Mission of St. Augustin

Origin and character of the Anglo-Saxons. — They have not to struggle, like the Franks, against the Roman decadence. — The seven kingdoms of the Heptarchy. — Institutions, social and political: government patriarchal and federal; seigneury of the proprietors; the witenagemot or parliament social inequality, the ceorls and the eorls; individual independence and aristocratic federation; fusion of the two races. — The conquered Britons lose the Christian faith. — Vices of the conquerors: slavery; commerce inhuman flesh. — The young Angles in the Roman market seen and bought by the monk Gregory. — Elected Pope, Gregory undertakes to convert the Angles by means of the monks of his Monastery of Mt. Coelius, under the conduct of the abbot Augustin. — Critical situation of the Papacy. — Journey of the missionary monks across Gaul; their doubts; letters of Gregory. — Augustin lands at the same spot as Casar and the Saxon conquerors in the Isle of Thanet. — King Ethelbert; the queen. Bertha, already a Christian. — First interview under the oak; Ethelbert grants leave to preach. — Entry of the missionaries into Canterbury. The spring-tide of the Church in England. — Baptism of Ethelbert. Augustin Archbishop of Canterbury. — The palace of the king changed into a cathedral. — Monastery of St. Augustin beyond the walls of Canterbury. — Donation from the king and the parliament.

Who then were the Anglo-Saxons, upon whom so many efforts were concentrated, and whose conquest is ranked, not without reason, among the most fruitful and most happy that tho Church has ever accomplished? Of all the Ger-

12* 137

manic tribes, the most stubborn, intrepid, and independent, this people seems to have transplanted with themselves into the .2;reat island which owes to them its name, the genius of the Germanic race, in order that it might bear on this predestined soil its richest and most abundant fruits. The Saxons brought with them a language, a character, and institutions stamped with a strong and invincible originality. Language, character, institutions, have triumphed, in their essential features, over the vicissitudes of time and fortune •— have outlived all ulterior conquests, as well as all foreign influences, and, plunging their vigorous roots into the primitive soil of Celtic Britain, still exist at the indestructible foundation of the social edifice of England. Different from the Franks and Goths, who suffered themselves to be speedilyneutralized or absorbed in Gaul, Italy, and Spain by the native elements, and still more by the remains of the Roman Decadence, the Saxons had the good fortune to find in Britain a soil free from imperial pollution. Less alienated from the Celtic Britons by their traditions and institutions— perhaps even by their origin — than by the jealousies and resentments of conquests, they had not after their victory to struggle against a spirit opposed to their own. Keeping intact and untamable their old Germanic spirit, their old morals, their stern independence, they gave from that moment to the free and proud genius of their race a vigorous upward impulse which nothing has ever been able to bear down.

Thesevea Starting in thrco distinct and succcssivG emigrations from the peninsular region which separates the Baltic from the North Sea, they had found in the level shores of Britain a climate and an aspect like those of their native country. At the end of a century and a half of bloody contests they had made themselves masters of all that now bears the name of England, except the coast and the hilly regions of the west. They had founded there, by fire and sword, the seven kingdoms so well known under the title of the Heptarchy, which have left their names to several of the existing divisions of that country, where nothing falls into irreparable ruin, because everything there, as in nature, takes a new form and a fresh life. The Jutes, the first and most numerous immigrants, had established in the angle of the island nearest to Germany, the kingdom of Kent, and occupied a part of the coast of the Channel (the Isle of Wight and Hampshire). Then the Saxons, properly so called, spreading out and consolidating themselves from the east to the south, and from the south to the west, had stamped their name and their authority on the kingdoms of Essex, Sussex, and Wessex.i Finally, the Angles laid hold of the north and the east, and there planted, first, the kingdom of East Anglia on the coast of the Xorth Sea, and next that of Mercia in the unoccupied territory between the Thames and the Humber; then, to the north of the latter river, the largest of all the Saxon kingdoms, Xorthumbria, almost always divided into two, Deira and Bernicia, the confines of which stretched away to join the Picts and Scots, beyond even the limits which the Roman domination had lately reached.

This race of pirates and plunderers, hunters and robbers of their kind, possessed nevertheless the essential elements of social order. They made this '°^^ clearly apparent as soon as they were able to settle down, and to adjust their settlements on that insular soil which the Britons had not been able to defend against the Romans, nor the Romans against the barbarians of the north, nor these last against the hardy seamen from the east. The Anglo-Saxons alone have been able to establish there an immovable order of society, whose first foundations were laid when the missionary monks came to bring to them the lights of faith and of Christian virtue.

At the end of the sixth century the Anglo-Saxons already formed a great people, subject, as the Celtic races had been, to the patriarchal and federal rule, which so happily distinguished those brave and free nations from the rabble corrupted by the solitarj' despotism of Rome. But among them, as among all the Germanic races, this government was secured by the powerful guarantee of property. ^^^ ^^^ The wandering and disorderly clan, the primitive band of pirates and pillagers, disappears, or transforms itself, in order to make room for the flimily permanently established by the hereditary appropriation of the soil; and this soil was not only snatched from the vanquished race, but laboriously won from the forests, fens, and untilled moors. The chiefs and men of substance of these leading families formed a sovereign and warlike aristocracy, controlled by the kings, assemblies, and laws.

The kings all belonged to a kind of caste composed of

' Saxons of the East, the South, and the West. The existing county of Middlesex bears witness to the same origin; it is the region inhabited by the Saxons of the Middle. the families which professed to trace their descent "^ss. ^^^^^ Odin or Woden, the deified monarch of German mythology: ^ their I'oyalty was elective and limited: they could do nothing without the consent of those who accepted them as chiefs, but not as masters. The assemblies, which at first resembled those which Tacitus has recorded as existing among the Germans, and composed of the entire tribe {volk-mot) were speedily limited to the elders, to the wise men (witena-gemot) to the chiefs of the principal families of each tribe or kingdom, and to men endowed with the double prerogative of blood and property. They were held in the open air, under venerable oaks, and at stated periods; they took part in all the affairs of the body politic, and regulated with sovereign authority all rights that were established or defended by the laws.

The laws themselves were simply treaties of peace discussed and guaranteed by the grand council of each little nation, between the king and those on whom depended his security and his power; between the different parties in every process, civil and criminal; between different groups of free men, all armed and all possessors of lands, incessantly exposed to risk their life, their possessions, the honor and safety of their wives, children, kindred, dependents, and friends, in daily conflicts springing from that individual right of making war which is to be found at the root of all German liberty and legislation.-^ Social Disparity of rank, which was in ancient times the inseparable companion of freedom, existed among the Saxons, as it did everywhere. The class of freemen — ceorls— possessors of land and of political power, who constituted the vital strength of the nation, had under them not only slaves, the fruit of their wars and conquests, but in much greater number servitors, laborers, dependants, who had not the same rights as they possessed^; but they in their turn acknowledged as superiors the nobles, the eorls, who were born to command, and to fill the offices of priest, judge, and chief, under the primary authority of the king.*

^* Ethelwerdi Chronic, lib. i. p. 474, ap. Savile.

^ Palgrave, The Rise and Progress of the English Cowmonwcalth, Lon- Lappenberg, Geschichtc von England, Hamburg, 1834. Kem- BLE, Codex Diplomaticus ^Evi Saxonici (London, 1839-48), and The Saxons in England, London, 1849. Baron D'Eckstein, various notices and memoirs.

^* The Anglo-Saxon laws and diplomas, and particularly the charters of

Thus that part of Great Britain which has since taken the name of England, was at this early period made up of an aggregation of tribes and independent communities, among which the exigencies of a common struggle against their warlike neighbors of the north and west helped to develop a gradual tendency towards union. It settled into an aristocratic federation, in which families of a reputedly divine origin presided over the social and militar}- life of each tribe, but in which personal independence was at the base of the whole fabric. This independence was always able to reclaim its rights when a prince more than ordinarily dexterous and energetic encroached upon them. Its influence was everywhere felt in establishing and maintaining social life on the principle of free association for mutual benefit.^ All that the freemen had not expressly given over to the chiefs established by themselves, or to associates freely accepted by them, remained forever their own inviolable possession. Such, at that obscure and remote epoch, as in our own day, was the fundamental and gloriously unalterable principle of English public life.

The British population, which had survived the fury of the Saxon Conquest, and which had not been able or willing to seek for refuge in the mountains and peninsulas of Wales and Cornwall, seems to have accommodated itself to the new order of things. "When the conquest was fully achieved, in those districts where the indigenous race had not been completely exterminated,^ no traces of insurrection or of general discontent are to be found among the British; and the opinion of those who maintain that the condition of the mass of the British population remaining in the conquered regions was not worse under the Saxon invaders than it had been under the yoke of the Romans, or even under that of their native princes, so reviled by their compatriot the historian Gildas, may bo admitted as probable.'' It may even be sup-

monastic endowments, constantly repeat this distinction between ceorls and eorls, which is found in the Scandinavian mytholog)', between the Karls and the Jarlg, the offspring of the intercourse of a god with two different women. See the song of the first Edda, entitled Rigsmal. The word ceorl is the parent of the churl of modern English; as eorl is perpetuated in earl. The one has fallen in dignitj', the other has risen.

° Kemble, Saxons in England, vol. ii. p. 312.

" It has been already stated that in some districts the Saxons annihilated the conquered population. But this was only in exceptional cases. Sec on this subject the excellent summary of Burke in his Abridged Essay on the History of England — a work too much forgotten, though altogether worthy of the greatest of Englishmen.

^ Such is, especially, the opinion of Kemble, who otherwise generalizes posed that this fusion of the conquerors and the conquered was productive of great benefit to the former. It would be hard to say whether the heroic tenacity which has become the distinctive characteristic of the English may not have been derived mainly from that vigorous race which, after having coped with Cassar, proved itself the only one among all the nations subjected to the Roman yoke capable of struggling for two centuries against the invasion of the barbarians.^

But this assimilation of the two races could not but Operate to the prejudice of the Christian faith. Unlike the barbarian invaders of the Continent, the Saxons did not adopt the religion of the people they had subdued. In Gaul, Spain, and Italy, Christianity had flourished anew, and gained fresh strength under the dominion of the Franks and the Goths; it had conquered the conquerors. In Britain it disappeared under the pressure of the alien conquest. No traces of Christianity remained in the districts under Saxon sway when Rome sent thither her missionaries. Here and there a ruined church might be found, but not one living Christian amongst the natives; ^ conquerors and conquered alike were lost in the darkness of paganism.

It is not necessary to inquire whether, along with this proud and vigorous independence, in which we have recognized a rare and singularly advanced condition of political intelligence and social vitality, the Anglo-Saxons exhibited moral virtues of an equally elevated order. Such an assertion no one would be disposed to believe. Certainly " there existed under this native barbarism noble dispositions unknown to the Roman world. Under the brute the free man, and also the man of heart, might always be discovered." i'^ Even more, intermingled with daily outbursts of daring an^ of violence there might also be found miracles of heroic and simple devotion — of sincere and lofty enthusiasm — which emulated or forestalled Christianity. But alongside of these

too freely upon the exaggerations of history in relation to the oppression or extermination of vanquished nations. The events which since 1772 have occurred in Poland, in Lithuania, in Circassia, and elsewhere, prove that it is very possible, even in the full light of modern civilization, and under princes consecrated before the altar of the living God, to proceed with an invincible determination to the destruction of human races.

" La Bordeeie, p. 23L
^* Bukke, Works, vol. vi. p. 216.
*" Taine, Jlistoire de la LitUraturc Anglaise.

wonders of primitive virtue, what miracles of vice and crime, of avarice, lust, and ferocity! The religion of their Scandinavian forefathers, whose primitive myths concealed no small amount of traditional truth under symbols full of grace and majesty, was only too soon corrupted or obscured. It did not preserve them from any excess, superstition, or fetishism: perhaps not even from the human sacrifices which were known to all other pagan nations. What could be expected in point of morality from people accustomed to invoke and to worship Worden, the god of massacres, Freya, the Venus of the North, the goddess of sensuality, and all these bloody and obscene gods of whom one had for his emblem a naked sword, and another the hammer with which he broke the heads of his enemies? ii The immortality which was promised to them in their Walhalla but reserved for them new days of slaughter and nights of debauch, spent in drinking deep from the skulls of their victims. And in this world their life was but too often only a prolonged orgie of carnage, rapine, and lechery. The traditional respect for woman which marked the Germanic tribes was limited among the Saxons, as elsewhere, by singular exceptions, and did not extend beyond the princesses or the daughters of the victorious and dominant race.

Such mercy as they ever showed to the vanquished consisted only in sparing their lives in order to reduce them to servitude, and sell them as slaves. That frightful slave-traffic which has disgraced successively all pagan and all Christian nations was among them' carried on with a kind of inveterate passion.^^ It needed, as we shall sec, whole centuries of incessant efforts to extirpate it. Nor was it only captives and vanquished foes that they condemned to this extremity of misfortune and in immau shame: it was their kindred, their fellow-country- *''*"^°' men; even, like Joseph's brethren, those of their own blood, their sons and daughters, that they set up to auction and sold to merchants who came from the Continent to supply themselves in the Anglo-Saxon market with these human chattels. It was by this infamous commerce that Great

" See the interesting chapter on the religion of the Germans in Ozanam's Germains avant le Christianisme, 1847.

'" " Venaies ex Northunibria pueri, familiari ct pcne ingenita illi nation! consuetudine, adeo ut, sicut nostra quoquo sa;cula viderunt nou dubitarent arclissimas neccssitudines sub praitextu niinimorum connnodorum distrahere." — WiLLELJiLS Malmesbukiensis, Be Gesiis liegum Anglorum, 1. 3.

Britain, having become almost as great a stranger to the rest of Europe as she was before the days of Caesar, reentered the circle of the nations, making herself known once more, as in the time of Ceesar, when Cicero anticipated no other profit to Rome from the expedition of the proconsul than the produce of the sale of British slaves.^^

Nevertheless, it was from the depth of this shameful abyss that God was about to evolve the opportunity of delivering England from the fetters of paganism, of introducing her by the hand of the greatest of the Popes into the bosom of the Church, and, at the same time, of bringing her within the pale of Christian civilization.

^^*-* ^^^^ ®^'®^ explain to us how these traffickers in men found a market for their merchandise at sold rr Rome? Yes, at Rome, in the full light of Christian- Eome. j|.y^ gj^ centuries after the birth of the Divine Deliverer, and three centuries after the peace of the Church at Rome, governed since Constantino by Christian emperors, and in which was gradually developing the temporal sovereignty of the Popes. It was so, however, in the year of grace 586 or 587, under Pope Pelagius II. Slaves of both sexes and of all countries, and among them some children, young Saxons, were exposed for sale in the Roman forum like any other commodity. Priests and monks mingled with the crowd that came to bid or to look on at the auction; and among tho spectators appears the gentle, the generous, the immortg,! Gregory.^* He thus learned to detest this leprosy of slavery which it Avas afterwards given him to restrict and to contend against, though not to extirpate it.^'

This scene, which the father of English history found among the traditions of his Northumbrian ancestors, and the dialogue in which are portrayed with such touching and quaint originality the pious and compassionate spirit of Gregory, and at the same time his strange love of punning, has been a hundred times rehearsed. Every one knows how, at the sight of these young slaves, struck with the beauty of their counte-

" " Britannici belli exitus exspectatur.... Illud cognilum est, neque argenti scripulum ullum esse in ilia insula, neque ullam spera praedae nisi ex mancipiis."— Epist. ad. Attic, iv. 16.

" " Die quadam cum advenientibus nuper raercatoribus multavenalia in forum fuissent collata, luultique ad emendum confluxissent, et ipsum Gregorium inter alios advenisse, ac vidisse inter alia pueros venales positos." —Bede, ii. 1.

»^ Joan. Diac, VitaS. Gregorii, iv. 45, 46, 47. S. Greg., Epist., iv. 9, 13; vii. 2i, 38, and elsewhere.

OJF CANTERBURY. 145

nances, the dazzling purity of their complexions, the length of their fair locks (probably index of aristocratic birth) he inquired what was their country and their religion. The slave-dealer informed him that they came from the island of Britain, where every one had the same beauty of complexion, and that they were heathens. Heaving a profound sigh, " What evil luck," cried Gregory, " that the Prince of Darkness should possess beings with an aspect so radiant, and that the grace of these countenances should reflect a soul void of the inward grace! But what nation are they of?" " They are Angles." " They are well named, for these Angles have the faces of angels; and they must become the brethren of the angels in heaven. From what province have they been brought? " " From Deira " (one of the two kingdoms of Northumbria). " Still good," answered he. " De ira eruti— they shall be snatched from the ire of God, and called to the mercy of Christ. And how name they the king of their country? " " Alle or ^lla." " So be it; he is right well named, for they shall soon sing the Alleluia in his kingdom." ^"^

It is natural to believe that the rich and charitable abbot bought these captive children, and that he conveyed them at once to his own home — that is to say, to the palace of his father, where he was born, which he had changed into a monastery, and w^hich was not far from the forum where the young Britons were exposed for sale. The purchase of these three or four slaves was thus the origin of the redemption of all England.

An Anglo-Saxon chronicler, a Christian but a layman, who wrote four centuries later, but who exemplifies the influence of domestic traditions among that people by giving to his own genealogy a very high rank in the history of his race,^'^

'* " Nee silentio praetercuncla opinio quae de beato Gregorio traditione niajorura ad nos usque perlata est.... Candidi et lactei corporis, venusti vultus, capillorum forma egregia... crine rutila.... Intimo ex corde suspiria ducens... interrogavit mercatorem.... De Britannia; insula cujus incolarum oninis facies sirnili candore fulgescit.... Heu proli dolor! quod tarn lucidi vultus... tantaque gratia frontispicii.... Bene Angli quasi angeli, quia et angelicos vultus habent... Bene quia rex dicitur Aclle. Alleluia etenim in partibus illis oportet decantari." — Bede, loc. cit. Paul Diac, Vita S. Gf'egorii, c. H. Joan Diac, Vita S. Gregorii, i. 21. Gotselini, Historia Maior de Vita S. Augustini, c. 4. Lap- PENBERG, p. 138. The name of iElla fixes the date of this incident to a period necessarily prior to the death of this prince in 588.

" Etiielwerdi Ohronic, lib. ii. c. 1. See his curious preamble to his cousin Matilda, in Savile, and the remarks of Lappenberg, p. 5b. says expressly that Gregory lodged his guests in the triclinium, where he loved to serve with his own hand the table of the poor, and that after he had instructed and baptized them, it was his desire to take them with him as his companions, and to return to their native land in order to convert it to Christ. All authors unanimously admit that from that moment he conceived the grand design of bringing over the Anglo-Saxons to the Catholic Church. To this design he consecrated a perseverance, a devotion, and a prudence which the greatest men have not surpassed. We have already seen how, after this scene in the slave-market, he sought and obtained from the Pope permission to go as a missionary to the Anglo-Saxons, and how, at the tidings of his departure, the Romans, after overwhelming the Pope with reproaches, ran after their future pontiff, and, overtaking him three days' journey from Rome, brought him back by force to the Eternal City.i^

Scarcely had he been elected Pope, when his great and cherished design became the object of his constant thought. His intrepid soul dwells on it with an unfailing interest, and his vast correspondence everywhere testifies itsexistence.^^ While waiting until he should discover the fit man to conduct this special mission, he never forgot the English slaves — the heathen children whose sad lot had been the means of revealing to him the conquest which God had in store for him, and whose brothers were to be found in the slave-markets of other Christian countries. He writes to the priest Candidius, who had the management of the patrimony of the Roman Church in Gaul, " We charge you to la}^ out the money which you have received, in the purchase of young English slaves, of seventeen or eighteen years of age, whom 3'ou shall train in the monastery for the service of God. In this way the coins of Gaul, which are not current here, will be put on the spot to a suitable use. If you can draw anything from the revenues which they say have been withheld from us, you must employ it equally either to procure clothing for the poor or to buy these young slaves. But as they will yet be heathens, they must be accompanied by a priest, who may baptize them if they fall sick by the way." ²⁰ At last, in the

" See ante, vol. i. p. 361.

•' Episi., ix. 108, ad Syagrium episc Augustodunensem. " Cum pro convertendis Anglis-Saxonibus, quemadniodum in monachatu suo proposuerat, assiduis cogitationura fluctibus urgeretur." — Joan. Diac, ii. 33.

20 a Volumus ut dilcctio tua... quatenus solidi Galliarum qui in terra sixth year of his pontificate, he decided to select as the apostles of the distant island, whither his thoughts continually carried him, the monks of the Monastery of St. Andrew, on Mount Coelius, and to appoint as their leader Augustine, the prior of that beloved house.

This monastery is the one which now bears the xhemonasname of St. Gregory", and is known to all who have tery whence visited Rome. That incomparable city contains few apo"sues of spots more attractive and more worthy of eternal ^°°''*°'^- remembrance. The sanctuary occupies the western angle of Mount Coelius, and the site of the hallowed grove and fountain which Roman mythology has consecrated by the graceful and touching fable of Numa and the nymph Egeria.^i It is at an equal distance from the Circus Maximus, the baths of Caracalla, and the Coliseum, and near to the church of the holy martyrs John and Paul. The cradle of English Christianity is thus planted on the soil steeped with the blood of many thousands of martyrs. In front rises the Mons Palatinus, the cradle of heathen Rome, still covered with the vast remains of the palace of the Ceesars. To the left of the grand staircase which leads to the existing monastery, three small buildings stand apart on a plot of grass.^^ On the door of one you read these words Triclinium Pauperum; and within is preserved the table at which every day were seated the twelve beggars whom Gregory fed and personally waited upon. The other is dedicated to the memory of his mother, Silvia, who had followed his example in devoting herself to a religious life, and whose portrait he had caused to be painted in the porch of his monastery.^^

Between these two small edifices stands the oratory dedicated by Gregory, while still a simple monk, to the apostle St. Andrew, at the time when he transformed his patrimonial mansion into the cloister whence were to issue the apostles of England. In the church of the monastery, which now belongs to the Camaldolites, is still shown the pulpit from which Gregory preached, the bed on which he took his brief repose, the altar before which he must have so often prayed for the conversion of his beloved English. On the fagade of the

nostra cxpcndi non possunt apud locum proprium utiliter expendantur.... Sod quia pagani sunt... volo ut cum eis presbyter transniittatur ne quid aegriiudinis contingat in via, ut quos raorituros conspexerit, debeat baptizarc." — Epist., vi. 7.

^' Ampere, U Ilistoire Romaine a Rome, pp. 4, 370, 498.
" Gekbet, Esquisse de Rome Chretienne, vol. i. p. 447.
^ Joan Uiac, Vita Gregorii, iv. c. 83.

church an inscription records that thence set out the first apostles of the Anglo-Saxons, and preserves their names.^* Under the porch are seen the tombs of some generous Englishmen who died in exile for their fidelity to the religion which these apostles taught them; and, among other sepulchral inscriptions, this which follows may be remarked and remembered: " Here lies Robert Pecham, an English Catholic, who, after the disruption of England and the Church, quitted his country, unable to endure life there without the faith, and who, coming to Eome, died, unable to endure life here without his country." ^^

Where is the Englishman worthy of the name who, in looking from the Palatine to the Coliseum, could contemplate without emotion and without remorse this spot from whence have come to him the faith and name of Christian, the Bible of which he is so proud— the Church herself of which he has preserved but the shadow? Here were the enslaved children of his ancestors gathered together and saved. On these stones they knelt who made his country Christian. Under these roofs was the grand design conceived by a saintly mind, intrusted to God, blessed by Him, accepted and carried out by humble and generous Christians. By these steps descended the forty monks who bore to England the word of God and the light of the Gospel along with Catholic unity, the apostolical succession, and the rule of St. Benedict. No country ever received the gift of salvation more directly

^* The following is the exact text of the inscription transcribed by the friendly hand of an eloquent monk of our time and country, Father Hyacinth, of the Barefooted Carmelites: —

EX HOC MOXASTEKIO PKODIERVNT

S. GREGOKIVS. M. FVNDATOR. ET. PARENS. — S. ELVTHERIVS. AB. — S. iflLA- HION. AB. — S. AVGVSTINVS. ANGLOR. APOSTOL. — S. LAVRENTIVS- CANTUAR. ARCHIEP. — S. MELLITVS. LONDINEN. EP. MOX. ARCHIEP. CANTVAU. S. JVSTVS EP. ROFFENSIS. S. PAVLINVS. EP. EBORAC. S. MAXIMIANVS. SYRA- CVSAN. EP. — SS. ANTONIVS. MERVLVS. ET. JOANNES. MONACHI. S. PETRVS. AB. CANTVAR.

HONORIVS. ARCHIEP. CANTVAR. MARINIANVS. ARCHIEP. RAVEN. PROBVS. XENODOCHI. lEROSOLTMIT. CURATOR. A. S. GKEGOEIO. ELECT. SABINVS. CALLIPOLIT. EP. FELIX. MESSANEN. EP. — GREGORIVS. DIAC. CARD. S. EU- STACH.

HIC ETIAM. Dltr. VIXIT. M. GREGORII. MATER. S. SILVIA. HOC. MAXIME. COLEN- DA. QVOD. TANIVM. PIETATIS. SAPIENTIAE. ET. DOCTRINAE.

LUMEN. PEPERERIT.

•'^ Quoted in the address of M. Augustin Cochin to the Congress at Malines, 20th August, 1863. from popes and monks, and none, alas! so soon and so cruelly betrayed them.

Nothing could be more sad and sombre than the state of the Church at the epoch when Gregory resolved to put his project into execution. This great man— by turns soldier, general, statesman, administrator, and legislator, but always, and before all, pontiff and apostle — had need of more than human boldness to take hand distant conquests, surrounded as he was by perils and disasters, and at a moment when Eome, devastated by plague, famine, and the inundations of the Tiber, mercilessly taxed and shamelessly abandoned by the Byzantine emperors, Avas struggling against the aggressions of the Lombards, which became every day more menacing.^s It is not without reason that a writer more learned than enthusiastic represents the expedition of Augustin as an act as heroic as Scipio's departure for Africa while Hannibal was at the gates of Rome-^'

Absolutely nothing is known of Augustin's history j^^^^^y of previous to the solemn days on which, in obedience to the commands of the pontiff, who had been his aries across abbot, he and his forty comrades tore themselves from the motherly bosom of that community which was to them as their native land. He must, as prior of the monastery, have exhibited distinguished qualifications ere he could have been chosen by Gregory for such a mission. But there is nothing to show that his companions were at that time animated with the same zeal which inspired the Pope. They arrived without hinderance in Provence, and stopped for some time at Lerins, in that Mediterranean isle of the Saints where, a century and a half before, Patrick, the monastic apostle of the western isle of Saints, had sojourned for nine years before he was sent by Pope Celestine to evangelize Ireland. But, there or elsewhere, the Roman monks received frightful accounts of the country which they were going to convert. They were told that the Anglo-Saxon people, of whose language they were ignorant, were a nation of wild beasts, thirsting for innocent blood — a race whom it was impossible to approach or conciliate, and to land on whose coast was to rush to certain destruction. They took fright at these tales; and in place of continuing their route, they persuaded Augustin to return to Rome to beseech the Pope to relieve them

^2* See ante,vo]. i. p. 356.

^'' Kemble, Saxo7is in England, vol. ii. p. 3o7.

from a journey so toilsome, so perilous, and so useless.^^ Instead of listening to their request, Gregory sent Augustin ^ack to them with a letter in which they were ordered to recognize him henceforth as their abbot — to obey him in everything, and, above all, not to let themselves be terrified by the toils of the way or by the tongue of the detractor. " Better were it," wrote Gregory, " not to begin that good work at all, than to give it up after having commenced it.... Forward, then, in God's name!... The more you have to suffer, the brighter will your glory be in eternity. May the grace of the Almighty protect you, and grant to me to behold the fruit of your labors in the eternal country; if I cannot share your toil, I shall none the less rejoice in the harvest, for God knows that I lack not good will." ^9

Augustin was the bearer of numerous letters of the same date,30 written by the Pope first of all to the Abbot of Lerins, to the Bishop of Aix, and to the Governor of Provence, thanking them for the hearty welcome they had given to his missionaries; and next to the Bishops of Tours, of Marseilles, of Yienne, and of Autun; and, above all, to Virgilius, Metropolitan of Aries, warmly recommending to them Augustin and his mission, but without explaining its nature or its aim.

He acted differently in his letters to the two young kings of Austrasia and of Burgundy, and to their mother, Brunehaut, who reigned in their name over the whole of Eastern France. In appealing to the orthodoxy which distinguished beyond all others the Frank nation, he announces to them that he has learned that the English were disposed to receive the Christian faith, but that the priests of the neighboring regions (that is, of Wales) took no pains to preach it to them; wherefore he asks that the missionaries sent by him to enlighten and save the English may obtain interpreters to go with them across the Straits, and a royal safe-conduct to guarantee their safety during their journey through France.^^ Thus stimulated and recommended, Augustin and his

23 << Augustini sanctorumque fratrum a maternis visceribus monasterialis ecclesiae avulserunt.... Nuntiatur quod gens quam peterent immanior belluis existeret." — GoTSELiNus, Historia Maior, c. 3, 6. " Perculsi tiniore inerti... ne tarn periculosam, tarn laboriosam, tam inmilem praedicationem adire deberent." — Bede, i. 23.

-^ " Quatenus etsi vobiscum laborare nequeo, simul iu gaudio retributionis inveniar, quia laborare scilicet volo." Bei>e, i. 23.

³⁰ 23d July, 596.

^yEpist., vi. 53-59. monkg took courage and again set out upon their way. Their obedience won the victory which the magnanimous ardor of the great Gregory had failed to secure. They traversed the whole of France, ascending the Rhone and descending the Loire, protected by the princes and bishops to whom the Pope had recommended them, but not without suffering more than one insult at the hands of the lower orders, especially in Anjou, where these forty men, in pilgrim garb, walking together, resting sometimes at night under no other shelter than that of a large tree, were regarded as were-wolves, and were assailed (by the women particularly) with yellings and abuse.'^^

After having thus traversed the whole of Frankish J^^„^g^^^ Gaul, Augustin and his companions brought their lands where journey to a close on the southern shore of Great a^s.^Tud Britain, at the point where it approaches nearest to s^.xousSiad the Continent, and where the previous conquerors ^!,^™gj of England had already landed: Julius CjEsar, who revealed it to the Roman world; and Hengist with his Saxons, who brought to it with its new name the ineffaceable impress of the Germanic race. To these two conquests, a third — destined to be the last — was now about to succeed. For it is impossible to place in the same rank the victorious invasions of the Danes and the Normans, who, akin to the Saxons in blood and manners, have indeed cruelly troubled the life of the English people, but have effected no radical change in its social and moral order, and have not been able to touch either its language, its religion, or its national character.

The new conquerors, like Julius Caesar, arrived under the ensigns of Rome — but of Rome the Eternal, not the Imperial. They came to restore the law of the Gospel which the Saxons liad drowned in blood. But in setting, forever, the seal of the Christian faith upon the soil of England, they struck no blow at the independent character and powerful originality of the people, whom, in converting them to the true faith, they succeeded in consolidating into a nation.

On the south side of the mouth of the River Thames, and at the north-east corner of the county of Kent, lies a district which is still called the Isle of Thanet, although the name of

^- " Tot homines peregrines pedestri incessu et habitu humiles quasi tot lupos et ignota monstra rcpulere. Mulierculaj sinuil conglonierattc tnnta... insania, tribulatu, despectu, subsannatione, derisione in sanctos Dei sunt debacchatae.... Stabat juxta ulnrus anipla... sub hac sancti volentes ipsa nocte requiescere."— Gotselincs, c. 10. isle no longer befits it, as the arm of the sea which at one time separated it from the mainland is now little better than a brackish and marshy brook. There, where the steep white cliffs of the coast suddenly divide to make way for a sandy creek, near the ancient port of the Romans at Richborough, and between the modern towns of Sandwich and Ramsgate,^^ the Roman monks set foot for the first time on British soil.^* The rock which received the first print of the footsteps of Augustin was long preserved and venerated, and was the object of many pilgrimages, in gratitude to the living God for having led thither the apostle of England.^^

Immediately on his arrival the envoy of Pope Gregory despatched the interpreters, with whom he had been provided in France, to the king of the country in which the missionaries had landed, to announce to him that they came from Rome, and that they brought to him the best of news — the true glad tidings — the promise of celestial joy, and of an eternal reign in the fellowship of the living and true God.36

The king's name was Ethelbert, which means in Anglo- Saxon oiobie and valiantP Great-grandson of Hengist, the first of the Saxon conquerors, who himself was supposed to be a descendant of one of the three sons of Odin, he reigned for thirty-six years over the oldest kingdom of the Pleptarchy — that of Kent — and had just gained over all the other Saxon kings and princes, even to the confines of Northumbria, that kind of military supremacy which was attached to

^^ It is pleasant to know that in this same town of Ramsgate, on the shore where the Abbot Augustin landed, the sons of St. Benedict have been able, after the lapse of thirteen centuries, to erect a new sanctuary, near to a church dedicated to St. Augustin, designed and built by the liberality of the great Catholic architect Pugin. This monastic colony belongs to the new- Benedictine province of Subiaco.

'* In a book entitled Historical Memorials of Canterbury, 1855, Dr. Stanley, Dean of Westminster, has examined and determined, with no less enthusiasm than scrupulous exactness, the facts relative to the arrival of St. Augustin. lie has contirmed the already old opinion which fixes the very place of his landing at a farm now called Ehbsfleet, situated upon a promontory, from which the sea has now withdrawn.

^3* Stakley, p. 14. Oakley, Life of St. Augustin, 1844, p. 91. This life forms part of the interesting series of Lives of the English Saints, published by the principal writers of thePuseyite school before their conversion.

^^ " Mandavit se venisse de Roma et nuntium ferre optimum... Eeterna in coelis gaudia et regnum sine fine cum Deo vivo et vero futurum." — Bede, i. 25.

^' The root Ethel, which we shall find in almost all the names, male and female, which we shall quote, corresponds to the German adjective edel, noble. the title of Bretwalda, or temporary chief of the Saxon Confederation.^^

It was to be supposed that he would have a nat- Queen ural prepossession in favor of the Christian reh'gion. i*crtha. It was the faith of his wife Bertha, who was the daughter of Caribert, king of the Franks of Paris, and grandson of Clovis, and whose mother was that Ingoberga whose gentle virtues and domestic troubles have been recorded by Gregory of Tours.'^^ She had been affianced to the heathen king of the Saxons of Kent only on the condition that she should be free to observe the precepts and practices of her faith, under the care of a Gaulo-Frankish bishop, Liudhard of Senlis, who had remained with her until his death, which occurred immediately before the arrival of Augustin. Tradition records the gentle and lovable virtues of Queen Bertha, and her judicious zeal for the conversion of her husband and his subjects. It is believed to have been from her that Gregory received his information as to the desire of the English to be converted, with which he had enlisted the interest of Brunehaut and her sons.^*^ The great-granddaughter of St. Clotilda seemed thus destined to be herself the St. Clotilda of England. But too little is known of her life: she has left but a brief and uncertain illumination on those distant and dark horizons over which she rises like a star, the herald of the sun of truth.

Meanwhile King Ethelbert did not immediately permit the Roman monks to visit him in the Roman city of Canterbury where he dwelt. While providing for their maintenance, he forbade their leaving the island on which they had landed until he had deliberated on the course he should pursue. At the close of some days he himself went to visit them, but he would not meet them except in the open air. It is difficult to imagine what pagan superstition made him dread foul play if he allowed himself to be brought under the same roof with the strangers. At the sound of his approach they advanced to meet him in procession.

" The history of the Church," says Bossuet,'*! " contains ^* Bede, i. 25; ii. 3, 5.

=** Greg. Turox., Hist. Franc, iv. 2G; ix. 2G.

*° " Quam ea conducerea parentibus accoperat, ut ritum fidei ac religionis suae cum cpiscopo quein ci adjutoreni fidei dederant, nomine Liudliardo, inviolatam servare liccntiam haberet." — Bede, loc. cit. '-rervenit ad nos Anglorum gentem ad fidcm Christianam Deo miserante desiderantei" velle converti." — S. Gregorii Epist., vi. 58; compare Epist., xi. 29.

*' Discours sur VHistoire Universelle. nothing finer than the entrance of the holj monk Augustin into the kingdom of Kent with forty of his companions, who, preceded by the cross and the image of the great king our Lord Jesus Christ, offered their solemn prayers for the conversion of England." At that solemn moment when, upon a soil once Christian, Christianity found itself once more face to face with idolatry, the strangers besought the true God to save, with their own souls, all those souls for whose love they had torn themselves from their peaceful cloister at home, and had taken this hard enterprise in hand. They chanted the litanies in use at Rome in the solemn and touching strains which they had learnt from Gregory, their spiritual fother and the father of religious music. At their head marched Augustin, whose lofty stature and patrician presence attracted every eye, for, like Saul, " he was higher than any of the people from his shoulders and upwards." ^^ The king, surrounded by a great number of his followers, received them seated under a great oak, and made them sit down before him. After having listened to the address which they delivered to him and to the assembly, he gave them a loyal, sincere, and, as we should say in these days, truly liberal answer. " You make fair speeches and promises," he said, " but all this is to me new and uncertain. I cannot all at once put faith in what you tell me, and abandon all that I, with my whole nation, have for so long a time held sacred. But since you have come from so faraway to impart to us what you yourselves, by what I see, believe to be the truth and the supreme good, we shall do you no hurt: on the contrary, we shall show you all hospitality, and shall take care to furnish you with the means of living. We shall not hinder j^ou from preaching your religion, and you shall convert whom you can." By these words the king intimated to them his desire to reconcile fidelity to the national customs, with a respect for liberty of conscience too rarely found in history. The Catholic Church thus met, from her first entrance into England, that promise of liberty which has during so many ages been the first and most fundamental article of all English charters and constitutions.

Faithful to his engagement, Ethelbert allowed the missionaries to follow him to Canterbury, where he assigned them a dwelling, which still exists under the name of the Stable

*^ " Beati Augustini formam et personam patriciam, staturam proceram et arduam, adeo ut a scapulis populosuperetnineret." — Gotsel., Vita, c. 45.

Gate. The forty missionaries made a solemn entry into the town, carrying their silver cross, along with a picture of Christ painted on wood, and chanting in unison the response of their litany, " We beseech Thee, Lord, by Thy pity, to spare in Thy wrath this city and Thy holy house, for we have sinned. Alleluia." It was thus, says a monastic historian, that the first fathers and teachers of the faith in England entered their future metropolis, and inaugurated the triumphant labors of the cross of Jesus.*^

There was outside the town, to the east, a small church dedicated to St. Martin, dating from the time of the Romans, whither Queen Bertha was in the habit of going to pray, and to celebrate the offices of religion. Thither also went Augustin and his companions to chant their monastic office, to celebrate mass, to preach, and to baptize.*^ Here, then, we behold them, provided, thanks to the royal munificence, with the necessaries of life, endowed with the supreme blessing of liberty, and using that liberty in laboring to propagate the truth. They lived here, says the most truthful of their historians, the life of the apostles in the primitive Church —assiduous in prayer, in vigils, in fasts; they preached the word of life to all whom they could reach, and, despising this world's goods, accepting from their converts nothing beyond what was strictly necessary, lived in all harmony with their doctrine, and ever ready to suffer or to die for the truth they preached. The innocent simplicity of their life, and the heavenly sweetness of their doctrine, appeared to the Saxons arguments of an invincible eloquence; and every day the number of candidates for baptism increased.'^'^

Such fair days occur at the outset of all great undertak-

*^ "Ad jussionem regis residentos, verbum Dei vita;, una cum omnibus qui adcrant ejus comitibus, prajdicarent.. ^. Pulchra sunt quidcm verba et promissa, sed quia nova sunt et incerta.... Nee probibemus quin omnes quos potestis fidei vestras religionis prajdicando societis.... Crucein pro vexilla ferentes argenteam et iniaginem Domini salvatoris in tabula depietam, laetaniasque can(|ptes.... Pro sua simul et eorum propter quos et ad quos venerant salute aeterna... consona voce." Beue, i. 25. "Tali devotione proto-doctoribus et in fide Christi proto-patribus Angliae mctropolim suani cum triumphali crucis labore ingredientibus: Aperite portas," &c. —GoTSELiNUS, Ilistoria 31inor de Vita S. Aug., c. 12.

*• The existing church rebuilt in the thirteenth century, occupies the place of that which is forever consecrated by the double memory of Eertlia the Queen and Augustin the Archbishop. The baptismal fonts are .shou-n there in which, according to tradition, King Ethelbert was baptized by immersion.

^** "Paratum ad patiendum adversa quojque, vel etiam ad moriendiim animum habendo.... Mirantes simplicitatem innoccntis vita; ac dulcedinem doctrinas eorum coelestis." — Bede, i. 26.

The spring- ings. TliGj do iiot last, thanks to the lamentable ciTul-cinu'' and incurable infirmity of all human things; but yet they should never be forgotten nor remembered without honor. They are the blossoming time of noble lives. History serves no more salutary purpose than in transmitting their perfume to us. The Church of Canterbury for a thousand years possessed unparalleled splendors; no Church in the world, after the Church of Rome, has been governed by greater men, or has waged more glorious conflicts. But nothing in her brilliant annals could eclipse the sweet and pure light of that humble beginning, where a handful of strangers, Italian monks, sheltered by the generous hospitality of an honest-hearted king, and guided by the inspiration of the greatest of the Popes, applied themselves in prayer, and abstinence, and toil, to the work of winning over the ancestors of a great people to God, to virtue, and to truth.

Baptism of The good and loyal Ethelbert did not lose sight of them; soon, charmed like so many others by the purity of their life, and allured by their promises, the truth of which was attested by more than one miracle, he sought and obtained baptism at the hand of Augustin. It was on Whit Sunday ,4^ in the year of grace 597, that this Anglo-Saxon king entered into the unity of the Holy Church of Christ. Since the baptism of Constantine, and excepting that of Clovis, there had not been any event of greater moment in the annals of Christendom.*"

A crowd of Saxons followed the example of their king, and the missionaries issued from their first asylumn to preach in all quarters, building churches also here and there. The king, faithful to the last to that noble respect for the individual conscience of which he had given proof even before he was a Christian, was unwilling to constrain any one to change his religion. He allowed himself to show no preference, save a deeper love for those who, baptized like himself, became his fellow-citizens in the heavenly kingdom. The Saxon king had learned from the Italian monks that no constraint is compatible with the service of Christ.^^ It was « 2d June, 597.

"' Stanley, p. 19.

*^ " Ipse etiam inter alios delectatus vita miindissima sanctorum et promissis... quEe vera esse miraculorura quoque multorum ostensione firmaverant.... Unitati se sancta? Ecclesire Cliristi crcdendo sociare. Quorum fidei et conversioni ita congratulatus esse rex perliibetur, ut nullum tamen cogeret ad Christianismum: sed tantummodo credentes arctiori dilectione, not to unite England to the Roman Church, it was in order to tear her from it, a thousand years after this, that another king and other apostles had to employ the torture and the stake.

In the meanwhile Augustin, perceiving that he should henceforward be at the head of an important Christian community, and in conformity to the Pope's instructions, returned to France in order to be there consecrated 25th Dec, Archbishop of the English by the celebrated Metropolitan of Aries, Virgilius, the former abbot of Lerius, whom Gregory had appointed his vicar over all the churches of the Frankish kingdom.

On his return to Canterbury he found that the example of the king and the labors of his companions had borne fruit beyond all expectation; so much so, that at the festival of Christmas in the same year, 597, more than 10,000 Anglo- Saxons presented themselves for baptism; and that sacrament was administered to them in the Thames at the mouth of the Medway, opposite that Isle of Sheppey, where is now situated one of the principal stations of the British fleet, and one of the grand centres of the maritime power of Great Britain.49

The first of the converts was also the first of the benefactors of the infant Church. Ethelbert, more and more imbued with respect and devotion for the faith which he had embraced, desired to give a notable pledge of his pious humility by transferring to the new archbishop his own palace in the town of Canterbury, and establishing henceforth his royal residence at Reculver, an ancient Roman fortress on the adjacent shore of the island on which Augustin had landed. Beside the dwelling of the king thus transformed into a monastery for the archbishop and his monks, and on the site of an old church of the time of the Romans, a basilica which was hereafter to become, under the name of Christchurch, the metropolitan church of England, was commenced. Of this church Augustin was at once the first archbishop and the first abbot.'^*^

quasi concives sibi rcgni coelestis, aniplecteretur. Didiccrat enim a doctoribus auctoribusque sute salutis, servitium Christi voluntarium, non coactitium esse debere." — Bede, i. 20. Yet Bede himself speaks, farther on, of those who had embraced tlie faith, " vel favore, vel timore regio." — ii. 5.

** S. Gregor., Epist., viii. 30. Stanley, op. cit., p. 19.

*" The immense cathedral of Canterbury, the reconstruction of which was begun by Lanfranc in the eleventh century, occupies the site of this earlier church and of the palace of Ethelbert.

The Pope Lad at first designed, as the seat of the new metropolis, the city of London, a Roman colony already famous from the time of the Emperors; whereas he had, perhaps, never heard the name of the residence of the Saxon kings at Canterbury. But London was not within the kingdom of Ethelbert, and the selection of the Pope could not prevail against the motives which determined Augustin to choose, as the head and centre of the religious life of England, the capital of the king who had become his proselyte and his friend, standing, as it did, in the region where he had first landed on British soil, and whose inhabitants had welcomed him with such genial sympathy.^i Abbey of But the splcudors and the influence of the tinat"(fau- ofiScial metropolis were lor long ages to be eclipsed, terbury. in file opinion of the English people, and of the Christian world, by another foundation, equally owing its origin to Augustin and Ethelbert, the first archbishop and the first Christian king of England. To the west of the royal city, and half-way to that Church of St. Martin whither the queen went to pray, and where the king had been baptized, Augustin, always on the outlook for any traces which the old faith had left in Britain, discovered the site of a church which had been transformed into a pagan temple, and encircled with a sacred wood. Ethelbert gave up to him the temple, with all the ground surrounding it. The archbishop forthwith restored it to its original use as a church, and dedicated it to St. Pancras, a young Roman martyr, whose memory was dear to the Italian monks, because the Monastery of Mount Coelius, whence they had all come, and where their father Gregory was born, had been built upon lands formerly belonging to his family. Round this new sanctury Augustin raised another monastery, of which Peter, one of his companions, was the first abbot, and which he intended to be the place of his own burial, after the Roman custom which placed the cemeteries out of the towns, and by the side of the highroads. He consecrated this new foundation in the names of the apostles of Rome, Peter and Paul; but it was under his own name that this famous abbey became one of the most opulent and most revered sanctuaries of Christendom. It was for several centuries the burying-place of the kings and primates of England,^^ and at the same time the *' Gkegor., Epist., xi. 65. Willelm. M.vlmesburiensis, Be Gest. Reg., i. c. 4, and De Doroberiiensibiis Episcopis, p. 111.

^- Ecclesiastical historians abound in testimonies of admiration for this

OF CANTERBURY, 159

first and brighest centre of religious and intellectual life in the south of Great Britain.

Seven years were needed to complete the monastery, the church attached to which could not even be dedicated during the lifetime of him whose name it was to assume and preserve. But some months before his death, Augustin had the satisfaction of seeing the foundation of the first Benedictine monastery in England sanctioned by the solemn ratification of the king and the chiefs of the nation whom he had converted.

The charter of this monastery has been brought to light in our day as the oldest authentic record of the religious and political history of England.^3 Our readers will thank us for quoting the text and the signatures of the witnesses. The Anglo-Saxon king appears in this transaction at once as a Christian prince and as the chief of the aristocratic assembly whose consent was necessary to the validity of all his deeds.^ He begins thus: —

immense house, whose patrimony extended to 11,860 acres of land, and •whose facade was 250 feet long. Perhaps one could read on that facade these verses quoted by a chronicler, and which recall the inscription on the front of St. John Lateran at Rome: —

*' Hoc caput Anglorum datur esse monasteriorura Regum cunctorura fons pontificunique sacrorura."

The abbot of St. Augustin of Canterbury received from Pope Leo IX. in 1055, the privilege of sitting in the first place after the abbot of Mount Cassino, in tlie general councils. The Monasticon Anglicanum of Dugdale, vol. i. p. 23, gives a very curious view of the state of the ruins of this abbey, towards the middle of tlie seventeenth century; a great tower, called Ethelbert's, but built much later than his time, can still be distinguished. In the Vestiges of Antiquities at Canterbury, by T. Hastings, 1813, folio, there are plates representing in great detail the remains, still considerable, but cruelly profaned and neglected, wliich existed in 1812 — the best preserved portion used as a brewery, and beside it a tavern with an enclosure used for cockfights. It has been restored recently, to a certain extent, tlianks to the munificence of Mr. Beresford Hope, and is used at present as a seminary for the Anglican missions. The house has had several historians, among others William Thorne {de Spina), who was abbot about 1358, and chiefly Thomas de Elmham. treasurer of the monastery in 1407, whose chronicle was edited by Mr. Ilardwick in 1858, for the collection of Eerum Britannicarum Medii JEvi Scriptores.

^^ Tlie authenticity of this deed has been admitted by one of the most learned and competent critics of our day, Sir Francis Palgrave, Rise and Progress of the British Commonwealth, vol. ii. pp. 215-18. Kemble, again, in his Codex Diplomaticus yEvi Saxonici, vol. i. p. 2, has published it with the asterisk which marks documents suspected or false; but he nowhere enters into any justification of this sentence.

^* " Convocato ibidem concilio communi, tam cleri quam populi, omnium et singulorura approbatione et consensu, monasterium... monacliis liic perpetuo Deo servituris.., cum dotatione, confirmatione ac perpetua libertate donavit." — Elmham, p. 111.

" I, Ethelbert, king of Kent, with the consent of the venerable archbishop Augustin, and of ray nobles, give and concede to God, in honor of St. Peter, a certain portion of the land which is mine by right, and which lies to the east of the town of Canterbury, to the end that a monastery may be built thereon, and that the properties hereinafter named may be in full poseession of him who shall be appointed thereof. Wherefore I swear and ordain, in the name of Almighty God, who is the just and sovereign judge, that the land thus given is given forever — that it shall not be lawful either for me or for my successors to take any part of it whatsoever from its possessors; and if any one attempt to lessen or to annul our gift, that he be in this life deprived of the holy communion of the body and blood of Christ, and at the day of judgment cut off from the company of the saints.

" t I, Ethelbert, king of the English, have conjGrmed this gift, by my own hand, with the sign of the holy cross.

" t I, Augustin, by the grace of God archbishop, have freely subscribed.

f I, Eadbald, son of the king, have adhered.
" t 1, Hamigisile, duke, have approved
" f 1, Hocca, earl, have consented.

" t I, Angemundus, referendary, have approved. " t I, Graphic, earl, have said it is well.

" f I, Tangisile, regis oplimas, have confirmed.
" t I, Pinca, have consented.
f I, Geddi, have corroborated." ^^

85 it j^gQ Ethelbertus, rex Cantise, cum consensu venerabilis archiepiscopi Augustini," &c. — Kemble, loc. cit. The deeds of gift executed by the Anglo-Saxon kings always announce the consent, ducmn, comitum, optimatiimqjie, and are always signed by the counts and principal lords, or by the bishops and abbots; the formula Favi, or consensi, or approbavi, often accompanies the proper name, which is always preceded by a cross: f. This cross did not occupy the place of the signature, as has been represented, nor did it at all indicate that the subscriber could not write. Kemble, in a note to his preface, p. 91, seems to indicate that the two signatures of Angemundus and Graphio, with the accompanying qualifications, warrant him in ranking the whole deed in the list of apocryphal documents. Palgrave gives, after Somner's Canterbury, p. 47, another text with the same title, where the signatures, arranged in the same order, are not accompanied with any qualification. He proves elsewhere, p. 214, that the most disputed of the Anglo-Saxon documents have almost always some authentic deeds as their basis, the original authenticity of which ought not to be called in question on account of real or apparent anachronisms resulting from subsequent amplifications or alterations. Almost all the Anglo-Saxon deeds that we can still read are strongly confirmed, according to him, by what he calls their internal evidence. These charters rest on history, which in its turn rests on them; each thus confirming the other.

OF CAXTEEBUEY. 161