbana et rustica loca, non equorum dorso, sed pedum incessu.... Sive adtonsi, seu laici, meditari deberent, id est aut legendis Scripturis aut psahuis discendis operam dare.... Nunquam divitibus honoris sive timoris gratia, si qua deliquissent reticebat sed aspera illos invectione corrigebat.. •. Nullam potentibus seculi pecuniam, excepta solummodo esca gi quos hospitio suscepisset, unquam dare solebat.... Animum irae et avaritite victorem, superbiee simul et vanae glorias contemptorem... auctoritatem sacerdote dignam, redarguendi superbos ac potentes, pariter et infirmos consolandi, ac pauperes recreandi vel defendendi clementiam." — Bede, iii. 3, 5, 17.

"^ "In hoc habens ecclesiam et cubiculum, saape ibidem divert! ac manere, atque inde ad prsedicandum circumquaque exire consueverat: quod ipsum

Like St. Gregory the Great, whom, though not his disciple, he emulated in well doing, he took an especial interest in the education of children and the emancipation of slaves. From the beginning of his mission he attached to himself twelve English youths, whom he educated with the greatest care for the service of Christ, and of whom one at least became a bishop. Every church and monastery founded by him became immediately a school where the children of the English received from A'idan's monks an education as complete as that to be had in any of the great Irish monasteries.^*' As to slaves, he devoted principally to their redemption the gifts which he owed to the munificence of the Anglo-Saxons, endeavoring especially to save such as, to use Bede's expression, had been " unjustly sold," — which means, probably, those who were not foreign prisoners, or who had not been condemned to slavery as the punishment of crime. For it has been already stated, and it must be kept in mind, that the Saxons, as well as the Celts, made no scruple of selling their brethren and their children like cattle. The freedmen were carefully instructed by A'idan, numbered among his disciples, and frequently raised to the priesthood.^i Heathen barbarism was thus assailed and undermined in its very citadel by monks, both from the north and from the south, and by slaves promoted to the rank of priests.

The king and the bishop rivalled each other in virtue, in piety, in ardent charity, and desire for waiS helper the conversion of souls. Thanks to their mutual and unwearied efforts, every day saw the Christian religion spreading farther and taking deeper root every day joyous crowds hastened to feed on the bread of the Divine Word, and to plunge into the waters of baptism every day numerous churches, flanked by monasteries and schools, rose from the soil. Every day new gifts of land, duo to the generosity of Oswald and the Northumbrian nobles, came to swell the patrimony of the monks and the poor. Every da}', also, new missionaries, full of zeal and fervor, "•rrived from Ireland or Scotland to help on the work of

„ in aliis villis regiis solcbat, utpote nil propria; possessionis, excepta ecclesia sua et adjaccniibus agellis, Iiabens." — Bede, iii. 17.

^^ " Imbuebantur pra'ccptoribus Scutis parvuli Anglorum una cum niajoribus studiis et obscrvationc disciplina3 regularis."— Bede, iii. 3.

•" " Ad redemptionem coruiu qui iujuste fuerant venditi... • IMultos quos pretio dato redcmerat, suos discipulos fecit, atque ad sacerdotalcm usque gradum erudiendo atque instituendo provexit." — Bede, iii. 5.

240 THE CELTIC MONKS

A'idan and Oswald, preaching and baptizing converts. And at the same time James the Deacon, sole survivor of the former Roman mission, redoubled his efforts to help forward the regeneration of the country in which he had already seen the faith flourish and decay. He took advantage of the restoration of peace, and the increasing number of the faithful, to add, like a true disciple of St. Gregory, the teaching of music to the teaching of religion, and to familiarize the English of the north with the sweet and solemn melody of the Roman chant, as already in use among the Saxons of Canterbury .32

Oswald did not content himself with giving his friend A'idan the obedience of a son and the support of a king, in all that could aid in the extension and consolidation of Christianity. He himself gave a personal example of all the Christian virtues, and often passed whole nights in prayer, still more occupied with the concerns of the heavenly kingdom than with those of the earthly realm which he had so ably won, and for which he was so soon to die. He was not only lavish in alms, giving of his riches, with humble and tender charity, to the humble and the poor, to the sick, to travellers, and to needy strangers who came to the bishop to be nourished with the Word of Life. In addition he constituted himself Aidan's interpreter; "and it was," says Bede, " a touching spectacle to see the king, who had, during his long exile, thoroughly learned the Celtic tongue, translating to the great chiefs and the principal officials of his court, the eorls and thanes, the sermons of the bishop, who as yet spoke but imperfectly the language of the Anglo-Saxon s.-^^

The tender friendship and apostolic brotherhood which thus united the king and the bishop of the Northumbrians

^'^ " Exin coepere plures per dies dc Scotorum regione venire.... Construebantur ecclesise per loca, confluebant ad audicndum verbum populi gaudentcs, donabantur niunere regio.... Qui quoniara canendi in ecclesia erat peritissiuius, recuperata postmodum pace in provincia et crescente nuluero fidelium, etiam magister ecclesiasticae cantionis juxta morem Romanorum seu Cantuariorum multis ccepit existere."— Beui;, iii. 3, 11, 20.

^^ " Qui temporalis regni gubernacula tenens, magis pro Eeterno regno semper laborare solebat.... Pauperibus et peregrinis semper humilis, benignus et largus.... Semper, dura viveret, infirmis et pauperibus consulere, eleemosyiias dare, opem ferro non cessabat.... Pulcberrimo sape spectaculo contigit, ut evangelizante antistite qui Anglorum linguam perfecte non noverat, ipse rex suis ducibus ac ministris interpres verbi extiteret coelestis, quia tam longo exilii sui tempore linguam Scotorum plene didicerat." —Bede, iii. 12, 9, 6, 3.

AND THE ANGLO-SAXONS. 241

has, perhaps more than anything else, contributed to exalt and hallow their memory in the annals of Catholic England.

Oswald was too active, too popular, too energetic, and too powerful not to make his actions and ^!fy"|^t*'J^^ flueuce felt beyond the bounds of his own kingdom, the Kingof Like Edwin, whom he resembles in so many points, alcfconnotwithstanding the rivalry of their two families, turned his thoughts and his steps to the south the Humber. Edwin had converted, for a time at least, his neighbors and vassals, the East Anglians. Oswald went further, and contributed largely to the conversion of the most powerful kingdom of the Heptarchy, next to Northumbria— that of the Saxons of the West, Wessex— a kingdom which w^as destined to absorb and supplant all the others. The kings of this nation also professed to be of the blood of Odin; they were descended from a chief called Cerdic, perhaps the bravest of all the invaders of the British soil, and who had consolidated his conquests by forty years of craft and war. It was among this warlike race that Oswald sought a wife; but, contrary to ordinary precedent, it was, in this new union, the husband, and not the wife, who took the initiative in conversion. When he Avent for his bride, Kincburga, into the country of the West Saxons, the King of Northumbria met there an Italian bishop, who had undertaken their conversion, finding them entirely pagan. He did his best to second the laborious efforts of the foreign missionary, and the king, whose daughter he was about to wed, having consented to be baptized, Oswald stood sponsor for him, and thus became the spiritual father of him whose son-in-law he Avas about to become.^^ He took back to Northumbria with him the young convert, who soon bore him a son, little worthy of his sire, but yet destined at least to be the founder of a monastery which acted a part of some importance in the history of his people.

AH this prosperity was soon to end, as all that Invasion of good and beautiful ends here below. The terrible I'enda at Penda was still alive, and, under the iron hand of tiJeMer'i"^ that redoubtable warrior, Mercia remained the strong- ^rlJon".*^ hold of paganism, even as Northumbria had become under Edwin and Oswald the centre of Christian life in Great Britain. He had left unrevenged the death of his ^* "Cumomnes paganissimos invenirct.... Pulcherrimo ct Deo digno consortio, cujus erat filiam acccpturus in conjiigem, ipsum priu3 sccunda generatione Deo dictatuin sibi accepit in filium." — Bede, iii. 7.

VOL. 11. 21

242 THE CELTIC MONKS

ally, the Briton Cadwallon; he had done nothing to hinder the accession and establishment of a new Christian king in Northumbria. But when that king essayed to cross the river which formed the boundary of the two kingdoms, and to unite to his domains a province which had always belonged to the Mercians,^^ Penda, notwithstanding his age,' resumed his old inveteracy towards those whom he saw— again like Edwin — deserting the worship of their common ancestor Odin, and claiming an insupportable supremacy over all the Saxons, Pagan or Christian. He accordingly renewed with the Britons the alliance which had already been so disastrous to the Northumbrians, and, placing himself at the head of the two combined armies, waged for two years a sanguinary war against Oswald, which ended in a decisive battle at Maserfeld, on the western border of Mercia and Northumbria.^^ The struggle was fierce; the brother of Penda pcrishcd in the fight, but Oswald, the great 642.^"""^*' ^^^ beloved Oswald, shared the same fate. He died on the field, in the flower of his years, at the age of thirty-eight. There he fell — the historian of the English Church says with emphasis — fighting for his country. But his last word, his last thought, was for heaven, and for the eternal welfare of his people. '' My God," said he, on seeing himself encircled with enemies, overwhelmed by numbers, and already pierced by a forest of arrows and lances — " ray God, save their souls." ^'' The last cry of this saintly spirit, this young hero, remained longgraven on the memory of the Saxon people, and passed into a proverb to denote those who prayed without ceasing in life and in death.

The ferocity of Penda was not even satisfied by the death of his young rival. When the dead body of the king of Northumbria was brought from the battle-field into his pres-

•** Oswald, whether as a conqueror or only as bretwalda or chief of the confederation, had invaded that province of Lindsey, where Paulinus had founded the Cathedral of Lincoln, where the monks themselves reproached the sainted King of Northumbria, forty years after his death, with having wished to rule over them.

^^ According to some, near Winwick, in Lancashire; according to others, at Oswestry, in Shrewsbury.

^^ " Ubi pro patria dimicans a paganis interfectus est.... Vulgatum est autem et in consuetudinem proverbii versum quod etiam inter orationes vitam finierit.... Cum arniis et hostibus circumseptus, jamjam viderct se esse perimendum, oravit pro animabus exercitus sui. Unde dicunt in proverbio: Deus, miserere animabus, dixit Oswald cadens in terra." — Bede, iii. 9, 12. "Cum stipatoribus fusis ipse quoque ferratam silvam in pectore gererct." —WiLHELM. Malmesb., Db Gest., lib. i. c. 3. ence, the old savage caused the head and hands of the hero to be cut off, and set up on stakes, to intimidate both conquerors and conquered. The noble remains were thus exposed for a whole year, till his brother and avenger, Oswy, carried them away. The hero's head was then taken to Lindisfarne, to the great monastery which he had so richly endowed, and where his holy friend A'idan awaited it; but his hands were deposited in a chapel in the royal fortress of Bamborough, the cradle of that Northumbrian dominion which the arms of his ancestors had founded, and which his own had so valiantly restored.

Thus perished, at the age of thirty-eight, Oswald, ranked by the Church among her martyrs, and by the Anglo-Saxon people among its saints and heroes of most enduring fame. Through the obscurity of that thankless and confused age, the eye rests gratefully on this young prince, reared in exile among the hereditary enemies of his race, who was consoled for the loss of a throne by his conversion to Christianity who regained the kingdom of his fathers at the point of the sword, and planted the first cross on his native soil, at the moment when he freed it from the usurper; crowned by the love and devotion of the people on whom he bestowed the blessings of peace and of supreme truth, spending his very life for its sake; united for a few short years to a wife whom, in marrying, he had made a Christian; gentle and strong, serious and sincere, pious and intelligent, humble and bold, active and gracious, a soldier and a missionary, a king and a martyr, slain in the flower of his age on the field of battle, fighting for his country and praying for his subjects. Where shall we find in all history a hero more nearly approaching the ideal, more richl}' gifted, more worthy of eternal remembrance, and, it must be added, more completely forgotten?

It was long, however, before his name was forgot- oswauiis ten. During the whole Anglo-Saxon period, and venerated even alter the Norman Conquest, under the Plan- "^^™''^5''* tagcnets, this gallant soldier, great king, and generous Christian, continued to be the object of popular veneration. The chroniclers and poets of the time vied with each other in celebrating his fame. " Who, then," said one of them, with that mingling of classic associations and Christian ideas so habitual to the monks and all the writers of the middle ages •— " Who, then, is Hercules? who is Alexander the Great?

who is Julius Csesar? We are taught that Hercules con-

quered himself, Alexander conquered the world, and Cassar 244 THE CELTIC MONKS

the enemies of Rome; but Oswald conquered at once the world, his enemies, and himself." ^^

The monks of the great and magnificent Church of Hexham went in procession every year to celebrate the day consecrated to him at the site of the cross which he had planted on the eve of his first victory. But the love and gratitude of the Christian people gave a still greater glory to the place of his defeat and death. Pilgrims came thither in crowds to seek relief from their sutFerings, and had each a miraculous cure to relate on their return. The dust which his noble blood had watered Avas collected with care and conveyed to great distances as a remedy for disease, or a preservative from the evils of life. By dint of carrying away this dust a hollow was scooped out of a man's size, and which seemed the ever-open tomb of this martyr of his country. On seeing the turf around this hollow clothed with an unwonted verdure, more delicate and beautiful than elsewhere, travellers said that the man who had perished there must needs have been more holy and more pleasing in God's sight than all the other warriors who rested beneath that sward.-^^ The veneration of which his remains were the object spread not only among all the Saxons and Britons of Great Britain, but even beyond the seas, in Ireland, and among the Greeks and the Germans. The very stake on which the head of the royal martyr had been fixed was cut up into relics, the fragments of which w^ere regarded as of sovereign efficacy in the healing both of body or of mind. These things provoke a pitying smile from the wise and witty, who in times and countries enslaved by the ascendency of numbers and physical force are not forbidden to philosophize. But no safer or sweeter asylum has ever been found for humiliated patriotism, violated justice, or vanquished freedom, than the pious tenderness with which Christian nations once surrounded the tomb and relics of those who died for the faith and their rights.

^^ " Quis fuit Alcides? Quis Csesar Julius? Aut quis

Magnus Alexander? Alcides se superasse

Fertur; Alexander mundum, sed Julius hosteni. Se simul Oswaldus et mundum vicit et hostem."

— Ap. Camden, Britannia, iii. 493. '^ " Contigit ut pulverem ipsum ubi corpus ejus in terram corruit... multi auferentes... qui niox adeo increbuit, ut paulatim ablata exinde terra fossam ad mensuram staturae virilis reddiderit. Quidam de natione Britonum, iter faciens juxta ipsum locum, vidit unius loci spatium cctero campo venustius ac viridius: ccepitque sagaci animo conficere quod nulla esset alia causa insolitae illo in loco viriditatis, nisi quia ibidem sanctior cetero exercitu vir aliquis fuisset interfectus." — Bede, iii. 9, 10.

A kind of prophecy, that Oswald's bones would become relics, had been made to him by Aidan, on ofAWanin

,,-.,,.'. '

the loJlowing occasion: —

The bishop had made it a rule to accept very rarely those invitations to the royal table which were considered, among the Germanic races,as signs of the most marked distinction. When he did go he was present only at the beginning of the repast, after which he would hasten away to apply himself, with his monks, to reading or prayer. But one Easter-day the monk-bishop, being at dinner with the king, and seated beside him, had just raised his hand to bless a silver dish filled with delicacies which was placed before Oswald, when the officer to whom the charge of the poor was specially intrusted, suddenly entered to announce that there was a crowd of begg-ars in the street who besought alms of the king. Oswald immediately gave orders that the food, and the silver dish which contained it, the latter broken in pieces, should be divided among the beggars. As he stretched out his hand to give this order, the bishop seized it and cried, " May this hand never perish! " ^'^ The following year it was severed from his body, and picked up on the battle-field where he gave his life for God and his people; and the hand of the royal martyr, enshrined in the sanctury of the ancient Northumbrian capital, continued entire and incorruptible for centuries, was seen and kissed by innumerable Christians, and disappeared only in that abyss of spoliation and sacrilege in which Henry VIII. ingulfed all the monastic glories and treasures of England.

*° " Adceleravit ocius ad Icgondum aut orandum egrodi.... Discus argenteus regalibus epulis refertus, jainjam essent manus ad benedicenduna panem missuri.... Ministrum cui suscipicndorum inopum crat cura delegata.... Pontifex qui adsidebat... appreliendit doxtram ejus et ait: Nunquam inveterascat hcEC manus." — Bede, iii. 5, 6. The Bollandists prove (vol. ii. Aug., p. 87) that the hand still existed in the sixteenth century.

21*