Propagation of Christianity by the Kings and Monks of Northumbria. — Final Triumph of Northumbria Under Oswy

Influence of the three Northumbrian Bretwaldas and their Celtic clergy on the other kingdoms of the Heptarchy.

1. East Anglia. — Vicissitudes of Christianity. — The king, converted by Edwin, is assassinated. — His brother, exiled in France, returns a convert with the missionary bishop, Felix. — The king and the bishop evangelize East Anglia. — Supposed origin of Cambridge. — The Irish monk, Fursy, assists in their work. — The visions which make him a forerunner of Dante. — King Sigebert becomes a monk; he issues from his cloister to fight, armed with a staff, against Penda; and dies on the field of battle. —A king-monk among the Cambrians perishes in the same way fighting against the Saxons. — Anna, the successor of Sigebert, is, like him, killed by Penda.

2. ^Yessex. — Christianity is brought hither by King Oswald and the Italian bishop, Birinus. — Oswald, son-in-law and godfather of the King of the West Saxons. — Popular verses about Birinus. — The son of the first Christian king, who had continued a heathen, and had been dethroned by Penda, is converted during exile; re-established in Wessex, he summons thither as bishop a Frank who had been educated among the Celts, but afterwards desires a bishop acquainted with Anglo-Saxon. — Foundation

irridere vitam conversationis eorum, quasi merito talia paterentur, qui communia mortalia jura spernentes, nova et ignota darent statuta vivendi.... Rustico et animo et ore stomachantes.... Nullus, inquiunt, hominum pro eis roget, nullus eorum misereatur Deus, et qui veteres culturas hominibus tulere, et nova; qualitcr observari debeant nemo novit." — Bede, Vita S. Cuthberii, c. 3. This anecdote refers to the time when Cuthbert, though he had reached the age of adolescence, was not yet a monk. He became a monk at fifteen. He was born in 637. It was, therefore, about 650 or 651, and exactly at the time of the great Northumbrian foundations at Hartlepool, &c.

'" "Milites Christi." — BoLLAND., t. ii. Jan., p. 236. of Malmesbury and of Winchester. — An English abbot at Glastonbury. — The Anglo-Saxons begin to occupy the episcopal sees. —A West Saxon becomes the first English Archbishop of Canterbury. — Ercombert, King of Kent, destroys the idols.

3. Essex. — King Oswy converts his friend Sigebert, King of Essex, baptized by Finan in the villa of the Northumbrian king. — A monk of Lindisfarne becomes Bishop of London. — The first Christian king of Essex killed by his cousin, because he is too ready to forgive. — The first bishop dies of the plague, and thirty of his friends go to die on his tomb. — Eelapse of the East Saxons into idolatry. — A new king and a new bishop, educated by the Celts, bring them back to the faith.

4. Mercia. — Influence of the King of Northumbria and of the Bishop of Lindisfarne on the conversion of the Mercians. — The son of King Oswy, married to a daughter of the King of Mercia, converts the brother of his •wife, and marries him to his sister. — The Celtic missionaries in Mercia. Unexpected tolerance of the ferocious Penda towards his son and his converted subjects. But he continues his devastations in Northumbria. Last conflict between him and Oswy. — Battle of Winwaiid. — Defeat and death of Penda, the last hero of Saxon Paganism. — Oswy offers his daughter to God in acknowledgment of the victory, and founds twelve monasteries.— Final triumphs of the Northumbrians and of Christianity. Conquest and conversion of Mercia. — Its first five bishops issue from Celtic cloisters. — Opposition of the monks of Bardeney to the worship of St. Oswald. — The Mercians, revolting against the Northumbrians, nevertheless remain Christians.

Summary. — Of eight Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, one only is exclusively converted by the Roman missionaries; four are converted by the Celtic monks alone; and two by the combined action of the CeUs and of bishops sent from Rome. — Sussex alone remains to be won, where a Celtic colony resides without influence.

From the cloisters of Lindisfarne, and the heart of those districts in which the popularity of ascetic pontifFs such as Aidan, and martyr kings such as Oswald and Oswin, took day by day a deeper root, Northumbrian Christianity spread over the southern kingdoms. Whether this gradual invasion is to be attrib- H-'Pr'

,i,,i ,'--'.. n f.11 aoms ⁰¹ the uted to the preponderating influence of the last three Bretwaldas, all Christians and Northumbrians, or simply to the expansive force of Celtic missionary labor, can never be discriminated. But what is distinctly visible is the influence of Celtic priests and missionaries everywhere replacing or seconding the Roman missionaries, and reaching districts which their predecessors had never been able to enter. The stream of the divine word thus extended itself from north VOL n. 24 to south, and its slow but certain course reached in succession all the peoples of the Heptarchy. Life and light infused themselves through all, and everywhere, along with the immaculate sacrifice, the hymns of a people freed from the yoke of idolatry rose towards the living God.

Let us state rapidly the progress of the pacific invasion made by the Celtic monks, trained in the school of the great Columba, into the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms south of the Humber.112

I.

CONVERSION OF EAST ANGLIA.

vicissi- We have seen how Edwin, the first Christian

Bretwalda of Northumbria, employed his influence over the country where he had spent his exile to convert the king of East Anglia. Unfortunately this first conversion had not been more durable than that of Northumbria itself under Edwin. Eorpwald, the Christian king, had been assassinated soon after his conversion ,ii'^ and this important kingdom, which comprehended so large a part of eastern England, fell back into idolatry. The singular law which made exile the cradle of the faith and the apprenticeship of royalty to so many Anglo-Saxon princes, appears among the Angles of the East as well as among those of the North. Sigebert, the brother of the murdered king, exiled in France from his youth, was there baptized, and there too had come to admire and understand monas- Recalled to reign over his own country, he brought thither with him at once the true faith and the life of the cloister. He was accompanied by a Burgundian bishop of the name of Felix, who placed himself under the jurisdiction of Honorius, Archbishop of Canterbury, and was by him appointed missionary bishop of the East Angles.ii^ For seventeen years this foreign bishop

"^ In order to a full understanding of this chapter, the maps must be consulted.

"^ In preference to the chronology of Bede's annotators, I follow, as far as regards East Anglia, that of the" Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which is also adopted by the Bollandists in the Life of St. Eelix (vol. i. Mart., p. 780).

"* The seat of this bishopric was first established at Dunwich, then, that town having been ingulfed by the sea, was transferred successively to Elmham, to Thetford, and finally to Norwich, where it still exists. diligently sowed the seed of eternal life in his new diocese.i^^ As in Northumbria, the king and the bishop labored in concert to extend religion and also Christian instruction, for they founded several schools for the literary education of the young English, in imitation of those that Sigebert had seen in France, and which Felix provided with masters obtained from the great monastic school of Canterbury .^i*^ The origiuof origin of the celebrated University of Cambridge has ve?-sity of been attributed by many to these monastic schools. Cambridge.

But they were not content to imitate Northumbria at a distance; they entered into close relations with the new Celtic mission of that kingdom. The holy bishop Aidan became the object of the respectful emulation of the Burgundian Felix, who, like him, had come from across the seas to evangelize the English, and who was encouraged in his respect for the Celtic abbot by the example of the Archbishop Honorius himself, notwithstanding Aldan's obstinate attachment to Celtic custom in respect to the celebration of Easter as opposed to the Roman usage, of which the metropolitan church of Canterbury was the natural guardian in England.^i''

Ere long a Celtic missionary appeared to assist in the joint work of the king and the bishop. This was an Irish monk, named Furs}^, of very noble birth, and celebrated from his youth in his own country for his knowledge and his visions. It would be pleasant to follow the example of Bede, to pause in the tale, and leave the vicissitudes of missionary history in England, to repose ourselves for a little amidst the wonderful revelations of this famed precursor of Dante. Bede had his account of these visions from an old East Anglian monk of his community, as pious as he was truthful, who had heard the Irish saint himself recount his visions. Their character was such that this wonderful man, though but scarcely covered by a thin garment during the rude winters of that English coast, frozen by the east winds, was covered with perspiration at 115 " Totam illam provinciam juxta sui nominis sacratnentum, a longa iniquitate atque infelicitate liberatani, ad fidem et opera justitia3 ac perpetuae felicitatis dona perduxit." — Bede, iii. 15.

'"' " Ea quaj in Gallia bene disposita vidit imitari cupicns.... Pajdagogos ac magistros juxta moreni Cantuariorum." — Bede, iii. 18. Cf. WiL- HEL. Malmesb.; Flouent. Wigoun; IIenkic. Huntingd.; Bolland., t. ii. Mart., p. 781.

"^ " IIa>c dissonantia pasclialis obscrvantiae, vivente iBdano, patientcr ab omnibus tolerebatur.... Ab omnibus etiam qui de pascba aliter sentiebant, merito diligebatur... ab ipsis quoque episcopis Honorio Cantuariorum et Felice Orientalium Anglorum venerationi habitus est." — Bede, iii. 25. the bare recollection of the moving and frightful trances which his spirit had passed through.^i^

In the chief of these visions, which Ampere and Ozanam agree in regarding as one of the poetic sources of the Divina Commedia, the Irish monk was permitted to contemplate the chastisements reserved for the most abominable sins of his times. " Look," said an angel to him— " look on these four fires that consume the world: the fire of falsehood, for those who renounce the promises of their baptism; the fire of avarice, for those who prefer this world's riches to the love of Heaven; the fire of discord, for those who fear not to injure souls for trifling cause; the fire of impiety, for those who scruple not to spoil and defraud the lowly and the feeble." ^^^

This Irish monk came into East Anglia, as he had gone to other countries, to serve God in preaching the Gospel; but one of his visions determined him to remain here longer than was usual to him. The eloquence of his words and the example of his virtues contributed much to the conversion of the heathen, and the confirmation of the Christians in their new faith.i'^*^ King Sigebert received him with great respect, and gave him a large estate surrounded with wood and near the sea, where he might found a monastery. The buildings and wealth of this foundation were afterwards much augmented by the kings and nobles of East Anglia.^^^ At a later period, King iSigebert, who was not only a great Christian and a great philosopher for his time, but also a great warrior, harassed with the contests and troubles of his earthly royalty, resolved to occupy himself no longer with any occupation save the things of the kingdom of heaven, nor to fight except for the King Eternal.i-^ Accord-

"** " De nobilissimo gcnei-e Scotorum.... Superest adliuc frater senior monasterii nostri qui narrare solet.... Adjiciam quia tenipus hiemis erat acerrimum et glacie constrictum, cum sedens in tenui veste vir, ita inter dicendum propter multitudinera memorati timoris vel suavitatis, quasi ut media aestatis caumate sudaverat."

"' " Hi sunt quatuor ignes qui mundum succendunt.... Tertius dissentionis, cum aniraos proximorum etiara in supervacuis rebus offendere non formiJant. Quartus impietatis, cum infirniiores exspoliare et eis fraudem facere pronihilo ducunt." — ^Ici!. SS. 0. S. B., t. iii. p. 289.

120 li Cupiens pro Domino, ubicumque sibi opportunum inveniret peregrinam ducere vitani. Angelica visione admonitus coepto verbi ministerio sedulus insistere." — Bede, iii. 19.

'^' At Burghcastle, in the present countj^ of Suffolk.

122 (I Yiy. pgj. omnia christianissimus atque doctissimus.... Tantumque rex ille coelestis regni amator factus est, ut ad ultimuni relictis regni negotiis... atque aecepta tonsura pro reterno rego militare curaret." — Bede, ii. 16; iii. 18. ingly lie received the tonsure, and entered as a

Celtic friend, the Irish Fursy.^^s He thus set the first example, among the Anglo-Saxons, of a king abandoning secular life and sovereignty to enter the cloister; and, as we shall see, his example was not fruitless.

But he was not permitted to die as he hoped in the cloister. The terrible Penda, that scourge of the Saxon confederation, and unwearied leader of the heathen, hated his Christian neighbors in the east as well as those of the north. At the head of his numerous Mercians, reinforced by the implacable British, he invaded and ravaged East Anglia with as much fury and success as had attended him in Northumbria. The East Angles, terrified and very inferior in numbers, recollecting the exploits of their old king, sought Sigebert in his cell to place him at the head of their army, his valor and warlike experience being well-known to the soldiers. It was in vain to resist; he could not but yield to the solicitations of his former subjects; but that he might remain faithful to his recent vows he armed himself only with a staflP. not with a sword.. His devotion was useless; all that he could do was to die for his faith ^fStr7. and his country. It was thus, with his staff in his hand, that the king-monk perished at the head of his troops under the sword of the enemy.^^i

We may appropriately recall here an incident altogether analogous to this Saxon king's self-sacrifice, the hero of which was a British king fighting TM,fi"rTc"°'^ against the Saxons. Both had become monks, and bJjttie"but were forced in their own despite to leave the clois- agains'ttue ter and die on the battle-field. Both are too closely connected with our subject to be passed over in silence.

Thirty years before the sacrifice of the king of East Anglia — about the year 610 — Teudric, a valiant Welsh king, conqueror in all the battles waged during his reign, abdicated the throne in order to prepare by a period of penitence for

¹²³ u g_ Turseo dcdit locum ad construondum nionasterium, in quo ct ipse post modum relicto regno monaclius factus est." Gervas. Dokob., Act. Pont. Cantiiar., p. 163G. But Bedo says that he entered a monastery quod sibi fecerai, and which is supposed to have been that which has since been known by the name of St. Edmundsbury. — Cf. Liber Eliensis, p. li, ed. 1848.

'^* " Sperantes minus animos militum trepidare, prsBscnte duce quondam strenuissino et eximio, scd ipse professionis suaj non immemor." Beue, I. c. death. He concealed himself in an islet formed by the picturesque course of the Wye, in the wild and solitary spot to which the more recent ruins of the Cistercian abbey of Tintern have attracted crowds of sight-seers. But in the reign of his son, the Saxons of Wessex, under King Ceolwulf, crossed the Severn, which had formed their boundary for more than a centur}^, and ravaged the country as far as the Wye. At his people's cry of distress the generous old man left the solitude where he had lived for ten years, and once more led the Christians of Wales to battle with the Pagan Saxons. He awaited the latter at the ford by which they meant to cross the river which bathed the banks of his soli-

tude. A brilliant-^ victory was the reward of his generous

devotion. At the mere sight of the old king, armed at all points and mounted on his war-horse, a panic spread among the Saxons, long accustomed to fly before him; but in the flight one of them turned back and gave him a mortal blow. He perished thus in the arms of victory, his skull split open by a Saxon sword. A thousand years afterwards his heroic remains and venerated relics were identified by means of this shattered skull in the stone coffin wherein his faithful followers had buried him, at the confluence of the Severn and the Wye, six miles distant from the battle-field on which he gave up his life for the safety of his country .^^^ KinfjAnna, Anna, Sigebcrt's successor, sprung like him from slgebeX"^ the race of Ufiti, who founded the East Anglian kingdom, had a longer and less stormy reign. Like Sigobcrt, he was the zealous helper of Felix and Pursy, the Burgundian bishop and the Celtic monk, in the work of converting his kingdom. Like him, he founded numerous monasteries, and like him had the honor to die fighting for his people, invaded and decimated by the hateful Penda. Though he did not become a monk like Sigebert, he left a numerous offspring destined to adopt the life of the and thus to expiate the guilty weakness of his brother, who succeeded him, and who, although himself a Christian, became the aUy of the heathen Penda in his attacks upon the Christians of Northumbria.^^s

^12* F. Godwin, De Prcesulihus AnglicE, p. 593, ap. Lingakd, vol. i. p. 153; Lappenberg, p. 5i; Liber Landaveiisis, pp. 133, 134:; La Borderie, op. cit., p. 54, who refers this occurrence to the year 575, while Lappenberg fixes it, after an Anglo-Saxon chronicler, on the 3d January, 610.

'^•' Fursy, after having founded in East Anglia various double communities of monks and nuns according to the Celtic usage {De Virtutibus S. Fursei, ap. Mabillon, Act. SS. 0. S. B., vol. ii. p. 296), quitted the ceno-

II.

CONVERSION OF WESSEX.

What Edwin had been to the Angles of the East, his saintly and generous successor, Oswald, was to the Saxons of the West, who under Cerdic, one of those bloodthirsty and warlike chiefs who were said to descend in a direct line from the great god Odin, had founded the most western colony of the Saxon immigration, a colony which had become a kingdom of much vaster extent than the kingdoms of the eastern or southern Saxons, or that of the Jutes of Kent. This realm, which extended from the Thames to the Severn, condemned by its position to endless struggles with the Britons of Wales and of Cornwall— a race always thrilling with patriotic hatred of the invader, and destined in the future to absorb the seven other kingdoms of the Heptarchy 1^7— was governed in the time of Oswald by two brothers, Cuichelm, from whose attempt at assassination Edwin had barely escaped, and Cynegils, the father of a princess whom Oswald had asked in marriage. When Oswald came in person for his bride, he met at the residence of the King of Wessex a missionary called Birinus-i^*^ This bishop— who was perhaps not a monk, and whose origin is unknown — had acquired the Saxon language at Genoa, a port much frequented by the Anglo-Saxons, where the bishop of the place had consecrated him. He had been commissioned by Pope Honorius I. to continue the work of the conversion of the Saxons, and had promised in return that he would sow the seed of life even beyond the territory of the Angles, where no preacher had yet penetrated. But landing on the coast of \Wessex,i-'^ he found the population

bitic life in order to become an anchorite. Then seeing East Anglia more and more ravaged by the incursions of the heathens of Mercia, he decreed the dissolution of his communities and departed to France, where he was well received at the court of Clovis 11., that great protector of the Irish nionlis. He there founded the Monastery of Lagny, and died in G50. We have already spoken of him among the successors of St. Columbanus in France, and we shall find his brother and his disciples among the Irish missionaries in Belgium.

'" " Britannos antiquaj libertatis conscientia frementes, ct ob hoc crcbram rebellionem meditantes." — Wiliielm. Malmesb., i. 2.

128 "An fuerit monachus non constat." — Mabillon, In SS. IT. Scbc. PrcBtermissis. Cf. Suuius, De Probaiis Sanctorum Viiis, t. vi. p. 771.

'*' In the existing counties of Dorset or Hants.

28-1: THE CELTIC MONKS

there, which no doubt he supposed to be already Christianized, still plunged into the darkness of utter Paganism, and devoted himself to their conversion, believing this to be the best way of keeping his promise.^^*^

The influence of the pious and zealous Oswald came most fortunately to aid the missionary's arguments: and when King Cynegils consented with all his people to be baptized, his son-in-law became his godfather.i'^i The baptism was performed at Dorchester, which was erected into a bishopric for Birinus by the twofold authority of Cynegils, as provincial king, and of Oswald, as Bretwalda or supreme head of the Saxon confederation.i-^

The success of the mission of Birinus was rapid and complete. He founded many churches and converted multitudes. Many years after the close of his long and fruitful pontificate, popular songs intended for choral singing still celebrated the memory of the Roman exile^^ who had come to emancipate the Saxons of the West from bondage to their idols, and blessed the day which had seen him land on their coasts.

¹³⁰ '^Promittens se illo (Papa) prsesente in intimis ultra Anglorum partibus quo nullus doctor praecessisset, sanctae fidei semina esse sparsurum.... Sed Gewissorum genteni ingrediens, cum omnes ibidem paganissimos inreniret." — Bede, iii. 7.

"1 '' Cum rex ipse catechizatus, fonte baptismi cum sua gente ablueretur contigit... pulcherrimo prorsus et Deo (figno consortio. cujus erat filiam aceepturus in conjugem, ipsum prius secunda generatione Deo dicatum sibi accepit in filium." — Bede, iii. 7.

'^^ Not the existing county town of Dorsetshire, but a place near Oxford, on the Thames. The episcopal see was, later, transferred to Lincoln. The Saxons of Wessex had two other celebrated bishoprics — Winchester, the cathedral of which Birinus is understood to have founded; and Sherborne, afterwards transferred to Salisbury. The clergy of all these cathedrals were monks. ^ " Dignus honore pater micat aureus ecce BiEi2«rs

Sanctus adest omni dignus honore pater.
ExvX ad. hunc populum qui renit ab urbe Qoiritum;
Pro Chriito pergens, exul ad hunc populum, . . .

Hostica harharies omnis sedatur in illo;

Deque lupo fit ovis hostica larlaries. . . .
Liher adest populus, sub longo tempore serrus ;
Isunc Chvisto {a.mnl3iBS, liber adest populus. . . .

Sit henedicta dies in qua maris alta petisti;

Hue quae te duxit, sit lenedicta dies."

This popular song has been published from a MS. of Alenqon by M. Edelstand du Meril {Poesies Inedites du Moyen Age; Paris, 1854, p. 277). The learned editor marks the systematic repetition of the first hemistich as a kind of refrain meant for a choir of singers. The same MS. contains poems in which he notes the same kind of rhythm, in honor of two other monastic apostles of the Anglo-Saxons — St. Ethelwald and St. Swithin.

The assassin Cuichelm himself was touched, and received baptism on his death-bed, with his son. But the son of Cynegils, Cenwalch, refused to renounce the reh'gion of his ancestors; and when he succeeded to the throne, it might have been supposed that the work of Oswald and Birinus would be overturned bj one of those pagan reactions which had already thrown back into idolatry the subjects of the first Christian king of Kent, as well as the Saxons and Angles of the East. But it does not appear that the new king originated any persecution, or indeed any change whatever; and, singular to say, it was the ferocious heathen Penda who was the instrument of Divine mercy in bringing the young unbeliever to the truth which he had refused to receive at his father's conversion. The terrible King of Mercia, whose sister Cenwalch had refused, avenged that injury by declaring war against him. The new converts of Wessex were no more able than those of Xorthumbria or East Anglia to resist the savage energy of the Mercian pagans; Cenwalch was defeated, dethroned, and exiled. But for him, as for Oswald and Oswy, exile was the cradle of the faith. He sought refuge with the pious King Anna, and in that family of saints ^^^ he learned to know and to love the faith of Christ. When he was reinstated in his kingdom, he and his people held to their new religion with inviolable fidelity, and during his reign of thirty years he lent active and intelligent assistance in the extension of the Christian faith and of the monastic order. On the death of Birinus, who, notwithstanding his quality of missionary and bishop sent from Rome, has left no trace of his relations with the Roman colony of Canterbury, the Celtic element reappeared among the Saxons of the West, in the person of a Frank, named Agilbert, who had long studied in the Irish monasteries,!-^^ from which he had newly arrived when he offered himself to King Cenwalch to carry on the work of the deceased bishop. In this he acquitted himself so well that the king, delighted with his learning and activity, induced him to agree to become the bishop of the cenwaich kingdom. But at the end of ten years, the same ^J*^^**'' king, who understood nothing but Saxon, grew tired bishop who

'^ '' Nam et ipse apud quem exulabat rex erat vir bonus, et bona etsancta Bobole felix." — Bede, 1. c.

J3i a Venit de Hibernia pontifex quidam, nomine Agilbertus, natione quidem Gallus, sed tunc legendarum gratia Scripturarum in Hibernia non parvo tempore demoratus." — Ibid. in that Celtic tongue which he considered barbarous. He does not, however, seem to have been animated by any systematic hostility against the British Celts, who formed a numerous class amongst his subjects; for while he fulfilled a promise made at his fether's death-bed, and founded for his Saxons at Winchester the great monastery which has become one of the most important monuments of English architecture,^^^ he at the same time protected and favored the national sanctuary of the Celts at Glastonbury. A deed of gift exists in which he engages the monks of that British sanctuary to pray for the Saxon king beside the tomb of Arthur. In his reign, it is true, a Saxon for the first time became abbot of the great Celtic monastery; i^' but, on the other hand, it was also under him that the Celt Maidulphe, a professed monk, and at the same time a distinguished philosopher,!^^ came from Ireland or Scotland to lay the humble foundations of an abbey which preserves a trace of his name in the later splendors of Malmesbury.

Nevertheless King Cenwalch wanted a bishop who spoke Saxon,!"^^ and found him in the person of a certain Vini, who had been ordained in France; and for whom he constituted a new bishopric in connection with his recent monastic establishment of Winchester. Agilbert, however, instead of congratulating himself, as he ought to have done, on seeing the fer too extensive field of his labors diminished, to the great profit of his flock, by the arrival of this fellow-workman native to the soil, was so irritated that he threw up his episcopate and returned to France, where he became Bishop of Paris. The Ant'i "^^^^ need of and wish for native bishops increased however, more and more among the Anglo-Saxons fbtak/^tlre The first who was invested with the episcopal dig- Beer'*^''' nity was Ithamar, a native of Kent, who was sum moned to succeed the aged Paulinus in the see of Rochester, where the latter had found an honorable retreat after his flight from Northumbria. It was the Archbishop Honorius of Canterbury, himself a Roman monk, like his four predecessors, who chose Ithamar, ac- "'' DuGDALE, Monasticon Anglicanum, t. i. p. 31.

'" Ibid., p. 12.

¹³⁸ "Natione Scotus, eruditione philosophus, professione monachus." —WiLH. Malmesb., i. 2.

"9 "Rex qui Saxonum tantum linguam noverat, pertaesus barbara; loquelffi, subintroduxit in provinciam alium suae linguae episcopum." — Bede, 1. c. knowledging him to be a man fully capable of rivalling both in knowledge and virtue the Roman bishops who had hitherto occupied the two Kentish bishoprics.^**^

The small kingdom of Kent, which owed its importance, and perhaps the maintenance of its independence, to the possession of the metropolis of Canterbury, was at this time governed by Ercombert, grandson of the first Christian king, who showed himself even more zealous than his grandsire for the new religion. He enforced the observance of Lent by severe penalties, and gave orders for a general destruction of the idols and heathen temples which had been spared for the previous fifty years, notwithstanding the conversion to Christianity of the great majority of the inhabitants. 1^1 It was in his reign that, on the death of the archbishop, the last survivor of Augustin's Italian mission, the rank of metropolitan was, after two years' hesitation and delay, conferred, for the first time, on an Anglo-Saxon. The newly converted realm of Wessex had the honor of furnishing to England her first native primate. This fifth successor of Augustin Avas named Frithona, but thought fit to change that Archbishop Teutonic name for the purely Roman one of Deusdedit. He was consecrated by the English Ithamar, and did not hesitate to remain in friendly relations, or rather to resume intercourse, with the Celtic bishops, who up to this time had scarcely recognized the supremacy of the Church of Canterbury."^

HI.

CONVERSION OF THE SAXONS OF THE EAST. Whatever may have been the influence of the Action of saintly King Oswald on the conversion of the West ^^u on the Saxons, it was assuredly less direct and less effect- kinV<iom of ual than that of his brother and successor Oswy ^'^*'''^ upon the Saxons of the East and the midland Angles. It must, indeed, be acknowledged that, of all the Northumbrian

140 (( Y)c gente Cantuariorum, seel vita et eruditione antecessoribus suis sequanduni." — Bede, iii. 14.

"' " Cum avus et pater sitra destructionem idolorura fidcni nostrara coluissent." — Will. Malmesb., De Gesi. Reg. Angl., 1. i. c. 1.

"* Hook, op. cit., p. 131. kings, it is Oswj, stained as he was with the innocent blood of King Oswin, who did most for the extension and defence of Christianity in England.

Sigebert, named the Good— king of those West fonfertV^ Saxons whom we recently saw driving Mellitus Kinjsrgl f^'O"^ ^^^^ bishopric of London, and renouncing the bert? " faith which had been urged on them by the preachings of that companion of Augustin, and the influence of the Bretwalda Ethelbert — was Oswy's special friend. Sigebert the Good had dethroned the posterity of those three princes who demanded the communion from the hands of the Christian bishop without having been baptized.^*^ He frequently came into Northumbria to visit Oswy as a friend, but doubtless also as the Bretwalda, the sovereign of the confederation, who alone was able to protect the petty kingdom of Essex against its much more pov/erful neighbors of Wessex and Mercia. Oswy, on those occasions, spoke much to him on the subject of idolatry; he took pains to make him understand that gods could not be made by the hand of man of stone or wood, the rest of which might be put to the vilest uses; but that rather flir he should believe in a God incomprehensible and invisible, but all-powerful and eternal, able to govern the world which He has created, and which He will judge, whose throne is in heaven, and not made of worthless metal, and who promises everlasting rewards to such as learn His will and do it on earth. Sigebert suffered himself to be won over by these brotherly and repeated exhortations. After long deliberation with his faithful counsellors, according to the invariable custom of the Saxon kings, and fortified by their unanimous assent, he received baptism, along with his whole court,i** at the hands of the Celtic bishop Finan, in a royal villa of the Northumbrian kings, called Ad Murum (on the wall), from its proximity to the famous rampart built by the Emperor Severus to restrain the incursions of the Caledonians.^*-^

'"^ See above, p. 197. Compare Lappenberg, Genealogical Table B. of vol. i.

144 <'j"i(jeni quam olim... abjecerant... instantia regis Oswin receperunt... frequenter solebat eum hortari... haec et hujus modi multa cum rex Oswin regi Sigeberto amicabili et quasi fraterno consilio saepe inculcaret; tandem juvante amicoruin consensu credidit, et facto cum suis consilio cum exbortatione, faventibus cunctis et adnuentibus fidei baptizatus est." — Bede, iii. 22.

"^ Ad Murum. This spot is believed to have been at Walton, or rather at Wallbottle, near Newcastle.

The new Christian was unwilling to return to his ^ ^^.. kingdom without being accompanied by missiona- uwUMarne ries commissioned to preach to his people the faith {'j'ishop of which he had just embraced. For these instructors ^^"j'"^""- he applied, naturall}', to his friend and brother the king, whom be regarded as the author of his own conversion. Oswy gave him a monk of the great Celtic Monastery of Lindisfarne, named Cedd, a Northumbrian by birth, who had already distinguished himself in a mission to the pagans of Mercia.^"^^ Cedd accordingly went over the whole kingdom of Sigebert, and gathered in a first and ample harvest of souls; after which he returned to Lindisfarne, to be there consecrated bishop of the West Saxons,, whose capital and episcopal see, formerly occupied by the Roman monk Mellitus, was at London. The monk of Lindisfarne succeeded where the monk of Mount Coelius had failed. He ordained numerous priests and deacons to assist him in preaching and baptizing, and founded many churches and monasteries, in which he endeavored to induce the best of his converts to adopt the life of the cloister, as far at least as the rudeness of their habits would permit.i*^ pje himself made continued journeys to Lindisfarne, in his native Northumbria, to renew his spirit, and to draw from the stern penances and bracing traditions of his order the energy he needed to cope with the difficulties of his task.i^^

The end of King Sigebert the Good shows, with sufficient plainness, the nature of those difficulties, and the combination of firmness and sagacity which was required to overcome them. One of the earls, or principal lords of the country, a near kinsman of the king, having persevered in an illicit connection in spite of the repeated representations of the bishop, Cedd excommunicated him, forbidding any one to enter his house or to eat with him. The king took no notice of this prohibition, and at the invitation of the earl went to dine with him. As he left the house he met the bishop.

>'6 Bede. iii. 21. Compare Act. SS. Bolland., t. i. Jan., p. 373. '" " In quibus collecto examine famulorum Christi, disciplinam vitae rcgularis, in quantum rudes adhuc capore poterant, custodire docuit." —Bede, iii. 23.

^*^ " Solebat... saepius etiam suam, id est Northanhymborum, provinciam cxhortandi gratia, revisere." — Bede, iii. 23. It was in one of these journeys that he was detained by the son of King Oswald, who reigned over a part of De'ira, and who had at his court as priest a brother of Cedd. This prince, Ethelwald by name, persuaded Cedd to accept an estate from him, in order to found a monastery, which might serve as the place of his burial —the Monastery of Lastingham, of which we have spoken above, p. 273.

Both were on horseback, and dismounted to greet each other. The king, affrighted, threw himself at the feet of the bishop, imploring pardon for his fault. The bishop, irritated, touched him with the staff which he carried in his hand, and said to him, " Since you have not chosen to abstain from entering ^^® house of that reprobate, there you shall die." ^"^^ And, in fact, some time after, the same earl and his brother slew the king, whose kinsmen they were. When they were asked the reason of their crime, they assigned no other than the anger they felt at seeing the chief of their race pardon his enemies so readily — granting pardon as soon as it was asked, according to the precept of the Gospel. And certainly, adds honest Bede, we may believe that such a death sufficed, not only to expiate his disobedience to the bishop, but also to increase his merits in the sight of God.

"^^^^ zealous prelate, whom we shall meet again farther on, survived his royal convert, whom he had SO Severely judged, and baptized Sigebert's succes- *'''^" sor. Afterwards, in one of his too frequent excursions to Northumbria, Cedd was seized with a contagious malady, and died at the Monastery of Lastingham, which he had founded, and of which one of his three brothers, like himself all priests and monks of Lindisfarne, was abbot. When the news of his death reached his diocese, thirty East Saxons, whom he had made monks, started in all haste for the north. They sought the monastery where lay the body of their father and founder, with the intention of living there near his remains, or dying and finding their last repose beside him, if such were the will of God. Their desire was quickly granted. At the end of a few days they all died of

the same disease that had cut short the bishop's life.^^*^ How

is it possible but to esteem, in spite of his severity, a bishop capable of inspiring such a rare affection? And how, also, is it possible not to love those rough Saxons, scarce converted, but moved even in the cloister by that passionate self-devotion, by that necessity of giving hfe for the beloved which, in the midst of their natural fierceness, continued the distinctive feature of the Anglo-Saxon race?

H9 " Episcopus pariter desiluit: sederat enini et ipse in equo.... Dico tibi quia noluisti te continere a domo perditi et daninati illius, tu in ipsa donio mori iiabes." — Bede, iii. 22.

¹³⁰ "Cupientes ad corpus sui patris, aut vivere, si sic Deo placeret, aut moricntes ibi sepeliri." — Bede, iii. 23.

Saxons into Yet, notwithstanding, these same Saxons, so easily gained and attached by the light and the virtue of the Gospel, often fell back with a lamentable and surprising facility into the depths of Paganism. Bishop Cedd and his thirty friends were scarcel}^ dead when the people whose apostle and master he had been, apostatized almost in a body. The same disease which had taken from them their bishop, so terrified the East Saxons by its ravages that the king, nobles, and people rivalled each other in their eagerness to restore the temples and altars of offended Woden, hoping thus to ward off the contagion from themselves. Happily ^^ another king, named Sebbi, uncle and colleague of the apostate, stood firm, and succeeded in bringing back the whole nation to Christianity, with the aid of the Bishop of the Mercians, a Saxon by birth, but, like so many other pontiffs and missionaries, trained by the Celtic monks of lona and Lindisfarne.151 The narratives of Bede, which serve to guide us across the maze of the races and dynasties of the Heptarchy, were taken by him from the lips of a priest who had accompanied this very active and zealous bishop in his unwearied journeys throughout ail the corners of the kingdom of Essex, to preach the faith and raise up again the altars of Christ. According to his testimony, the inhabitants were turned back to idolatry less by hostility against Christianity than by indifference as to the future life, of which many denied the very existence. But as soon as the churches were reopened, a multitude of Christians reappeared, who loudly declared they would rather die in the faith of the resurrection of our Lord than live under the impure shadow of their idols.^^^

*^' " larumanus, Anglicus natione, sed a Sootis episcopis ordinatus." —Anglia Sacra, t. i. p. 425.

¹⁵² u Diiigentes banc vitam ct fiituram non quajrentes, sive etiam non esse credentes.... Juxta quod mihi presbyter qui conies itineris ille et cooperator verbi extiterat, referebat.... Magis cum fide resurrectionis in illo mori, quani in perfidiae sordibus inter idola vivere cupientes." —Bede, iii. 30.

IV.

CONVERSION OF THE MERCIANS, OR MIDLAND ENGLISH. Influence of The personal influence of King Oswy as a and buLp preacher of the Gospel, the royal villa at the foot of n mbH.7 ^^^® *-*^^ Roman wall, scene of the baptism of the first converts, and the intervention of the Celtic bishop Finan as administrator of the sacraments — all these cians. details, which impress a special character on the conversion of the Eastern Saxons, are identically reproduced in the history of the conversion of the Mercians. But it will be understood how much more difficult and important this task must have been, when the fierceness of the bloody wars, waged during the thirty years of Penda's reign against Christian Northumbria, is considered, and especially when the vast extent of the kingdom of Mercia, almost as large as Northumbria itself, and embracing all the country that lies between the Thames, the Humber, and the Severn, is called to mind. The population of this kingdom was composed of very diverse elements,— first, of great numbers of the conquered Britons; then of Saxon settlers; ^°'^ and, finally, of Angles, especially concentrated on the south-west frontier of Northumbria.!'^* Towards the end of his long reign, the ferocious Penda had intrusted the government of the Angles of the Middle to his eldest son Peada. Tt was through him that Christianity and the Northumbrian influence penetrated into Mercia, and succeeded in beginning operations upon this formidable remnant of darkness, encircled on all sides by newly Christianized states, which still offered a vast and inviolable asylum to Saxon Paganism.

The Mer- As elsewhere, love and marriage had a certain part to play in this revolution. During one of those truccs which the sagacious policy of Oswy Continued to obtain from ill-starred Northumbria, always bathed in blood or wrapt in flames by the implacable chief of the Mercians, the young Peada, who had ^^^ Among others, the Wuiccas on the west, and the Girwas on the east, who are often mentioned by the historians of the period. They had their own kings, whose charters figure among the very limited number of those whose authenticity is recognized by Kemble.

'^^ These Angles bore the name of Middle Angles, or English of the Middle, to distinguish them from the East Angles, or Angles of the East. all the virtues and all the external advantages which the Saxons prized most highly in their kings, came into Northumbria to ask the hand of Alchfleda, the daughter of Oswy. Oswy replied that he could not give his daughter to an idolater, and that, in order to win her, Peada and the nation of Angles governed by him must be converted and baptized. The young prince then put himself under instruction, most probably by Bishop Finan; and from the moment when he understood the teachings, and especially the promises, of the Christian faith, the hope of the resurrection, and of that future and everlasting life which the Saxons of the East had been so unwilling to admit, he declared that he would become a Christian, even though the princess whom he sought to wed were refused to him.^°^ But Peada seemed to be drawn towards the light of truth even less by his love to Alchfleda than by his friendship for Alchfrid, the brother of the princess. Alchfrid was already his brother-in- oswy's son law, having married the King of Mercia's daughter, in whom he had found not only a Christian, but saint,!^*^ destined to confirm by a new example the providential law, which, amidst the desendants of Odin, selected those who were most marked by the obstinacy and union of ferocity of their paganism as the progenitors of a race of saints, and especially of saintly women.

would be desirable to have fuller details of the circumstances which brought these two young princes together, and made them friends and brothers before they became related by marriage. We know only that it was Alchfrid who, of all the preachers of the truth, exercised the strongest influ- Baptism of ence upon the convictions of his friend. The future ^''^^^^^ King of the Mercians received baptism from Bishop Finan at the villa near the Roman wall on the same spot, and ^.^ almost at the same date, as the King of the West Saxons. The eorls, the thanes, and the men of war (called at a later period counts, lords, and knights) who had accompanied the young Peada to the Northumbrian court, Avere baptized all along with him, as were also their servants.^^'^

155 t( juvenis optimus, ac regis nomine ac persona dignissinius... nisi fidem Cliristi et baptisnia cum gente eui praierat, acciperct. At ille, audita praedicatione veritatis, et promissione rcgni coelestis, spequo rcsurrectionis ac future immortalitatis, libenter sc Cliristianum fieri velle confessus est, etiamsi virginem non acciperet." — Bede, iii. 21.

'^^ Her name, like that of the wife of the heroic Oswald, was Kyneburge, and, later, she became a nun along with her sister Kyneswitha.

157 «« Persuasus maxime ad percipiendam fidem a filio regis Oswin...

Mission- When the Mercian prince, carrying back with him Lindisfarae l^'s joung wife, returned a Christian from a country which had ah'eady been Christianized for twenty years, his companions formed a most precious and effectual nucleus for the complete conversion of Mercia. Oswy had added to their party, in the capacity of missionaries, four monks trained at Lindisfarne, and endowed with the knowledge and virtues which seemed to him needful for the evangelizing of the new province which was to be won over to Christianity. Three of them were Anglo-Saxons, and among these three was Cedd, whom Oswy almost immediately recalled, to intrust him with the mission to the Eastern Saxons. The fourth, named Diuma, was a Celt by birth, and it was he who became the first bishop of the Mercians. These missionaries obtained a rapid and unhoped-for success. The Middle Angles listened to them with manifest sympathy, and every day the nobles and the common people flocked in great numbers to be baptized.^^^

The behavior of the savage Penda to his newly converted son and his companions was as singular as it was unexpected. It was to have been looked for that this fierce and unwearied enemy of the Christian kings and nations near him would becomo the violent persecutor of his own Christian subjocts. But it was not SO; and, indeed, the history of his frightful ravages in Northumbria and elsewhere records no special indication of enmity against the Christians: no doubt he did not spare them, but there is no proof of his having persecuted them with a peculiar hatred. As to his own kingdom, not only did he take no steps to punish his eldest son and the other converts, but he allowed the Northumbrian missionaries freely to preach the Gospel to all who wished to hear them in those districts, the exclusive sovereignty of which he had reserved to himself. This barbarian ravager and pagan gave thus an example of toleration by which many Christians in ages more enlightened than his might be profited. He confined himself to evincing haughtily his dislike and contempt for those who, after having received the faith of

qui erat cognatus et amicus ejus.... Baptizatus cum omnibus qui secum venerant comitibus ac militibus eorumque famulis universis." — Bede, iii. 21.

'*'* " Qui ad docendam baptizandamque gentem illius, et eruditione et vita videbantur idonei... praedicabant verbum et libenter auditi sunt, multique quotidie nobilium et iniimorum, abrenuntiata sorde idolatriae, fidei sunt fonte abluti." — Bede, iii. 21.

Christ, did not practise its works. " Those who despise," said he, " the laws of the God in whom they believe, must be despised as wretches." ^^^

Penda, however, continued none the less the pitiless foe of the princes and people of Northumbria. This bloodthirsty and stubborn hatred led him to his destruction.

It was only at the last extremity that Oswy re- Last strugsolved to engage in a final conflict with the terrible S'swy*I^d^" enemy who had conquered and slain his two prede- Penda. cessors, Edwin and Oswald. It has been seen that he married his son and his daughter to children of Penda; and he gave him another of his sons as a hostage. But Penda would not consent to any durable peace. During the thirteen years that had elapsed since the overthrow of Oswald and the accession of Oswy, he had periodically subjected Northumbria to frightful devastations. In vain Oswy, driven to desperation, offered him all the jewels, ornaments, and treasures of which he could dispose, as a ransom for his desolated and hopeless provinces. The arrogant and fierce octogenarian refused everything, being resolute, as he said, to exterminate the whole Northumbrian race, from first to last. " Well, then," said Oswy, " since this heathen contemns our gifts, let us offer them to one who will accept them—to the Lord our God." '^''^ He then made a vow to devote to God a daughter who had just been born to him, and at the same time to give twelve estates for the foundation of as many monasteries. After this he marched at the head of a small army against Penda, whose troops were, according to Northumbrian tradition, thirty times more numerous. Besides his Mercians, Penda led to battle a crowd of auxiliaries under the command of thirty chiefs who bore the title of king; first of all, the implacable Britons, his constant allies against the Angles of the North; then a body of East Anglians; and finally, by an inexcusable treason against his country and his uncle, the nephew of Oswy, the son of his

ift9 u jq-gg prohibuit Penda rex quin etiam in sua, hoc est, Merciorum natione, verbuni, si qui vellent audire, prasdicaretur. Quin potius odio habehat et dcspiciobat eos quos fide Christi imbutos, opera fidei non habere deprchendit, dicens contemnendos esse eos et niiseros qui Deo sue quern crederent obedire contemnerent." — Bede, iii. 21.

16') " Cum acerbas atque intolerabiles pateretur irruptiones... dummodo ille provincias usque ad internecionem vastaredesineret... qui totam ejus gentera a parvo usque ad majorem delere atque exterminarc dccreverat.... Si paganus nescit accipere nostra donaria, offeramus ei qui novit. Domino nostro Deo." — Bede, iii. 24. brother, who had been killed by Penda, the same Ethelwald who reigned over a portion of Doira.

Battle of Notwithstanding the enormous disparity of the St^i'Ncfv.f' forces, the battle, which was fought on the banks of 635. g^ river near the site of the present town of Leeds, was lost by Penda. The traitor Ethelwald sought safety in flight as soon as the struggle commenced, but the other allies, Britons and East Anglians, were exterminated. The vanquished in their flight found the river in flood, so that a larger number perished in the waters than by the sword.

Penda was slain fighting valiantly in the melee. Thus pcrislied at the age of eighty years, after a reign of thirty, the conqueror and murderer of pa^nism. ^^.^ Anglo-Saxon kings,i6i the last and indefatigable champion of paganism among the Anglo-Saxons, the ally and too effective instrument of the vengeance of the old British Christians against their converted invaders.^^^

This battle decided the fate of England: it not Only iusurcd the emancipation and temporary preponderance of Northumbria; but it put a period to

ti!4^caus'e".

'^^^^ struggle which for 200 years the British had maintained against the Anglo-Saxons. Henceforth there might be partial resistance and local conflicts, but there was no general attempt, with any chance of success, to repel the progress of invasion. Ah the little British kingdoms which occupied the existing counties of Chester, Lancashire, and Westmoreland, on the coast of the Irish Channel, were finally swept away and taken possession of by the Saxons of Northumbria.i*^^

Farther, it sealed the political and military triumph of the new religion, in the very bosom of the Heptarchy, over that external and official paganism which was the religious tradition of the nation. But this triumph was far from being sufficient for the designs of God, and for the deliverance of

>"' Two kings of Northumbria, Edwin and Oswald; and thrtje of East Anglia, Sigebert, Egeric, and Anna.

¹⁶² ''Fertur quia tricies majorem pagani habuerint exercitum... triginta legiones ducibus nobilissimis instructas... duces regii triginta qui ad auxilium venerant pene oranes interfecti." — Bede. Compare La Borderie, op. cit., pp. 223-225. The battle-field is now called Winn Moor, and the river the Broad Are.

'" La Borderie, op. cit., p. 227. Cumbria alone remained to them: the country of the Kymri or Cum.brians, now Cumberland, formed a small kingdom which recovered its independence after the death of Oswy's sons, and maintained it till the tenth century, like the other small British kingdom of Strathclyde, between the Solway and the walls of Severus. the souls of men. There was an inner paganism, infinitely more diiScult to overcome — the paganism of the savage morals and uncurbed passions of a conquering race. The valiant sword of the Northumbrians might well gain the mastery over oppressors and ravagers; but the word, and above all, the virtue, of the monks was needed to propagate and consolidate the faith, and root it deeply in the heart and life of the victors.

Oswy faithfully kept his word to God and to the HowOswy, Christian people. He set apart the twelve estates to be thenceforth monastic property — six in the fulfilled bis north and six in the south of his double kingdom — to form an endowment for monks who should substitute for the warlike service by which these domains were usually held an unceasing prayer for eternal peace.^*^* He then took his daughter Elfleda, who was but yet a 3^ear old, His dau^band consecrated her to God by the vow of perpetual virginity. Her mother, the daughter of Edwin, first Christian King of Northumbria, had been thus dedicated to God from her birth, but only by baptism, and as a token of the gratitude of a still pagan father for the protection of the Christians' God. The daughter of Oswy was to be the price of a yet greater gift of Heaven — the conclusive victory of his race, and of the Christian faith in his country: the sacrifice thus imposed on her reminds us of that of Jephthah's daughter. It will be seen that, far from desiring to escape her vow, she showed herself, during a long life, always worthy of 'her heavenly bridegroom. The king took her from the caresses of her mother, to intrust her, not, as we might have supposed, to his sister the Abbess Ebba of Coldingham, but to Hilda, a princess of the rival dynasty, who nearly ten years before had been initiated into monastic life by bishop A'idan.

After the overthrow of Penda, Oswy, now master oswy of Mercia, in right of his victory, undertook with ^jf^'^J^^g^- his accustomed zeal to effect the conversion of that kingdom. He left a portion of it to his son-in-law Peada, the son of his terrible opponent, whose ardor in the Christian cause seconded all his efforts for the extension of the true faith. The monk Diuma, born in Ireland, and one of the four missionaries whom Peada had of aiercia^^

134 (( j^ quibus, ahlato studio militiaD tcrrestris ad exercendam militiam coelestem, supplicanduinquo pro pace ejus ajterna, devotioni seduliB monachorum locus facultasque suppcditeret." — Bede, iii. 2-1:. are Celtic brought from Northumbria at the time of bis marmonks. riage, was consecrated by the bishop of Lindisfarne, and appointed Bishop of all Mercia, including therein the nation of the Middle Angles already converted under Peada. It was necessary that two distinct races should thus be united in one diocese, because of the small number of priests who were worthy of promotion to the episcopate.^^'^ The pontificate of Diuma was short, but fruitful. At his death he was succeeded by another Irishman, Ceolach, who was reckoned among the disciples of Columba, the great Celtic missionary, as coming from the Monastery of Iona,i66 to which be returned after some years of a too laborious episcopate in Mercia, to seek the peace of cloistered life in that citadel of Celtic monachism. The third Bishop ^*^' of Mercia, Trumhere, an abbot in Northurabria, and an Anglo-Saxon by birth, came, like his brethren, from the Celtic cloisters, and was, like them, consecrated by the Bishop of Lindisfarne.^*^^ His two successors, Jaruman and Ceadda, had the same origin the one was born in Ireland, and the other, a Saxon by birth, had been ordained by the Scots.^*^^

It is thus evident that the extension of Christianity and the government of the Church among the Saxons of Mercia were entirely under the influence of Scotch or Anglo-Celtic monks, disciples and spiritual descendants of St. Columba.

This state of matters was not at all altered when the Mercians, rising under three of their principal chiefs, shook off the yoke of Oswy, and took as their king a youthful son of Penda, whom these three earls had kept in concealment since the overthrow of his father. They drove out the officials of the Northumbrian king, but they kept, with the bishop the faith which had come to them from Northumbria, and which was to them now no less dear than their freedom and their reconquered frontiers. They desired,

¹⁶⁵ a Paucitas enim sacerdotum cogebat unum antistitem duobus populis prsefici." — Bede, iii. 21. It should be observed that these two races were long before united under the same kings.

"^^ CoLGAN, Trias Thaumaturga, p. 488.

'*'' Trumhere had been abbot of the Monastery of Gilling, founded by Queen Eanfleda, on the spot of her cousin King Oswy's murder. See above, p. 253.

168 «' Diuma, natione Scotus.... Ceollach et ipse de natione Scotorum... reversus est ad insulam Hii, ubi plurimorum caput et arcem Scoti habuere coenobium.... Trumheri, de natione quidem Anglorum, sed edoctus ct ordinatus a Scotis." — Bede, iii. 21, 24.

169 II Anglicus, sed a Scotis ordinatus." — Anglia Sacra, vol i. Cf. Eddics, Vita S. Wilfrid.

AND THE ANGLO-SAXONS. 299

they said, to be free, with a king of their-own race, on earth, without ceasing to serve Christ, the true and eternal King, so as to gain His kingdom of heavenJ'^

Twenty years later, this stubborn repugnance of the Mercians to the yoke of their Northumbrian cian monks neighbors manifested itself with painful distinctness deifey%earaong the monks of one of the principal monasteries pp?yg*t,j'e®" of the country. It was at Bardeney, in that prov- body of the ince of Lindsay (Lincolnshire), the conquest of which ti^uLbdln had already cost good King Oswald his life. His ^Jai|.^^' niece, the daughter of Oswy had become queen of ^.^ Mercia. It Avas her desire that this monastery, which was especially dear to her as well as to her husband, should receive the remains of her uncle. The bones of the sainted king arrived one evening, borne in a chariot, at the gate of the monastery, but the monks refused to receive them, " We know well," said they, " that he is holy; but he is not of our country, and in other days he subdued us by force." I'l It was necessary to yield to this explosion of patriotic rancor, and the sacred body had to remain all night in the open air. The next morning the monks were told that a luminous column had descended from heaven on the car which bore the corpse of the Northumbrian king, and had been seen by all the country round about. Upon this they thought better of it, and opened the door of their church to the uncle of their protectress.

His relics thenceforth remained there revered by all. A

banner of purple and gold placed over his shrine betokened his twofold dignity as saint and king. But it is not the less necessary to note this first and instinctive outburst of a local and provincial patriotism, sometimes even more powerful than the popular devotion, a new explosion of which long after brought about the murder of the pious queen who had striven so anxiously to endow Mercia with the relics of the great Northumbrian saint.^'^ Yot the history of these times no '('Ejectis principibus regis non proprii, fines suos fortiter simul et libertatem receperunt. Sicque cum suo rege liberi, Christo vero rcge pro sempiterno in ccciis regno, servire gaudebant." — Bede, iii. 2i.

'"' " Quia etsi sanctum cum noverant, tanien quia de alia provineia ortus fuerat et super eos regnum acccperat, veteranis cum odiis etiam niortuum insequebatur." — Bede, iii. 11. It is plain that this passage does not favor the interpretation of Father Faber, who sees in the conduct of the monks of Bardeney a repugnance to the Celtic rite and the Scots saints. — Life of St. Oswald, p. 68.

"" " Ut regia viri sancti persona niemoriam haberet a;ternam, vcxillum ejus super turabam auro et purpura compositura adposuerunt." — Bede, and races never allows us to forget that barbarism was always ready to reclaim its ancient rights even amidst the blossoming of Christian virtues and monastic austerities.

The entire narrative is very confused, very obscure, in great measure unknown, and much forgotten. But across these darkling foundations of the primitive history of Christian races stirs everywhere a potent and heroic breath, the breath of life, of the true and noble life — that breath which has made out of the confused masses of barbarism those modern Christian nations, free and manly, among whom the place held by England is known to all.

Summary

cessive

doms of the

In summing up the history of the efforts made during the sixty years between the landing of Augustin and the death of Penda to introduce

_ ^ Christianity into England, the results may be stated

thus: Of the eight kingdoms of the Anglo-Saxon Confederation, that of Kent alone was exclusively won and retained b}' the Roman monks, whose first attempts among the East Saxons and Northumbrians ended in failure. In Wessex and in East Anglia the Saxons of the West and the Angles of the East were converted by the combined action of Continental missionaries and Celtic monks. As to the two Northumbrian kingdoms, and those of Essex and Mercia, which comprehended in themselves more than twothirds of the territory occupied by the German conquerors, these four countries owed their final conversion exclusively to the peaceful invasion of the Celtic monks, who not only rivalled the zeal of the Roman monks, but who, the first obstacles once surmounted, showed much more perseverance and gained much more success.

All the kingdoms of the Heptarchy have thus passed under our review except that of Sussex, or the Saxons of the South. It was the smallest of all, but one of the earliest founded; ^'^ and the first German invaders of the southern coast of Great

1. c. This daughter of Oswy was named Osthryda. She frequently lived at Bardeney, where she received the visits of the neighboring abbesses, whom she was able to interest in the veneration of her uncle. She was assassinated by the nobles of Mercia in 697. It will be seen farther on, that her husband King Ethelred afterwards became a monk.

'"3 By ^Ua in 477.

Britain were notorious among all the others for their ferocity and their invincible vigor. Although they were next neighbors to the kingdom of Kent, the Roman missionaries, Augustin's companions, have left no trace of their presence among them, if indeed they ever tried to penetrate there. The Celtic monks, more enterprising or more persevering, made their way thither to form a first station, an advanced post, as it were, of their future army. They founded' the very small Monastery of Bosham, protected on one side by the sea, on the other by forests, and here vegetated five or six monks who came from East Anglia, the nearest Northumbrian province, under the leadership of an Irishman, the compatriot and disciple of that Fursy whose strange visions Avere everywhere narrated. There they served God as they best could, humbly and poorly; but not one of the Saxons of the country would listen to their preaching, still less adopt their manner of life.i"^ This is the only example known to us of a complete failure. And yet the people of Sussex, although the last of all the Saxons to receive the Gospel, owe, as we shall see, that blessing to a monk trained in the school of the Celtic missionaries. This monk, however, by forsaking the rule of his first masters, in order to connect himself more closely with Roman tradition and authority, produced in the new Church of England a revolution which it now remains for us to record.

"* " Monachus quidam de natione Scotorum, vocabulo Dicul, habens monasteriolum perniodicura. ... In humili et paupere vita Domino famulantes. Sed provincialium nullus eorum vel vitam semulari vel praedicationem curabat audire." — Bede, iv. 13. Compare iii. 19.

VOL. II. 26

BOOK XII,

ST. WILFRID ESTABLISHES ROMAN UNITY AND THE BENE-

DICTINE ORDER, 634-709.

" Sanctus haberi Justitijeque tenax, factis dictisque mereris i

Agnosco procerem."— Juvenal.