Northumbria Under the Successors of Oswald — The Celtic Bishops — The Great Abbesses, Hilda and Ebba (part 1 of 2)
Oswald's successors in Northumbria: Oswy in Bernicia; Oswin in Delra.
— Oswin's intimacy with Bishop Aidan. — The son of the mare and the son of God. — New outrages of Penda. — Aidan stops the burning of Bamborough. — Struggle between Oswy and Oswin. — Murder of Oswin. — Death of ATdan twelve years after his friend. — The double monastery of Tynemouth, built above the tomb of Oswin. — The wife of the murderer dedicates a monastery to the expiation of the murder. — Reign of Oswy, who was venerated as a saint, notwithstanding his crime, because of his zeal for the truth. — Successors of Aidan at Lindisfarne, sent by the monks of lona. — Episcopate of the Scot Finan. — He builds the Cathedral of Lindisfarne of wood. — Colman, second successor. — Novitiate at Melrose. — The young Anglo-Saxons go to study in Ireland. — The female monasteries of Northumbria. — HeTa, the first nun. — Hartlepool. — Aldan gives the veil to Hilda, princess of DeTra: her rule of thirty years at Whitby. — Description of the place. —The six bishops who issued from the double monastery. Ceadmon, the cowherd, vassal of Hilda; the first Anglo-Saxon poet; precursor of Milton, he sings the Paradise Lost; his holy life and death. — The Princess Ebba, of the rival dynasty, sister of Oswald and Oswy, foundress and Abbess of Coldingham: she also rules for thirty years. — Notable disorders in her monasteries. — Fervor and austerity of the Northumbrian monks: extraordinary fasts: different characteristics of Lindisfarne, Coldingham, and Melrose. — A precursor of Dante. — Foundation of Lastingham: Cedd, monk of Lindisfarne. — Testimony borne by the Romano-Benedictine Bede to the virtue, disinterestedness, and popularity of the Celtic missionaries. — Nevertheless, resistance and opposition are not awanting. — Contrast and fickleness of character in the kings as in the people. — Joy of the natives of the coast on seeing the monks shipwrecked.
Oswald's On the death of Oswald Northumbria fell a prey, in Ncf/-"*^^ first to the ravages of Mercian invasion, then to the thumbria. complications and weakness of a divided succession. Like the Merovingian, and even the Carlovingian Franks, although with a less fatal obstinacy, the Anglo-Saxons, and particularly the Angles of Northumbria, could not resist the inclination which led them to accept or to incite the division of a kingdom among several princes as soon as there appeared several heirs of a deceased king. It must be supposed ^that these divisions answered in England, as in France, to certain distinctions of race, or to certain exigencies of local or provincial self-government, which could not be reconciled with the existence of one supreme authority. Oswald left a son in childhood, whose claims were not at that moment taken into consideration. His brother Oswy, still in the oswyiu flower of his youth, and, though much less saintly than Oswald, no less a good soldier and valiant captain, at once took his place in Bernicia— that is to say, in the northern part of Northumbria. As for Deira, it fell to a prince of the Deirian dynasty, grand-nephew to Ella, the founder of that racc,'*^ and son of that ill-fated Osric who had reigned for a year only over Southern Northumbria after the downfall of his cousin Edwin in 633 — a short reign, which left him scarce time enough to renounce the baptism which he had received from the hands of Paulinus, and to perish under the sword of Cadwallon's Britons. His son, called Oswin, had • r.- o. been saved while yet a child by his friends, who ° sent him out of Northumbria, and had passed his youth in exile, like Edwin, and the two brothers Oswald and Oswy. Exile seems to have been the necessary and salutary apprenticeship of the Northumbrian kings.
On hearing of the death of Oswald he claimed his right of succession. The old subjects of his father and grand-uncle gladly received him.'^^ The principal nobles met in assembly, acknowledged his hereditary right, and proclaimed him King of the De'irians; and for seven years he governed them to the satisfaction of all. He was still very young, of lofty stature, endowed with remarkable comeliness and grace — a matter of no small importance in an age and among a people extremely sensible to external advantages. But he had, in addition, all the virtues which were then regarded as proofs of sanctity. His extreme gentleness, his charity, and, above all, his humility, were universally extolled. He was, moreover, so accessible, so courteous and generous, that the noblest
" See the gene.alogical table, Appendix VI., p. 752.
*^ " Audiens Oswinus exulans, quod, Oswaldo defuncto, rcgnarct Oswin pro fratre suo, inito cum suis consilio ad regnuni Delrorum rcgressus, ab omni plebe laetante rccepitur.... Omnibus ejus beneficia postulantibus liilaritcr impendebat." Joan. Tynkmoutii, ap. Eolland., t. iv. Aug., p. G3. " Parvo temporis intcrvallo principes primatesque regni convenerunt in unum conimunicatoquc unanimiter consilio B. Oswinum ha;redi talis juris euccessorem Dcfroruni dominum in regeni sublimantes." — Vita Oswini, p. 3, ill the Publications of the Surtees Society, 1838. lords of all Northumbria vied with each other in seeking tbe honor of serving among those ofEcers of bis boasebold whom tbe Latin historians designate in England, as elsewhere, by the name of minister iales.^^
Although Oswin had been exiled among the Saxons of Wessex, and not in Scotland, like his cousins and rivals Os- M^ald and Oswy, and bad been thus entirely out of contact with the Celtic monks, he was already a Christian when ho returned to Northumbria, and did not hesitate to recognize His con- the episcopal authority of A'idan. During his whole nection reign tbe monk of lona, now bishop of Lindisfarne, withAidan.
(jQjj^j^yg^j ^Q travel throughout the two kingdoms which formed his immense diocese — not confining himself to preaching in tbe new churches, but going from bouse to house to foster beside the domestic hearth tbe seeds of the new-sown faith.'^ It was a special pleasure to him on such occasions to rest under the hospitable roof of tbe young king of Deira, with whom ho always lived in as tender and thorough a union as that which had united him to Oswald. The son of An oft-repeated anecdote, which reveals at once andThT file pleasant intimacy of their relations and the nosonofGod. \)\q debcacy of their minds, has been left us by Bede. Ai'dan, as we have said, performed all his apostolic journeys on foot, but it was the king's wish that he should have at least a horse to cross the rivers, or for other special emergencies; he gave him accordingly bis best steed, splendidly caparisoned. The bishop accepted it, and made use of it; but being, as Bede calls him, '' tbe father and worshipper of the poor," it happened ere long that, meeting a man who asked alms, he leaped down from bis royal courser, and gave it, harnessed as it was, to the beggar. Tbe king, being informed of this, said to A'idan, as they. were going to dinner together, " Lord bishop, what do you mean by giving my horse to that beggar? Had I not many other borses of less value, and property of every kind to give in alms, without the necessity of giving that horse that I had expressly chosen for your own special use? " " What is this you say? " re-
*^ *' In maxima omnium rerum affluentia et ipse amabilis omnibus prsefuit.... Aspectu venustus et statura sublimis et affiitu jucundus et moribus civilis et manu omnibus nobilibus et ignobilibus largus.... Unde contigit ut... undique ad ejus ministerium de cunctis prope provinciis viri etiam nobilissimi concurrent." — Bede, iii. 14.
44 K Propter nascentis fidei teneritudinem provinciam circumeundo fidelium domos intrare verbique divini scmina pro captu singulorum in agro cordis eorum cominus spargere." — Vit. Osw., p. 4. plied Aldan. " king, the horse, "which is the son of a mare, is it dearer to you than the man who is the son of God?" As he said this they entered the banqueting hall. Oswin, who had just returned from the chase, approached the fire with his officers, before sitting down at the table, and while he warmed himself, thought over the words of the bishop; then all at once taking oft' his sword, he threw himself at the feet of the saint, and implored his pardon. '' No more," said he, " shall I speak of it, and never more shall regret anything of mine that you give to the children of God." After which, reassured by the kind words of the bishop, he sat down joyously to dine. But the bishop, on the contrary, became very sad, and began to weep. One of his priests inquired the cause of his sadness; upon which he replied in the Celtic tongue, which neither Oswin nor his attendants understood, " I know now that the king will not live long; never until now have I seen a king so humble; and this nation is not worthy of such a prince."*^
This little tale, Ozanam truly says, forms a perfect picture; it discloses in those barbarous times a sweetness of sentiment, a delicacy of conscience, a refinement of manners, which, more than knowledge, is the sign of Christian civilization.
The sad foreboding of the saint was realized only too soon. But it was not, like his predecessors, under the assault of the fierce Penda and the coalition of Mercians and Britons that the amiable and conscientious Oswin was to perish. Penda, however, had resumed his devastating career, and continued for thirteen years longer to ravage Northumbria. But he seems to have entertained less unfriendly feelings to his neighbors the De'irians and their king, than to the Bernicians, and Oswy the brother of his last victim. It is in the north of the two kingdoms that we again find him carrying
"** " Desiliens ille praecepit cquum ita ut erat stratus regaliter, pauperi dare: erat onini... cultor pauperum ac vclut pater luiserorum.... Quid voluisti, Domine Antistes, equum rcgiuni quern te conveniebat habere, pauperi dare? Nuniquid non habuimus cquos viliores plurimos... qui ad pauperum dona suffieercnt?,. Quid loqueris, rex i* Num tibi carior est ille tilius equa;, quani ille filius Dei.... Porro rex (venerat enim de venatu) coepit consistens ad focuni caleficri euni niinistris, et repente inter calefaciendum recordans verbuni quod dixcrat illi Antistes, discinxit se gladio sue... festinusque aecedens ante pedes episeopi corruit.... Quia nunquani deinceps aliquid loquar de hoc, aut jutlicabo quid ct quantum de peeunia nostra filiis Dei tribuas.... Lingua sua patria quam rex et doniestici ejus non noverant.... Nunquara ante hoc vidi tarn humilem regem." Bede, iii. 14. everywhere fire and sword,^*' and attempting to give to the flames the royal fortress of Bamborough. There also we find Aldan, the benefactor and protector of the country. Penda, not having been able to reduce the fortress either by assault or by investment, caused an enormous pile to be erected all round the rampart. He heaped on it all the wood of the surrounding forests, the driftwood from the beach, the beams, and even the thatch of the cottages in all the neighboring villages which he had destroyed; then, as soon as the wind blew from the west, he set fire to the mass, with the hope of Seeing the flames reach the town. Aidan was at the time in the islet of Fame, an isolated rock in the opcu sca, a little to the south of Lindisfarne, being%°u°rnt ^^^ nearly opposite Bamborough, to which he often went, quitting his episcopal monastery to devote himself in solitude and silence to prayer. While he prayed he saw a cloud of black smoke and jets of flame covering the sky above the town where his dear Oswald once dwelt. Lifting his eyes and hands to heaven, he cried, with tears, " My God, behold all the evil that Penda does us! " At the same moment the wind changed, the flames whirled round upon the besiegers, destroying many of them, and they speedily abandoned the siege of a place so evidently under Divine protection.'*'
strufrgie As if this formidable and pitiless enemy was not enough to desolate Northumbria, there arose in the heart of Oswy a jealous animosity which soon ripened into civil war. After seven years of union between the two kings of Bernicia and Deira, occasions of estrangement, ever increasing, began to arise between them. These were owing, it cannot be doubted, to the preference which, we have already remarked, was shown hy so many of the Northumbrian lords for the pleasant and cordial service of King Oswin. Oswy marched against the De'irians. Oswin likewise put himself at the head of his army; but it was much less numerous than that of the king of Bernicia, and when the moment of battle arrived, he said to the chiefs and lords of his country that he was reluctant to make them risk their lives for him whom they had raised from the position
*^ " Cum cuncta quae potcrat ferro flanimaque perderet." — Bede, iii. 17. *'' " Plurimam congeriem trabiuiu, tignoruni, parietum, virgarum et tecti fenei et his urbera in magna altitudine circunidedit... ventis ferentibus globos ignis ac fumum,... Vide, Domine, quanta mala facit Penda." —Bede, iii. 16. of a poor exile to be their king, and who now did not shrink either from renewed exile or death itself.*^ He then disbanded his troops and sought refuge with an earl on whom he thought he could rely, having just conferred on him, after many other bounties, the very manor of Gilling where he reckoned on finding an asylum. This wretched traitor gave him up to Oswy, who had the cruelty to kill him. One companion, Tondhere by name, alone remained to hirj. Oswin, resigned to his own death, besought that his friend might be spared; but he refused to survive his prince, preferring to sacrifice himself to that sentiment of passionate devotion which, among the Saxons, had preceded Christianity, and which justifies the title of knight prematurely applied to this brave and loyal adherent by one of the martyr's biographers.^^
The king and his knight thus perished together; and twelve days afterwards the glorious Bishop Aidan ^..^^^ ^.^^ followed the king he loved to the tomb.^*^ He fell twelve days sick during one of his innumerable missionary expe- ^^^^'' ditions, and died under a tent which had been pitched in haste to shelter him at the back of a modest church which he had just built. He expired with his head resting against one of the buttresses of the church. It was a death which became a soldier of the faith upon his own fit field of battle.51
The body of Aidan was carried to his monastic The double cathedral of Lindisfarne. But that of his royal friend, Oswin, was deposited in a chapel dedicated J. xi 1 1 1 Tr- • 1 -i i 1 -J. founded ou to the blessed Virgin, and situated on a granite headland almost entirely surrounded by the sea, at the mouth of the Tyne, a river which was then the boundary line between the two Northumbrian states of Deira and Bernicia, and which is now one of the principal arteries of the maritime commerce of England. Ere long, over the sacred remains of this martyr, who was beloved and honored by the Northumbrians of both kingdoms as their lather and lord on earth, and their patron saint in heaven, there rose
*^ JOAXN. TrXEMOUTn., 1. c.
"" " Maluit miles morti succumbere quam mortuo domino, etiamsi copia daretur, supervivere." — ILid. Compare Bede, 1. c.
^•^ "Nun plus quatn duodecimo post occisionem regis quem amabat die."' — JLid.
^' "Tetenderunt segrotanti tentorium, ita ut tentorium parieti adliaereret ecclesice. Adclinis destinae qua) extrinsecus ecclesiae pro muniniine erat adposita." one of those double monasteries which included both monks and nuns within two separate enclosures, but under one government.^2 The nuns whose office it was to pray upon his tomb came from Whitby, which was already governed with a splendor as great as her authority was absolute, by the Abbess Hilda, herself sprung, like the martyred Oswin, from the Deirian dynasty and the race of Ella. The vicissitudes of this great monastery throughout the invasions of the Danes and Normans; the constant or ever-reviving veneration with which the remains of St. Oswin were regarded, even after the remembrance of his friend A'idan was totally effaced; ^^ the protection which the poor, the afflicted, and oppressed long found under the shadow of his sanctuary, and under the shelter of what was called the Peace of St. Oswin, will possibly be related in the sequel of our narrative, or by other and more competent pens. We must content ourselves at present with merely pointing out the beautiful remains of the conventual church which was rebuilt in the thirteenth century, and which is enclosed within the fortress which defends the entrance of the Tyne. The seven great arcades, whose time-worn relics rise majestically against the sky from the height of their rock, produce a vivid effect on the traveller who arrives by sea, and nobly announce England's adoration of the ruins she had made.^*
Some years later, on the very spot where Oswin had perished, at Gilling, near Richmond, a monastery was reared in expiation of so foul a crime, by the wife of his murderer. This was no other than Eanfleda, daughter of King Edwin, she whose birth had contributed to ^^^ conversion of her father,^^ who had been the first-born of Christ in the Northumbrian kingdom, and who, after the overthrow of Edwin and the Roman mission in Northumbria, had been carried jq i^qy Cradle by Bishop Paulinus into the country
*^ " Ut dominum et patrem in terris, defensorem reputarent in coelis unde processu temporis ad majorem martyris gloriam sanctimoniales virgines de coenobio S. Hildte abbatisssB ad corpus ejus introductae, usque ad persecutionem Danicam ... in supremo religionis culmine permanserunt." — Math. Westm., ad ann. IOCS. Compare Bolland., t. iv. Aug., pp. 58, 59.
*^ " Ue sancto rege Oswino nonnnlla dudum audieram, sed sancti Aydani episcopi nee nomen ad me pervenerat," says a traveller, miraculously cured in the twelfth century. — Vita Oswini, p. 32.
^^ There is a large and handsome recent work on the Monastery of Tynemouth, entitled, History of the Monastery founded at Tynemouth in the Diocese of Durham, to the honor of God, under the invocation of the B. V.
31. and St. Oswin, King and Martyr, by William Sidney Gibson. London, 1846, 2 vols. 4tQ. *^ See p. 210.
AND THE ANGLO-SAXONS. 253
of her mother, Ethelburga, daughter of the first Christian king of Kent.
Oswy, who was as able as he was ambitious, readily perceived that it was not enough to murder a rival in order to secure himself in the exclusive sovereignty of Northumbria. He had previously wished to conciliate the opposing dynasty by a matrimonial alliance, as his father Ethelfrid had done.^s In pursuance of this purpose, he had despatched to Canterbury, with A'idan's approval and blessing, a priest respected for the gravity and sincerity of his character/^" and abbot of one of the new monasteries,^'^ to obtain from Queen Ethelburga, if she still lived, the hand of her daughter. His suit was granted, and the exiled princess returned to reign over the kingdom that she had quitted in her blood-stained cradle. In this double Northumbrian dynasty, the history of which is at once so dramatic and romantic, and so closel}^ interwoven with the history of the conversion of the English, exile was almost always the forerunner of the kingly office, or of sainthood. Eanfleda, cousin-german of the murdered king, and wife of the king who killed him, obtained permission from her husband to build a monastery on the spot where the murder had been committed, that prayers might be offered there forever for two souls, that of the victim and that of the murderer. The government of this new foundation Avas intrusted to Trumhere, himself a scion of the family of De'irian princes, and one of those Anglo-Saxons who, like the negotiator of Eanfleda's marriage, had been trained and raised to the priesthood by the Celtic monks.^'^
Upon this noble daughter of Edwin, restored from exile to reign over the country of her ancestors as the wife of the cruel Oswy, the mind rests with emotion. A natural desire arises to attribute to her influence the happy change which appears to have been wrought in the character of Oswy from the day on which she induced him to expiate the crime with which he was stained, '"^ See the genealogical table of the two races in Appendix VI., p. 752. " " Utta, inultae gravitatis vir et ob id omnibus, etiam principibus seculi honorabilis." — Bede, iii. 15.
^^ At Gateshead on the Tyne, opposite Ne^rcastle. Compare Smith's notes on Bede, iii. 21. There was still at Gateshead, in 1745, a Catholic chapel, which was burnt by the populace out of hatred to Prince Charles Edward. —Camden's Britannia, Gough's edition, vol. iii. p. 123.
=* " De natione quidam Anglorum, sed edoctus et ordinatus a Scotis... propinquus et ipse erat regis occisi: in quo monasterio assiduae orationes pro utriusque regis, id est, et occisi, et ejus qui occidere jussit, salute asterna fierent."— Bede, iii. 24. by founding this monastery. Forgetful of this crime, all the historians unite in extolling the virtues and exploits which distinguished the after portion of his prolonged and active reign. He did not continue at first, after the assassination of Oswin, the undisputed master of all Northumbria; he had to give up at least a part of De'ira to the young son of his brother Oswald, Ethehvald by name. But he retained, notwithstanding, an evident preponderance, not only in Northumbria, but in all England, the dignity of Bretwalda having fallen to him uncontested. The great event of his reign is the overthrow of the fierce heathen, Penda of Mercia, an event which sealed the final victory of Christianity among the Anglo-Saxons. But both before and after this culminating point of his prosperity, Oswy displayed so ardent and consistent a zeal for the extension and establishment of the Christian religion, that he Avas finally admitted to a place, sometimes too easily accessible, in the English martyrology.60 Aldan's Nevertheless, neither the zeal of O&wj, nor the purer ardor of his illustrious predecessor, could have prevailed against the various and formidable obstacles which the Gospel had to encounter among ^^^^- the Anglo-Saxons, had the}^ not been directed, enlightened, and sustained by the admirable clergy whom Aidan and his successors had trained in the cloisters of Lindisfarne and its dependent monasteries.
In regard to the succession of bishops in the new diocese of Lindisfarne, it is necessary to keep in mind the very significant difference between the usages followed by the Roman and those of the Celtic missionaries in the election of bishops. The first four successors of Augustine at Canterbury were all, as we have seen, chosen from among the Italian monks who had accompanied him to England: but they all belonged to that first mission, and were all freely chosen by their companions, old or new, in place of being successively sent from Rome, as the bishops of Lindisfarne were from lona. In fact, at each vacancy in the see of Lindisfarne, the monks of lona, who regarded that monastic cathedral, and perhaps the whole of christianized Northumbria, as their exclusive property, hastened to despatch a monk of their community to replace him who had rendered his soul to God. The Scottish monks, thus placed during thirty years
«" 15th February: Compare Ad. SS. Bolland., vol. ii. Feb., p. 801.
AND THE ANGLO-SAXONS. 255
at the head of the Church of the North of England, showed themselves thoroughly worthy of the saintly school whence they issued, and of the glorious mission to which they were consecrated. But it is, nevertheless, important to note that, either owing distance or some other cause, Rome left to her missionary communities, her apostolic colonies, a liberty which was not possible under the harsh discipline of the Celtic Church.
The first monk sent from lona to replace the noble A'idan, is known by the name of St. Finan.^i His episcopate Avas prosperous; it lasted ten years,^^ and was not interrupted by any melancholy event, such as those which had troubled the life of Ai'dan by taking from him his two royal friends. Finan always lived on good terms with King Oswy, and before going to join his predecessor in heaven, he had the happiness of introducing to the Church the heads of the two great Saxon kingdoms, who came to seek baptism at the gates of Lindisfarne. In that islandsanctuary, where we must remember that the bishop was often in ecclesiastical subjection to the local abbot of the monastic community, Finan caused a cathedral to be ^^ ^^^^^ built, not of stone, like that which Paulinus and Edwin had commenced at York, but according to draioiLmthe Celtic custom, and like the churches built by Columba and his Irish mo^ks: it was made entirely of wood, and covered with rushes, or rather with that long rough seagrass, whose pivot-like roots bind together the sands on the sea-shore, and which is still found in great abundance on the island, as well as on the sandy beach which has to be crossed before the traveller can reach Lindisfarne.'^'^
*' " Et ipse illo ab Hii Scotorutn insula ac monasterio destinatus." — Bede, iii. 25. Cf. Act. SS. Bolland., vol. iii. Feb., p. 21.
*' The Breviary of Aberdeen, quoted by the Bollandists, affirms that Finan's promotion to the episcopate was preceded by a kind of election or postulation proceeding from the clergy and people of Northumbria, the nuns included: " Congregatis cleri populique concionibus, virorum et mulierum utriusque sexus, unanimiter S. Finanum in episcopum Lindisfarncnsem Spiritus vSancti gratia eligi instanter postuiaverunt et solemniter assunipscrunt." But besides the fact of our finding no trace of any similar election in these ancient monuments, it appears to us incompatible with the formal testimony of the almost contemporary Northumbrian Bede: " Interea Aidano de hac vita sublato, Finan pro illo graduni episcopatus, a Scotis ordinatus ac missus, acceperat." — Bede, iii. 25.
"^ " Fecit ecclesiam episcopali sede congruam: quam tamen more Scotorum, non de lapide, sed de robore secto totam composuit atque arundine texit." Tliis herb is called in English bent, and the sandy flats which it covers, and which extend along all the coast of Northumbria and of southern Scotland, take the name of links.
Vast as was his diocese, which embraced the two great Northumbrian kingdoms, and great as must have been his influence over the other Saxon provinces, Finan seems farther to have preserved and exercised an authority not less complete over the country of his origin, the kingdom of the Dalriadian Scots. The Scots annalists all speak of a certain King Fergus, who, by his violence and exactions, had raised the indignation of the Scottish clerg}^, and called down upon himself a sentence of excommunication from the bishops of Lindisfarne, Finan and his successors.*^* These Celtic bishops were at all times far from courtly. Finan left among the Anglo-Saxons the reputation of a man rough and intractable,*^^ and we shall see that his successor was no less difficult than himself.
coiman, He was succeeded by Colman, a monk of lona, cesser' ol"''" sout forth by that community, like Aidan and Finan, Aldan. to govcm the Northumbrian Church,*^** and to evangelize the Northern Anglo-Saxons. He is believed to have been born in Ireland, and on this account he is held in honor there. It has even been supposed that in him might be recognized one of those young disciples of Columba, whose rustic labors the great Abbot blessed and encouraged from the threshold of the cell in which he pursued his solitary studies.*^" True or false, this tradition accords with history, which sho^^s us in Colman a pontiff penetrated with the same spirit as his predecessors, and always worthy of the monastic sanctuary which, for more than a century, was rendered illustrious by the genius and memory of Columba.
Novitiate Lindisfamo, as may easily be supposed, did not of Melrose, gugjce for the training, or indeed for the shelter of the army of monks employed by the Celtic bishops in the spiritual conquest of Northumbria. To the north of the Tweed, the present boundary between England and Scotland, and about halfway from Lindisfarne to the Scots frontier,
"* BoECE and Leslie, ap. Bolland., I. c.
^^ " Quod esset homo ferocis animi." — Bede, 1. c.
^'^ " Et ipse missus a Scotis.... Venit ad insulam Ilii unde erat ad praedicandum verbum Anglorunugenti destinatus."— Bede, iii. 23: iv. 4.
^' Adamnan, ii. 16. It is very difficult, however, to admit the identity of the Colman of whom Adamnan speaks with Colman the bishop of Lindisfarne: supposing ho had been but twenty years of age at the date of Columba's death in 597, he would have been above eighty at the time of his promotion to the episcopate in 661, and would have been nearly one hundred when he died in 675. Comp. Lakigan, op. cit. vol. iii. pp. 59-61. they established a kind of branch or establishment for novices, where the monks destined for the labors and trials of the apostolate were received and trained. Some of these, like their bishops, came from lona, Ireland, and the the Scots, while others were taken from the ranks of the Saxon converts.^^ This outpost of Lindisfarne and lona bore the name of Ilelrose — not the Cistercian Melrose, with the name of which Walter Scott has made ns familiar, while its picturesque ruins attract all the visitors of the famous quadrilateral formed by the four most beautiful ruins in Scotland, Kelso, Jedburgh, Dryburgh, and Melrose — but a more ancient and more holy Melrose — whose memory has been too much effaced by its brilliant offspring. It was situated on a kind of rounded promontory almost completely encircled by the winding current of the Tweed, the banks of which at this part of its course are very abrupt and thickly wooded. The spot was one of profound solitude, as the very name indicates (Mailross or Mul-ross, desolate point); '^^ and here was raised a sanctuarj^, which was for many years the centre of light and life to all the surrounding country, long frequented by pilgrims, whose paths are still pointed out, and from whence issued many of the saints most venerated in the south of Scotland and north of England.'*^
The first Abbot of Melrose was Eata, one of the twelve young Saxons whom the first Celtic bishop chose for himself as the first-fruits of his episcopate.'i But neither the zeal of the pastors nor the fervor of the converts was satisfied with those fountains of life and knowledge which gushed forth in Northumbrian soil. Older and more abundant springs were necessary to them. A crowd of youths, some the sons of thanes or nobles, others of the lowest rank, left their country
®* Varin, second paper.
«" The site is still called Old Melrose. It is occupied by a pretty countryhouse, which belonged in July, 1SG2, to a Mr. Fairliolme. It is not more than three miles from the magnificent ruins of the celebrated Cistercian abbey of the same name, the richest and most powerful of all the Scottish abbeys, and which still contained one hundred monks in 1542, when it was destroyed by the Ileformers. — Morton's Monastic Annals of Teviotdale; Edin. 1832, folio. Wade's History of St. Mary's Abbey, Melrose, 18G1, Edin.
^^ Boisil, first prior of Melrose, whose name is preserved in the neighboring village of Newtoicn St. BosweWs; Eata, first abbot of Melrose, then bishop of Lindisfarne; and especially the celebrated and popular Cuthbert, of whom more anon.
''' iSee preceding chapter, p. 239. to cross the sea and visit the distant island which was the cradle of their bishops and missionaries — not the monastic isle of lona, but the great island of Ireland, where Columba and most of his disciples were born. Of these young Anglo- Saxons, some, inflamed with the love of study or of penance, at once enrolled themselves in the crowded ranks of those great Irish communities where the monks Avere counted by hundreds and even by thousands; others travelled from monastery to monastery, from cell to cell, seeking the masters who suited them best, and giving themselves up under these masters to the delight of reading— that is to say, of study, without binding themselves by any other obligation. All w^ere received with magnificent hospitality by the Scots of Ireland, who freely lavished on them not only food and clothing but books and instruction.'^ All the students who remained in Ireland, as well as those who returned to England, continued to retain a natural prepossession in favor of the ancient insular rites, and to be imbued with that peculiar spirit which so long characterized the Christianity of the Celtic races.
Thus began, under the most honorable conditions, and motives as pure as they were generous, the first historical relations between England and Ireland— between the two races, Saxon and Celtic, who were destined by an unhappy myster}^ to tear one another in pieces even before religion divided them; one of whom, repaying these early benefits by the blackest ingratitude, has long tarnished the lustre of her glory by the perverse stubbornness of her despotism. The con- While SO many young Northumbrians, as yet NoAhum- scarcely escaped from the darkness of idolatry, bria. were thus rushing towards the very heights of ascetic life, or plunging with passionate enthusiasm into the studious and learned career of which Ireland was the great centre, and the Celtic cloisters the principal home, their sisters found asylums where peace and freedom were guaranteed to those whom the service of God and the vows of Christian virginity drew into them. Thanks to the solicitude of the missionary bishops of the line of Columba, the dignity, authority, and moral power which universal report from Tacitus downward agrees in according to the Germanic woman, assumes in the cloister a new, more durable, and universal form, without, however, lessening the duty and right which
'- See the text of Bede (iii, 27) already quoted, p. 126. she was acknowledged to possess of occasional intervention in the gravest concerns and most solemn deliberations of the commonwealth.
The principal monasteries destined to afford a homo and stronghold to the noble daughters of the conquering Saxons were established on the coast of Northumbria, where already Bamborough and Lindisfarne, the military and the religious capitals of the country, were planted, as if the waves of that sea which their warlike ancestors had crossed, and which flowed direct from the coasts of Germany to beat upon the shores of the conquered island, were to be their safeguard against the dangers of the future. The first of these monasteries was built on the borders of Deira and Bernicia, on a wooded promontory where the deer then found a covert, and which has since become, under the name of Hartlepool, one of the most frequented ports on the coast.'^ It was founded by a Northumbrian, Heia by name, the first woman of her race who embraced conventual life, and who received the veil and religious consecra- AVdanoiyes tion from the hands of Bishop Aidan.^4 xhe life of a community, and especially the functions of superior, soon, however, became fatiguing to Heia, who betook herself to a solitary retreat in the interior of the country. Aidan replaced her by a descendant of Odin and of Ella, a princess of the blood-royal and of the Deirian djmasty. This was Hilda, grand-niece of Edwin, the first Christian king of Northumbria, and father of the queen who shared the throne and the bed of Oswy.
This illustrious lady seemed to be called by her genius and character even more than her rank to exercise a great and legitimate authority over her compatriots. Born in exile, during the sovereignty of Ethelfrid, among the Saxons of the West, where her mother died a violent death, she had returned with her father on the restoration of his race in 617. In her early youth she had been baptized, with her " "Heruteu, id est, insula ccrvi." — Bede, iii. 24. lleri or hart, stag; c?«, isle. We shall take leave throughout to use the modern names of towns and monasteries instead of the Saxon names, which divers erudite modern writers have tried to reintroduce. We shall then say Whitby and not Streanes^halch. Hartlepool and not Heruteu, Hexham and not Ilulgtdstadt.
'* " Qua) prima feminarum fertur in provincia Nordanhymbroruni propositum vestemquc sanctimonialis habitus, consecrante ^dano episcopo, suscepisso." — Bkde, iv. 23. It will be seen farther on whether it is possible to adopt the common opinion which confounds this first Northumbrian nun with St. Bega {St. Bees), the Irish princess, who is mentioned at another place. uncle King Edwin, by the Roman missionary Paulinus, which did not, however, prevent her from leaning during her whole life to the side of the Celtic missionaries. Before consecrating her virginity to God, she had lived thirty-three years very nobly, says Bede, among her family and her fellow-citizens. When she understood that God called her, she desired to make to Him a complete sacrifice, and forsook at once the world, her family, and her country .'^^ She went into East Anglia, the king of which had married her sister, and whence she designed to cross over to France, in order to take the veil either at Chelles, where her widowed sister was one day to devote herself to God,-'^ or in some of the monasteries on the shores of the Marne, which sprang from the great Irish colony of Luxeuil, and whither the Saxon virgins already began to resort."''' She spent a whole year in preparations for her final exile, but she was not permitted to carry it out. Bishop Aldan authoritatively recalled her to her own country, and settled her there, obtaining for her a small estate sufficient to support a single family, and situated on the banks of the Wear, a little river which has now become, like the Tyne, one of the greatest arteries of English shipping.
There she lived as a nun with a very few compan- Hartlepool. ^^^^ ^^"^^'^^ Aldan .summoned her to replace the foundress of the Monastery of Hartlepool, where she was invested with the government of a large community.'^
''* " Desiderans exinde, si quo modo posset, derelicta patria et omnibus quaBCunque habuerat, in Galliam pervenire.... Quo facilius perpetuam in coelis patriam posset mereri." — Bede, iv. 23.
'^ Bede seems to imply that Hereswintha, Queen of East Anglia, was already a nun at Chelles, when Hilda wished to take the veil there; which would be an impossibility, as Hilda became Abbess of Hartlepool before Aldan's death in 651, and her sister could scarcely take the vows before the death of her husband, King Anna, slain in G54. It is then to the close of Hilda's cloister life that Bede's words must apply: " In eodem monasterio soror ipsius Hereswid... regularibus subdita disciplinis ipso tempore coronam exspectabat a'ternam." — Cf. Thomas Eliensis, ap. Wharton, Anglia Sacra, t. i. p. 695. Besides, the Monastery of Chelles, which a vague tradition refers to St. Clotilda, was actually founded by the Saxon Bathilda, and she became Queen of Neustria only on her marriage with Clovis II. in Gi9. Some uncertainty, farther, rests on this I^eriswida. Pagi {Critic, in Baronium ad an. 680) maintains that she became a nun in 647— seven years before her husband's death. Various English historians give her for husband, not Anna, but one of the brothers of that prince, Ethelher or Edric.
" See vol i. p. 614.
''* The original monastery of Hartlepool, destroyed in the ninth century, like all others on the Northumbrian coast, by the Danes, was not restored, but replaced later by a conAent of Franciscans. An ancient church, dedicated to St. Hilda, still exists, near which excavations carried on between
Nine years later, when tbe peace and freedom of Northumbria had been secured by the final victory onvhuby. gained by King Oswy over the Mercians, Hilda took advantage of a gift of land sufficient for ten families, which that prince had granted her, to establish a new monastery at Streaneshalch, now Whitby, a little to the south of her ancient abbey, and on the same coast.
Of all the sites chosen by monastic architects, after that of Monte Cassino I know none grander and more picturesque than that of Whitby. It is even, in certain aspects, still more imposing than the Benedictine capital, as being near the sea. The Esk, which flows through a hilly country, unlike the ordinary levels of England, forms at its mouth a circular bay, commanded on every side by lofty* cliffs. On the summit of one of these rocks, 300 feet above the sea, Hilda placed her monastery, on a platform of green and short seaside turf, the sides of which slope abruptly to the northern ocean. From this spot the eye wanders now over the uplands, valleys, and vast heaths of this part of Yorkshire, now along the rough precipices which line the coast, now on the wide horizon of the sea, whose foaming waves break against the perpendicular sides of the great rocky wall which is crowned by the monastery. The dull roar of the tide accords with the sombre tints of the rocks, which are rent and hollowed out by its force; for it is not here, as on the shores of the channel, where tbe whiteness of the cliffs has gained the name of Albion for the island of Great Britain. The precipices of the Yorkshire coast are, on the contrary, as dark in color as they are abrupt and rugged in outline.'^ Nothing now remains of the Saxon monastery: but more than half of the abbey church, restored by the Percies in the time of the Normans, still stands, and enables the marvelling spectator to form to himself an idea of the solemn grandeur
1833 and 1843 brought to light several Anglo-Saxon tombs, with the emblems and names of women — Hildithryth, Ilildigyth, Canngijtli, Berchigyd, Bregusvid— which seem to have been those of nuns of the Anglo-Saxon community. The last of these names is that of the mother of Hilda, and several of the others are found in the correspondence of St. Boniface with the Saxon nuns. This discovery has given rise to an interesting work, without date or author's name, entitled Notes on the History of St. Begu and St. Hild. Hartlepool.
"" Not so the rocks which border the inner bay formed by the embouchure of the Esk. They are of a brilliant white, and these bright cliffs in the midst of the great black rocks of the coast explain why the Danes, after having destroyed the monastery of Hilda, gave the name of Whitby ( Whitcby, white dwelling) to the establishment they created there.
262 TPIE CELTIC MONKS
of the great edifice. The choir and the north transept are still complete, and offer one of the most beautiful models of English architecture. The two facades of the east and north each with three rows of three-pointed windows, are of unrivalled elegance and purity. The beautiful color of the stone, half worn away by the sea-winds, adds to the charm of these ruins. A more picturesque effect could not be imagined than that of the distant horizon of the azure sea, viewed through the great hollow eyes of the ruinous arches. These majestic relics are now preserved with the respect habitually shown by the English to the monuments of the past; but they cannot always withstand the destroying action of time and the elements. The great central tower fell in 1830. Let the intelligent traveller lose no time, therefore, in visiting one of the oldest and most beautifully situated ruins in Europe, and let him there accord a prayer, or at least a remembrance, to the noble daughter of the Northumbrian kings, who of old erected on this desert rock a pharos of light and peace for the souls of men, by the side of the lighthouse designed to guide the mariners on that stormy sea! ^^
The original name, Streaneshalch, signified The Isle of the Beacon, and it was probably by this service conferred on the people of the coast that Hilda inaugurated her reign on this promontory, for it was a true reign, temporal as well as
Herroi<rii
Spiritual. At Whitby, as at Hartlepool, and during ofthufy the thirty years that she passed at the head of years.
j^^^ ^^^^ houses, she displa3'ed a rare capacity for the government of souls, and for the consolidation of monastic institutions. This special aptitude, joined to her love of monastic regularity, and her zeal for knowledge and ecclesiastical discipline, gave her an important part to play, and great influence. Her society was sought by Bishop A'idan, and all the religious who knew her, that they might learn those secrets of divine love and natural wisdom which dwelt
®° The principal details of this monastic church, which is of the beautiful order known as the Early English, are perfectly rendered in the magnificent folio published by Edmund Sharpe, an architect, and entitled Aj-ckiteciural Parallels selected from Abbey Ohurches, London, 1848, 121 plates. It was 300 feet long by 70 broad. It is marked by one curious peculiarity; it describes a curve, slightly bending towards the south, so that the door in the western facade is not in an exact line with the central window of the choir. These ruins are now part of a farm belonging to Sir Richard Cholmondeley. The town of Whitby, situated at the foot of these ruins, on the Esk, is a very flourishing seaport, and much frequented by bathers. in her. The kings even, and princes of her blood, or of the adjacent provinces, often came to consult her, asking enlightenment which they afterwards joyfully acknowledged themselves to have received. But she did not reserve for the great ones of the earth the treasuresof her judgment and charity. She scattered around her everywhere the benefits of justice, piety, peace, and temperance. She was ere longregarded and honored as the mother of her country, and all who addressed her gave her the sweet name of mother, which she so well deserved. Not only in Northumbria, but in distant regions, to which the fame of her virtue and enlightenment had penetrated, she was to many the instrument of their salvation and conversion.^i And in her two communities especially she secured, during a rule of more than thirty years, the supremacy of order, union, charity, and equality, so much, that it became usual to say to the proud Northumbrians, that the image of the primitive Church, wherein was neither rich nor poor, and where all was common among the Christians, was realized at Whitby.