Columbia ©nttjer^^ftp THE LIBRARIES SAINT AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY ; .UX^m&mi |&(f^f^?5>^vg)^y^^feygxcxp) [FVcv--,- c-a-i Miniatures from the C.C.C. M.S., Cambridge, No. 2S6, the so-called St. Augustine's Gospels. Fro>i/isJ>/ece. THE BIRTH OF THE ENGLISH CHURCH SAINT AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY BY Sir henry H. HOWORTH K.C.I.E., Hon. D.C.L. (Durham), F.R.S., F.S.A., Etc. Etc. PRESIDENT OF THE ROV. ARCH. INST. AND THB ROY. NUMISMATIC SOCIETY AUTHOR OF "SAINT GREGORY THE GREAT" ETC. ETC. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS MAPS, TABLES AND APPENDICES NEW YORK E. P. BUTTON AND COMPANY 1913 ^ 3T . 4^ \4 ?4-S2-. 15-2' '' TO PROFESSOR WILLIAM BRIGHT AND BISHOP BROWNE OF BRISTOL I WISH to associate the following pages with the names of two English scholars who have done much to illuminate the beginnings of English Church history, and to light my own feet in the dark and unpaved paths across that difficult landscape. I have extolled their works in my Introduction, and I now take off my hat to them in a more formal way. An author's debts can often only be paid by acknowledgment and gratitude. PREFACE In writing a previous work dedicated to the life of Saint Gregory I purposely omitted one of the most dramatic events in his career — namely, the mission he sent to Britain to evangelise these islands. My purpose in writing that work was not to publish a minute and complete monograph of the great Pope. That had already been done in a much larger book by Mr. Dudden, — but to give an account of him such as would enable my readers to understand what manner of man it was who first conceived the notion of sending a Christian mission to the English race ; what were the surroundings in which he lived ; what was the position he filled in the drama of European politics at the beginning of the seventh century ; what was the nature of the administrative changes he effected ; how he governed the Church and its possessions ; how he dealt with the secular rulers of Europe ; what was his mental attitude towards the great theological problems of his day and how he affected the future history of thouo-ht, especially of religious thought. To give, in fact, in sufficient detail and with as complete accuracy as I could command, a picture of the Man and the Pope \vhose scholars and whose friends were the first viii PREFACE missionaries to the English race, and who brought with them what he had taught them. That work I meant to be the foundation-stone for a further volume in which the story of the Pope's English mission should be told as completely as I could tell it. This volume I now offer as a victim to my critics. I feel, as I have always felt, that these islands are, both geologically and historically, only de- tached fragments of a much larger country, and that neither their geology nor their history can be understood without a continual reference to the geology and history of the other European lands. Especially is this the case with their religious history. Whatever polemics there may be about the ties of the earlier Church here, generally known as the British Church, there can be no question whatever that the Church of the English was the daughter of Rome. What the missionaries broug^ht with them and planted here was what they had learnt very largely indeed from the lips of the great Pope whose spiritual children they were, for they had been trained in the monastery he had founded, where he had spent much of his leisure, and where his heart was generally to be found when his body was elsewhere. It is a misfortune that we have next to noth- ing recorded in regard to the personal views of the missionaries themselves, on religious or secular subjects. Not a scrap of their writings (if any ever existed) has survived. The documents containing the story of their mission, scanty as they are, deal PREFACE ix only with its external aspects. For an account of the Christianity they planted here, its dogmatic leanings, its ritual, and its general policy, we must turn to the voluminous writings of their devoted father and master, Gregory. Hence the necessity for a careful survey of the great Pope's life and works as a preparation for any satisfactory study of the mission. This, as I have said, I made in the previous volume. The present volume deals with the history of Gregory's venture from its inception to its close on the death of Archbishop Deusdedit, when the Epis- copal succession derived from Augustine came to an end, and had to be revived under more promising conditions by Archbishop Theodore. It does not profess to deal with the British or with the Scotic Church. With both of them that mission had slight ties and both of them have an entirely different history, with which I may deal on another occasion. It is njt a very exhilarating story that I have to tell, for, notwithstanding a good deal of romantic writing by soft-hearted and sentimental apologists, the mission was essentially a failure. The conditions were, in fact, difficult and unpromising. The part of England then possessed by the English, instead of being governed by one sovereign or one royal stock, as in Gaul, was broken up into several rival principal- ities, at continual feud with each other. They had only one common occasional tie, in the person of a specially redoubtable person among the rival princes X PREFACE who became for a while supreme, and for a while held the hegemony of the whole country, which presently passed to another strong man. This dis- integrated condition of the community presented great obstacles to any concerted action on the part of the champions of a new faith. It led to jealousies, and it offered wild souls who preferred the religion of their fathers a ready means of finding a champion, if not at home, in some neighbouring state, to oppose those who surrendered to the new God and the new forms of magic (as they doubtless understood the ritual of the foreigners) of the Italian monks. I hope I have made it plain in the previous volume that Gregory, although not technically a monk, was a very ideal monk in his heart and aspira- tions. Religion meant very largely with him a devotion to asceticism and a sacrifice and surrender of this life, in order maybe to purchase another and a happier existence beyond the clouds. He would have liked the whole world to be a monastery and all mankind to be clad in homespun, to abnegate all kinds of aesthetic living, and to devote them- selves to penitence and prayer. Hence he forms the one heroic figure in the history of monkery. He idealised the monkish life and monkish stand- ards, and he accepted as more or less divinely in- spired the mystical thought and the materialised dreams and imaginings which pursue men when they press asceticism to the verge of endurance and starve their bodies and punish them with pain and suffering, until their morbid thought has become PREFACE xi more or less ecstatic and epileptic. His Dialogues prove this most completely. With this ideal of life, he was the first Churchman of great parts who deliberately placed the monk's role and career above that of his secular brethren. Parish priests who had to live a much more trying life in, and continually to associate with, the world, its diseases and its crimes, and to apply such remedies to them as they could with their frail weapons, had, he thought, a humbler sphere. Gregory not only placed the life of a secular priest at a lower ideal level than that of a monk, but he deemed it largely inconsistent with a monk's vocation. He was also re- sponsible for introducing the germs of what became, perhaps, the most pernicious of all innovations on the Christian polity of primitive times — namely, the exemption of monasteries from episcopal supervision and the loosening of their disciplinary regimen. The fact that the missionaries who came to evangelise the English were rnonks and not secular clergy, and the consequences that followed, are so important that I must be forgiven for enlarg- ing somewhat on the ideals of the early monks and their methods of attaining them. The theory underlying the monastic life has some difficulty in justifying itself by an appeal to the New Testament. The institution was not of Christian origin. It had close ties with some forms of Jewish asceticism as practised by the Essenes and other Jewish sects among whom the secluded life had be- come widely prevalent at the opening of the Christian xii PREFACE era, and it was with one of these sects that Christ's precursor, John the Baptist, probably passed the greater part of his career. But we find nothing re- sembHng monasticism in the teaching of Christ or embodied in His scheme. The central and original idea of a monk's life was not the bettering of the world and the leavening of his fellow-men with higher aspirations, by working among them, and teaching those who were weaker, more ignorant, or more un- fortunate than himself how to spend more profitable and joyful lives. Not at all. The monk's chief pre- miss was, and still is, that this life is unprofitable and utterly wicked and base ; that all its joys are delusive ; and that every man has as much as he can do, to make sure that when he bids good-bye to the world he shall himself attain to perfect happi- ness in another home. The helping and bettering of others was to him a very distant vision. What he had to do was to save his own soul, and asceticism, in theory, means the ransom of a soul which is by nature wicked, by means of a lifelong penance and punishment and prayer. According to this theory, a man must cut himself off from the world and from his fellow-men. He should neither consort with them nor even exchange thoughts with them except when literally necessary, but rather devote himself to self-contemplation and introspection. In- stead of treating the body as of equal importance and dignity with the soul, with which it is united by a necessarily indissoluble tie as long as life continues, the link was interpreted by the monks as an unholy PREFACE xiii alliance between a body ruled by passions and a soul capable of higher things. The only way to eventually release the soul from its degrading bondage was to continually mortify and punish the body, to compel it to resist all its natural crav- ings and appetites and to deny it everything which could be deemed pleasure or happiness or joy. This, as we have seen, was the express teaching of St. Gregory, the great apostle of the monks. He continually urged upon his disciples the duty of perpetual penance so as to secure a safe haven for themselves in a future life. In order to gain this future, painted by him as one of ineffable happiness, he held that pain, misery, and self-imposed torture were the most fitting apprenticeship and preparation. This was the typical monk's theory of life in the earlier centuries after Christianity, and it was rigidly practised by the lonely hermits and anchorites. Presently, certain of these hermits found it convenient for various reasons, and notably that of protection against external enemies, to associate themselves in communities living close together. In these they prayed on certain days in the same church and sometimes they fed together in the same room, while their various cells were enclosed by one pro- tecting wall. They, however, kept up the initial idea of rigid seclusion in other respects. Each had his own hut, where he lived and slept and prayed ; the common life being as much restricted as possible, and the solitary and silent one encouraged. These communities were presided over by some autocratic xiv PREFACE old member of the body with a reputation for greater sanctity, which often meant a capacity for sustain- ing life under especially trying conditions. Such communities were to be found all over the Christian East, and are still the models on which the monas- teries of the Greek Church are constituted. A Greek laura is a mere aggregation of hermits. This continual struggle against all the instincts and the natural desires of men and women and of the tender promptings of their hearts, was no doubt more easy to maintain among the single anchorites living apart and under the close eye of pupils and devotees than in the enclosed communities, where the afflatus and extreme tension had a tendency to relax and the discipline to become affected. Presently, wiser men began to see that the process of continually inventing new forms of self-torture must be restrained if a pretence of sanity was to be kept up, and that they must devise some limitations to fanaticism and some regulation of the life of the com- munity which should not entirely-crush all the hum- anity out of the men who joined it. They proceeded to qualify the stringent extravagance of penance, and of almost continuous prayer and introspection, by some other employment which should be salutary both for the health of the body and the health of the mind ; and otherwise to regulate and systematise the life of the brotherhood. Such a body of regula- tions was known as a Rule, and there were several such put together by the founders of various in- dividual monasteries, or of groups of monasteries. PREFACE XV Among these a very famous one, as we have seen in an earlier volume, was the Rule of St. Benedict. Benedict introduced a great deal of sane human wisdom and good sense into his monasteries, and especially encouraged, among other things, the element of well-regulated labour of the body, to act as a tonic to the continual mental strain which had a tendency to produce hysteria and paralysis of the mind. Under Benedict's Rule again, there grew up a corporate devotion and loyalty among the brethren, first of a monk to his own monastery, and then of each member of a house to those of any other house in the same Order. This family feeling among the monks was fostered by the largely democratic character of the Benedictine constitution. Thus a remedy was found for the strongly individualised and self-centred life practised by the anchorites. The new departure had excellent results in other ways. As the monasteries increased in size and wealth by the gifts of the pious, their posses- sions needed more and more skill in manage- ment. The establishments became more and more, not merely communities for practising continual asceticism and prayer, but great farms and manu- factories where everything necessary for the life and health of the community was studied and practised. Not only was farming pursued with skill and know- ledge, but road-making, and draining, and convey- ing pure water for drinking, and making ponds for stocking fish, and plantations for providing timber and firewood, were all practised in most scientific xvi PREFACE fashion. All this involved a condition of things as far removed as can be conceived from the ideals of St, Pachomius and St, Macarius, It led, no doubt, to what the historians of the monks have every right to claim as largely their work — namely, the reclaim- ing of large parts of the land in Western and Central Europe from waste and desert, and the spreading, by means of the intercommunion between the larger houses, of a knowledge of all the arts of rural life, which was supplemented by schemes for educating the young and ignorant, and the practice of skilled calligraphy for the multiplication of books. This state of things, however, took a long time to grow. The monks who were sent to convert the rough, heathen Eno-Iish were not men of business and men of the world of the type of their later descendants at Malmesbury or Peterborough or Gloucester, who were accustomed to deal with men and to face difficulties in doing so, but were very simple folk, who had virtually lived like hermits and thought like hermits. Those who have pictured for us the mission of Augustine and his brethren have too often had in their minds not St. Gregory's pupils, but monks like those of St. Albans in the days of its glory, or of Downside in our own day. Even in later times the useful work done by the monks in civilising the Western World must not allow us to forget that there was another side to the question. In theory, the life of the monastery was regulated by the Rule say of St. Benedict, and in many matters it PREFACE xvii was so in practice also. The growth of wealth and the manifold employments and responsibilities of great monasteries must, however, have interfered greatly with discipline and with the ideal monk's life. Especially did it do so as the life in the richer monasteries became more luxurious, more attractive, and indeed far more comfortable, than that in the feudal castles or the lonely manor-houses of the laity. This led to men repairing thither to pass easy lives rather than with rigid ideas of asceticism. Princes and great nobles, princesses and great ladies, flocked to the cloisters, and adopted the outward garb of monks and nuns, but not their spirit, and gave an- other turn to the life within and without. This was encouraged by the appointment of the abbots in the larger abbeys being in many cases really, though not always formally, controlled by the King. They had become too rich and powerful to be the mere nominees of the monks, and the kings and great nobles began to look on the abbeys as prizes to be given to their rela- tions and supporters. These recruits often came in not as monks, but as useful politicians. According to St. Benedict's Rule, each monastery was an entirely separate institution from every other, and entirely self-governed. This made it more difficult to main- tain high standards and good discipline everywhere, and laxity of discipline due to the want of supervision was the eventual cause of monastic decay. Hence the necessity that was found by the great reformers of the Benedictines in later times, such as the founders of the Cistercian and Cluniac Orders, tq xviii PREFACE affiliate all their houses to the mother-house, and thus to have a system of careful control and an annual conference of all the abbots of the Order, so as to maintain uniformity of practice and of life, instead of each monastery having individual theories of laxity or strictness largely dependent on the character of the abbot for the time being. The best remedy in such a case was the independ- ent one of episcopal visitation. To this the monks have always had great objections. The ecclesiastical life of the Middle Ages is full of instances of struggles by abbeys to escape from episcopal control and visitation, and of the employment of forgery and chicanery galore, in order to secure their ends. In this struggle the continual tendency of the Holy See was to support the monks, who became in most countries the janissaries of the Pope. For him they fought very largely with the same weapons and by the same sinister acts by which they fought for their own hands. Saint Gregory, great Pope as he was, did infinite harm in this, as in so many instances, by misinterpreting the signs of the future. A monk in heart, as we have seen, he was always ready to foster monkish in- dependence of control. From his day we may definitely date the begin- ning of the invasion of the primitive right of bishops and synods to direct the affairs of the Church in all ways, and the gradual substitution of an imperium m miperio in every diocese where a monastery existed. Not only did this tend to destroy PREFACE xix the original ideal of church polity and of Christian life as presented in the Bible, but to substitute another ideal for it — that which has borne its richest fruits not among- Christians but amono- the Northern Buddhists of Tibet and the Southern ones of Ceylon and Burma. The monks presently became very largely the authors of a continually changing kaleidoscope of new cults, of new ritual, of new moral theories. They further exalted the condition of celibacy into a special virtue, and were largely responsible for the substitution of devotions to the Virgin (whom they idealised in a morbid way, per- haps natural to secluded celibates) for the primitive worship of the Deity. The monastic theory of sur- rendering the will and thought of the monk to his abbot was extended presently to lay folk and their priests. By dangerously enlarging the theory of confession, it eventually became the most potent instrument for sapping the virility of the human conscience. Presently again, when the Orders had greatly increased, and had to compete with each other for the good things of life, and for the good will, the help and patronage of the poor and ignorant laity, whose faith in southern climates is so much coloured by its dramatic trappings, they also began to compete in providing more and more highly seasoned food to attract the never- satisfied appetite of the credulous and the ignorant. They accordingly became the great purveyors of miracles, of the cult of relics, of the multiplication of saints, pilgrimages, of images with special virtues. XX PREFACE and of revived pagan forms of magic. In their efforts to do this they defied all the attempts of bishops and clergy to restrain them, until they had over- laid the Christianity of primitive times by a revived paganism which may be best studied in the villages of Southern Italy, of Sicily, of Spain, and of Latin America. Above all things, they became the special bodyguard of the Pope, always ready to fight for the enhancement of his authority and for the corresponding degradation of the episcopate, of which the Pope was theoretically only the senior member. Thus the administrative machinery of Christianity itself became entirely changed. This aspect of monachism has been very much minimised by professed Church historians, whose role it is to hide these unattractive and for- bidding aspects of the past in a misleading and quite spurious glory, instead of letting men profit by the mis- takesof their best-meaningancestors. No onedoubts that in their inception the changes were well meant, but they involved a false analysis of human nature and its frailties, which are always tending to mis- take exaggerated emotional tendencies for religion. In view of all this, it must be kept perpetually in view that Gregory's mission to England was entirely manned by monks. It seems perfectly plain that, with the exception of certain individuals (very few are recorded) who were necessary to serve the altar, none of them were priests, nor in fact in holy orders, but were simply laymen who had taken perpetual vows of poverty, humility, and obedience, PREFACE xxi and lived by a Rule. They consorted together in communities in the large towns. There were no parishes, no parish priests ; but the monks used to travel from place to place at stated times and hold baptisms and preachings, while occasionally they would take a priest with them who administered the Holy Sacrament. The only parishes were the dioceses, which were called parochia. All this is difficult for us to realise, and more difficult because of the scantiness of our materials ; but it emphasises the fact that the mission of St. Augustine was a monks' mission, and worked from a monastery. It was like the early Spanish missions in South America and the Philippines, and very unlike such missions as those sent out by the Church Missionary Society in charge of one or more secular priests, and having the parochial system in view. The missioners whom Gregory sent were themselves hardly sympathetic harbingers of good tidings. They had an unfamiliar (quiteforeign)physicalappearance,olivecomplexions, black hair, and strange garb. They spoke a foreign tongue, and if some succeeded in learning the native speech, it must have been imperfectly and no doubt they spoke it with a strong accent. If there were interpreters, they were very indifferent conduit pipes between the debased Latin speech of most of the preachersand the understandings of the rudewarriors. Under these circumstances, they were probably tempted to gain the favour of their semi-heathen and only half-converted flocks by making compromises with old beliefs, old legends, and old divinities. xxii PREFACE They reconsecrated to Christian uses ancient holy wells and sacred trees, while the whole machinery of a more ancient magic was ever readily adapted to the new faith by having new nam.es given to it or being dressed in fresh clothes. The prime difficulty of all, however, was doubtless the tempera- ment of their chief Augustine, an unsympathetic person, with little tact, and pursued by the small thoughts and small issues that act as gadflies on men who live secluded lives, as witness his well-known questions sent to Gregory on difficult matters, some very trivial and some very unclean, and described later on. It thus came about that while the Roman missionaries made little headway, those who went out from lona and Lindisfarne and represented another allegiance proceeded to the conversion of the greater part of England to the Faith. It is not easy to say how much of the ritual and practice which was followed by the missionaries was other than that preached at Rome and was de- rived from that of Gaul. Some of it we know was so derived, and it may well have been thought suitable to their new conditions by the missionaries who had stayed a considerable time there on their way. Nor must we forget that a Gallic mission had already sown some scattered seeds in Britain. It accompanied the French Queen on her way hither, and the new missioners would probably like to make their prac- tices conform as closely as they could to those which were already familiar to some of the community. I have tried to make the story as complete as PREFACE xxiii possible by incorporating a record of every fact accessible to me, and I hope I may have illuminated some dark points and corrected some errors. Inter alia, I have thought it right to give a detailed account of the decayed and poor fragments of the sacred buildings positively known to have been put up by the missioners. They are the only docu- ments remaining on British soil which we can certainly identify with Augustine and his immediate successors, and if they have no artistic merit they are at least genuine. They no doubt represent very much the kind of buildings then being put up in Gaul : shadows of shadows of Roman structures built for the most part with Roman bricks or Roman dressed ashlar, and in the Roman fashion of walling, and they mark the depth to which the architectural art had then sunk. As a background to the picture, I have continually had in view what was passing else- where than in these islands, and have given a con- densed notice of the history of the Empire, of Spain, and of Francia (as Gaul then began to be called), in all of which lands the dramatic history of the Church was at that time passing th rough great and far-reaching changes material and moral. These, however ap- parently far off, had effects on the outermost skirts of Christendom. Among them the most important was the final conquest of Spain by the Visigoths, who had now become orthodox, and the overwhelming of three of the four Eastern patriarchates by the Muhamme- dans, who also gave the Empire very heavy blows in the latter years of Heraclius and his successors. xxiv PREFACE The history of the Papacy itself at this time is for the most part uninteresting, and only known in a fragmentary fashion. The most dramatic events, apart from the life of Honorius, are those relating to the Popedom of Martin i., which has been absurdly misinterpreted by most Church historians. Their views I have partially corrected by an appeal to a learned Benedictine who belongs to an Order famous not only for its learning but for its ingenuous treatment of history. Meanwhile, the Western World was sinking into greater intellectual lethargy and decay, and especially in Italy and Gaul. The Church in Spain, so recently converted to orthodoxy, had become a centre and source of movement in which several fine scholars took a part. This vigour was marred by the characteristic Spanish temper of impatience at the existence of intellectual liberty, and the persecution of Jews and heretics. The one un- sullied centre and focus of religious life, of mission- ary enterprise, and of devotion to learning, was Ireland, the last green spot which the sun in his daily journey across the Atlantic suffuses with gold and purple from his exhaustless palette. Alas, that this phase in the history of a gifted and unhappy race, whom fortune has generally treated as a step- daughter, should so soon have passed away ! We must never forget, however, that during the period we are dealing with, Columbanus in Gaul and Switzerland and Columba at lona were holding up for man's guidance, across the fearful waves PREFACE XXV that then tormented the Christian world, great lamps whose glow filled all Europe from lona to Bobbio and St. Gallen. The three appendices which close the volume deal with matters which, although somewhat remote from the affairs of England, are im- portant enough in the annals of Europe and of the Church at the time we are dealing with, and which needed discussion in view of the latest lights and information about them. I would especially commend the Second Appendix to my readers. In it I have tried to analyse with some pains the difficult question of the position of Pope Honorius in regard to the issue of Papal Infallibility. The historical methods of Baronius, Bellarmine, and Turrecremata are no longer in fashion, and few of their polemical writings have any value for us. Upon no subject did they confuse the judgment of honest folk so much as upon this one, and upon no other have they so much embarrassed the apologists of their Order and of their Faith. I have tried to do justice to a great Pope and an honest man, and to show how his assailants have led their Church to Coventry in their attempts to distort and falsify the clearest light of history. They have done so in support of a paradox whose conditions they cannot or dare not define — namely, that of Papal Infalli- bility. Perhaps those who are not interested in that issue may be interested in the wider one I have raised in regard to the authority of the so-called Fathers and Doctors of the Church to settle dogmas. xxvi PREFACE 1 am not sure that the real gravity of this issue has been hitherto sufficiently appreciated. The Third Appendix deals with the status and position of the Papal Nuncios at Constantinople, and with the mode of selection of the Popes in the sixth and seventh centuries. The Nuncios were much more important persons than is sometimes suspected, and, as a recent Catholic writer says : " To be sent as apocrisiariits to Constantinople was to graduate for the Papacy." The first Appendix contains a detailed account of the terrible ravages of the plague in the sixth and seventh centuries, and o-ives a list of its known victims, which proves how terribly the Church must have suffered from the attack ; for we probably only have a tithe of the names of those who were in Orders and died, names which are doubtless limited to the most prominent Churchmen. Meanwhile, may I crave a kind thought from my readers if I have enabled them even in a small way to see a little farther into the shadows that shroud so much of the history of our country in the seventh century. May I ask that they will be patient when they come across occasional errors of fact or temper or taste, and not expect me to be as immaculate as themselves, nor disdain altogfether what has been the result of much labour and thought, because of the wretched flies that may have crept into my pot of ointment while I have been nodding. 30 CoLLiNGHAM Place. H. H. HOWORTH. December i, 1912. CONTENTS FAGB Preface . . . . . • . vii Introduction ...... xxxi The Emperors, Popes, and the Kings of the Franks and Visigoths, from 595 to 664 . Ixxxiii Genealogy of the Descendants of Chlothaire II. Ixxxiv The English Archbishops and Bishops, and the Abbots of St. Augustine's, from 597 to 664 . Ixxxv The Episcopal Succession from Augustine to Damian ...... Genealogy of the Kings of Kent and Essex Genealogy of the Kings of East Anglia . Genealogy of the Kings of Deira . Genealogy of the Kings of Bernicia Addenda Ixxxvi Ixxxvii Ixxxvii Ixxxviii Ixxxviii Ixxxix CHAP. I. II. III. IV. V. VI. Appendix I. : The Bubonic Plague in the Sixth AND Seventh Centuries . . . • Appendix II.: Pope Honorius and the Mono- thelites ....••• Appendix III.: The Popes and their Nuncios at Constantinople ...••• I 38 87 198 240 318 343 366 406 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Miniatures from the C.C.C. M.S., Cambridge, No. 286, THE SO-CALLED St. Augustine's GOSPELS . Frontispiece FACING PAGE England a.d. 597 to 652 . . , . .1 The Marble Throne of St. Gregory . . .18 The Three Chapels of St. Andrew, Santa Silvia, and Santa Barbara, originally built by Saint Gregory, and rebuilt in the Seventeenth Century. (I owe this drawing to my friend, Mrs. E. McClure) ....... 24 The Church of Saint Martin at Canterbury, as it is now ..'.... 44 Remains of Saxon Work at St. Martin's, Canterbury 46 Remains of the Saxon Church of St. Pancras at Canterbury . . . . . .72 The so-called St. Augustine's Chair at the Cathedral, Canterbury . . . . . .96 Ground Plans of the Saxon Churches of St. Martin's AND OF St. Pancras's, Canterbury ; of the Saxon Cathedral at Rochester, and the Saxon Church AT LyMINGE ...... 172 The Old Altar of St. Augustine's at Canterbury, with the Shrines of ^Ethelberht, King of Kent, and of the early Archbishops grouped around it. (From an engraving in the first edition of Dugdale's Monasticon) . . . . . . .186 XXX LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PACING PAGE Ground Plan of the Church of Paulinus at York . 262 The Two Sides of the Cross in the Churchyard at Whalley. (Attributed by Bishop Browne and others to Paulinus) ....... 266 The Inscribed Cross at Hawkswell, near Catterick. (Attributed by Hubner, Bishop Browne, and others, to James, the Deacon of PauHnus) .... 328 The Reliquary of St. Eanswitha at Folkestone. (I owe this photograph to my friend Sir Martin Conway) . 334 INTRODUCTION The authorities for the contents of this volume are largely the same as those for the previous one on St. Gregory which were described in its introduc- tion. They begin with the letters of that Pope, which were of course strictly contemporary and con- stitute testimony of the best quality. The Pope's correspondence was entered up, as we saw, in a register comprising thirteen and a half volumes, each volume devoted to a single year, the last year being incomplete.^ The first to use these letters was a learned priest named Nothelm, who became Archbishop of Canterbury, and who made copies of a certain number of them relating to St. Augustine's mission which he sent to Bede to be used in his Church History of England. As I remarked in the previous introduction, it is curious that there should have been any necessity for these copies, for the originals ought to have then been at Canterbury. It is plain, from a subsequent letter of Bishop Boniface to Archbishop Ecgberht of Canterbury, that only a partial selection of the letters in the papal register (whether relating to Britain or not is not stated) were abstracted by Nothelm, for Boniface ^ See H. H. Howorth, Life of Gregory the Great, xvii-xix. xxxii INTRODUCTION was able to send some others to his correspond- ent. As I also pointed out in the previous intro- duction, the original registers have long ago been destroyed. Fortunately, although a considerable number of the Pope's letters have been lost, a very large proportion of them remain in several collections, about which I have given ample in- formation in my previous introduction. In the present volume, as in the previous one, I have relied upon the edition of Gregory's letters edited by Ewald and Hartmann, which, although by no means perfect, is very much better than any other. I have quoted this edition by the initials of the editors, referring to each letter by the number of the original volume of the register in which it occurs, with the number of the letter as given by E. and H. I have also had continually by my side the excellent translation of a large number of the more interesting letters by Dr. Barmby in the Library of Post-Nicene Fathers, where the letters are illuminated by excellent annotations. The first of Gregory's letters in which the English are referred to is not contained in Bede. It was written in September 595 by the Pope to Candidus, his agent in Gaul, and instructs him to spend a portion of the papal funds in his hands in the redemption of Anglian slaves.^ The next letter is dated 23rd July 596. It is not preserved in any of the existing registers, ^ See E. and H. vi. lo ; Barmby, vi. 7 ; infray p. 7. INTRODUCTION xxxiii and was perhaps never entered in them. It is, however, given by Bede, and may have been derived by him from the records at Canterbury. John the Deacon, who quotes it, apparently derived it from Bede. This letter was addressed to St. Augustine's companions (whose hearts had failed them) in order to encourage them.^ It was taken with him by Augustine on his return from Rome after his visit there," to cheer the faint-heartedness of his colleaQues. Dated on the same day are a number of com- mendatory letters to the rulers and bishops of Gaul, recommending Augustine and his com- panions.^ They are abstracted, and their contents are discussed in the following narrative (pp. 28- 35). They are all contained in the extant copies of the papal registers. In September 597 Gregory wrote a letter to Queen Brunichildis, in which, inte7' alia, he thanked her for her kindness to Augustine and his com- panions.'^ In July 598 he wrote to Eulogius, Patriarch of Alexandria, reporting to him the success of Augustine's mission.^ This and the previous letter are both contained in the extant papal registers. In July 599 Gregory wrote again to Brunichildis and told her that he was sending a pallium to Syagrius, the Bishop of Autun, to reward him for the zeal he had shown in assisting Augustine and ^ Vide infra^ 30. ^ It is given by E. and H. vi. 50a. 3 See E. and H. vi. 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, and 57. * E. and H. viii. 4. ^ E. and H. viii. 29. xxxiv INTRODUCTION his companions/ Of the same date is a letter written directly to Syagrius, in which he makes the same acknowledgment." None of these letters are in Bede. In the year 597-98, Augustine, having been consecrated Bishop, sent a mission to Rome to re- port about the progress of his venture to Gregory. Its head, the presbyter Laurence, also took with him a letter from Augustine to the Pope containing a series of questions on points of practice and ritual in which he had found some difficulty. This mission on its return to England brought back a num- ber of other letters dated ist June 601. Three were addressed to Queen Brunichildis and her two sons, thankine them for their treatment of Augrustine and his companions, and asking for similar favours for Laurence and his party ;^ another to Chlothaire 11., Kinof of Neustria, also commendincj Laurence and his party.* ' Others, again, were sent to the bishops of Gaul, to whom Gregory introduced the presbyter Laurence and his companions.^ These are not in Bede. The Pope further wrote letters to ^thel- berht, King of Kent, and his wife Bertha,^ and to St. Augustine himself.' These three last letters are contained in Bede. Several of the whole series are dated on the 2nd January, while Nos. 34, 35, 36, 40, 41, 42, 44, 50, 51 are dated simply in June. The arrangement of these letters by Ewald and 1 E. and H. ix. 213. ^ lb. ix. 222. ' lb. xi. 47, 48, 49, and 50. * 7(5. 51. * lb. xi. 34, 38, 40, 41, 42, 45- ® ib- ^'" 35 ^nd 37. ^ lb. xi. 36, 39. INTRODUCTION xxxv Hartmann is not very logical, a fault which is found elsewhere in their excellent work. Laurence and his companions (almost certainly) took back with them to Enoland another document — namely, Gregory's answers to St. Augustine's letters. These answers have given rise to a fierce polemic, and their authenticity has been questioned or denied by those who have had special reasons for disliking their contents as more or less sophisticating Pope Gregory's orthodoxy. I have discussed the ques- tion at length farther on,^ and have shown what a great weight of authority there is in their favour, including some recent Roman Catholic writers with critical acumen, and I have no doubt myself that the answers in question were the handiwork of the great Pope. These responsions or answers are not contained in the papal registers, but are pre- served by Bede. Ewald and Hartmann took their text of them^ from Bede. One great difficulty which those people have to face who question the authenticity of the responsions is that, if forged, they must have been forged before the time of Bishop Boniface, who refers to them in a letter written before 741. After Laurence and Mellitus with their com- panions had left Rome they were followed by a messenger from the Pope carrying another letter in which he corrected an instruction of his own in regard to the treatment of the heathen temples by the mis- * Infra, pp. loo-l 14. * xi. 56a. xxxvi INTRODUCTION sionaries. This letter was addressed not to Lau- rence but to his companion, Mellitus. It is preserved in the codices labelled R by Ewald, and also by Bede/ and is discussed below (p. 128, etc.). It is dated i8th July 601. This is the last letter in Gregory's corre- spondence in which he refers to Britain. Contemporary with Gregory the Pope was Gregory the Bishop of Tours, whose work on the Franks is a priceless record for the history of the Merovingian period in France. It is notable that he should have so little to say about England, showing what a remote and unimportant area it was in his time. He does not refer at all to Augustine's mission ; while in his account of the marriage of the Princess Bertha, daughter of King Charibert, he does not give us the name of her husband, yEthelberht, nor of any other English ruler. The little he has to tell us about the people beyond the Channel is incorporated in the following pages. The only other documents of a contemporary date professing to have to do with the English Church are certain charters granting lands and claiming to have been given by the kings of Kent to the new Church, and also certain laws attributed to yEthelberht, King of Kent. I say "pro- fessing" advisedly, for, with the exception of the laws, I have no doubt that all these documents are sophistications. The charters granting lands were 1 H.E. i. 30. INTRODUCTION xxxvii published by Kemble in his well-known work entitled Codex Diplomaticus, and were reprinted in another and enlarged form by my old friend Mr. de Gray Birch. It is a great pity this latter work has not been completed. It also much needs a com- mentary and annotations, and especially a revised judgment upon the authenticity and contents of the documents. I must now say a few words about those of the charters which come within the period I am dealing with. I will begin with one or two a priori arguments. In the first place, it is exceedingly unlikely that Augustine or the monks who went with him, or belonged to his mission, would have had with them anyone skilled in the production of charters. They were going on what was largely deemed a hopeless venture, and would not be likely to provide for the contingencyof drawing up charters. With the second mission under Theodore the case was different. The Church had then been already planted, and we are expressly told that he took with him a person skilled in the art in question. It is quite likely that the Kentish king gave the monks lands, but they would not be of the class called bocland [i.e. secured by charters), but of the sort called folcla^id, and conveyed in a much more primitive way by what lawyers call livery of seisin. Secondly, knowing as we do Bede's care and zeal in treating of the earliest history of the English, and the very competent and learned correspondents and friends he had to help him, it is reasonable to treat all xxxviii INTRODUCTION documents of this early time which profess to deal with the English Church and are not mentioned or quoted by him with suspicion. Quite a number of these exist, and may be roughly put into two classes. First, those which may have been concocted more or less innocently by the custodians of the charters in order to give a more stable and easily proved title to property already theirs. In this class of document we may generally trust the descriptions and boundaries of the lands as reliable, since it was a very difficult matter in the Middle Ages actually to appropriate other people's property in the face of a public inquest, which could always be demanded by the person aggrieved. On the other hand, the terms of the document, the names it contains and also the dates, and more especially the names of the witnesses, are generally entirely sophistications. A second class of spurious documents is much more dangerous and misleading, and consists of deeds deliberately forged for the purpose of securing not lands but privileges for various abbeys. These privileges generally consist in exemptions from Episcopal control and supervision. Thomas of Elmham, In his book on St. Augus- tine's Monastery, gives us a number of documents of both classes. He was treasurer of the abbey in 1407, and there Is no reason for attaching any suspicion to himself. He doubtless reports and copies what he saw there. One of the deeds he mentions was in fact already known to Sprott, whose chronicle INTRODUCTION xxxix extended to 1232, and was thus written a long time before Elmham's day. He makes it the foundation of his account of a synod said to have been held at Canterbury in 605 ; ^ while another of the documents, which is sealed with a leaden bulla, is copied, with a drawing of the bulla, in the Harleian MS. 686. It is pretty certain that at the beginning of the thirteenth century there were certain documents and charters at St. Augustine's Abbey purporting to belong to the end of the sixth and the first half of the seventh century, and that they were accepted by the three historians of the abbey — Sprott, Thorne, and Thomas of Elmham — as genuine. There cannot be a doubt that they were all forgeries. The evidence for this is plain, and they have been pro- nounced to be spurious by all recent scholars, including Kemble, Haddan and Stubbs, and others. Let us now try and analyse the evidence about these documents. First, the external evidence. On the 29th of August 1168 a fire broke out at St. Augustine's Abbey. It is described by Thorne, the last entry of whose chronicle is dated in 1397, and who tells us that down to the year 1232 his story was chiefly based on that of Thomas Sprott, which is not now extant. Thorne tells us that in this fire many charters perished " in qua combustione multae codi- cellae perierunt.'' We not only have evidence, however, of the destruction of the charters at St ' Haddan and Stubbs, iii. p. 56. xl INTRODUCTION Augustine's, but also of others having been forged. In the great struggle that took place between St. Augustine's Abbey and the Archbishop about privileges in the twelfth century, it was contended on the part of the latter that the documents produced by the monks were spurious. Archbishop Richard says in his letter to Pope Alexander iii., written about the year 1 1 80 : Moiiasteria enim quae hoc beneficiuin damnatissimae liberialis, sive apos- tolica atLctoritate, sive, qtwd freqitentius est, biillis adtilterinis, adcpta sunt, phis inquietudinis, plus inobedientiae, plus inopiae inc2irreru?it : ideoque et multae domus, quae nominatissiinae stmt in sanctitate et religione, has immunitates attt nunqttam habere voluertmt, aut habitas contimw rcjecerimt. Si ei^go Malmesburiensis abbas, qui aptid nos reputatur arbor sterilis, fiats fatua, et ti^tmcus inutilis, ad nos venerit, velmiserit, vitam et opinioneni illitts in libra justitiae appendatis ; nee illitis admittatis privilegia, donee manifeste liqueat, ex collatione scriptztrae et bullartt77i, quo teinpore, et a qiiibus patribus sunt indzdta, Falsariorum enim praestigiosa malitia ita in episco- porum contumeliani se armavit, td falsitas in omniiun fere monaster iorufn exemptione praevaleat, nisi in decisionibus et examinationibus faciendis judex veritatis exactor districtissimus inter cedat} The suspicions here referred to were followed up by a challeno^e to the Abbot of St. Augrustine's to show his privilegia in public, and so vindicate the * Vide Peter of Blois, ep. Ixviii ; Hardwick, Thomas of Ebnham, XXX, xxxi. INTRODUCTION xli claim he had raised of complete exemption from the Archbishop's jurisdiction. " The challenge was, however, declined once and again amidst the taunts and laughter of the Christ Church monks, who asked exultingly if truth was fond of corners, or if the possessors of a genuine document were likely at such a crisis to shrink from public examination. After a long delay the matter was submitted to the judgment of the Pontiff, who issued a commission empowering certain persons to visit St. Augustine's, to inspect the ancient privileges, and to forward their report to him. Again, however, the inquiry was delayed on account of the invincible tergiversation of the monks." ^ Fresh commissioners were now appointed in the persons of the Bishop of Durham and the Abbot of St. Albans, in whose presence, only the more important of the documents were produced. These consisted of two of th.Q pj'iz'ilegia professedly granted by King .^thelbert and one by Augustine (to be afterwards described), while the rest of the documents were carefully concealed. Gervase of Canterbury, a champion of the rival establishment at Christ Church, describes the result of this examination in some graphic phrases: '' Prohilerunt," he says, " itaque tandem aliquando monachi abbatis schedidas dttas, quas sua originalia constanter esse dicebant. Quarum pritna vetustissiiua erat rasa et subscripta, ac si esset e^nendata, et absque sigillo. Hanc ^ See Gervase of Canterbury, Chron., col. 145-48 ; Hardwick, Thomas of Elmhant, xxxi andxxxii. xHi INTRODUCTION dicebant regis Ethelberti esse privilegium. Alia vero schedula inulto erat recentior, de qua bulla plumbea cum iconia episcopi nova valde dependebat. Hanc cartulani sancti Atto;ustini dicebant esse privilegiiim. In his auteni privilegiis, iiituentitmi judicio, haec maxime notanda fitertmt : In prima latcdabilis quidem fuit ■vehcstas, sed rasa fuit et inscripta, nee zlIHus sigilli munimine roborata. In alia vero repreheiisione dignum fuit, qiiod nova extitit ejus littera et bulla czim vetustatis esse deberet annorum quingentoj'um octoginta, id est a tempore beati Augustini^ cttjus esse dicebatur. Fztit etiam notatum^ immo notorium et notabile, quod bulla ipsius plumbea fuit, cum non soleant Cisalpini prae- sules vel primates scriptis S7iis authenticis bullas plumbeas apponere. Models etiam Latini et forma loquendi a Romano stilo dissona videbantur. Haec duo solummodo privilegia in 7nedium prolata sunt, cum alia nonnulla se habuisse monachi jactitarenty^ It will be seen, therefore, that suspicions existed as long ago as the twelfth century in regard to the documents we are discussing. No wonder that the whole process of the securing of privileges of exemption, and in fact of any advantage, by the monks, was then felt to be steeped in chicanery and falsification, and that no document relating to such privileges can now be accepted as genuine without the closest inspection. The practice was virtually universal, * Gervase, op. cit., col. 1458 ; Hardwick, Thomas of Elmham, pp. xxxii and xxxiii. INTRODUCTION xliii and good examples may be found in the whole- sale forgeries (now universally admitted to be such) among the early charters of Peterborough, Evesham, Pershore, Chertsey, Malmesbury, etc. etc. The practice of forgery was in fact reduced to a fine art by the monks, and I cannot quote a better proof than the case of Croyland as described by Ingram in the Archceological Journal long ago. By a lucky chance he came upon the whole of the details of the manufacturing and forging of the documents which were afterwards produced as evidence in the struggle between the Abbeys of Croyland and Spalding in the law courts, by which the latter monastery was completely undone. In regard to the charters from St. Augustine's, we not only know that they were forged, but we can actually recover the name of the forger. This information is contained in a document quoted in Wharton's y^ 7/^/7^2; Sacra, 1691, vol. ii. preface, p. iv. It is a letter of y^igidius. Bishop of Evreux, written to Pope Alexander, which is sealed with his seal and labelled, '' Aigidii Dei gratia Ebi^oicensis Episcopi,'' and which is itself endorsed Contra falsa Privilegia S. Aztgustini ; qualiter per unimi monachuni fahariimi S. Medardi adtUterinis privi- legiis se nnmierunt. I prefer, in order to avoid all question, to quote it in its original Latin. " Quavi gravis inter Regem Henrinmi et me servum Vestrae Sanctitatis in initio nostri Episco- patus exorta sit discordia pro repai'atione libertatis Ecclesiarum Norman, quae a multis retro tempor- xliv INTRODUCTION ibus conculcatae fue^^ant ; discretioneni vestrant non credinius ignorare. Illius siquidem persecutionis turbine motiat Parochiae no strae fines exire compulsi^ portum nonnisi in Apostolicae pietatis sinubus in- venire potuinius. Quae et quanta nobis solatia foelicis memoriae B. Innocentius Papa contulerit vix mens potest concipere vel lingua proferre. Inter quae hoc luiuni quia ad modernorum non crediinus notitiam pervenisse, vestrae Discretioni, tanqiMfu dignum memoria, praesentis scripti re- latione studuimus intimare. Dum B. Innocentius Remis celebraturus Concilitim advenisset ; me minimum servoi^um Dei cum fratribus et filiis nostris ex more contigit interesse. Inter caeteros autem, quos nobiscum adduximus^ R. in Abbatem B. Audoeni, W. in Abbatem Genmieticensem electi, nee benedicti, Apostolico se conspectui in Abbatum ordine praesentarunt. Quorum electio7iem, iinmo dejectionem, dum Apostolicis auribus inthnarem, discreto more suo ab eis diligentius inquisivit, si forte aliquibus Privilegiis autenticis mtcnirentzcr, quorum patrocinio eorum personae vel Ecclesiae a Metro- politani subjectione comprobarentur immunes. Dtcm hae Apostolica sollicitudo diligenti scrutaretur in- stantia ; venerabilem vivum G. Catalaunensem Episcoptim, quonda7n Abbatem B. Medardi, ex divino munere contigit affuisse. Qui, dum B. Audoeni Electus circa quaestionem apostolicam haesitaret, nostrae dubitationi fine77i imposuit, et illitcs praesump- tionis tumorem antiquae recordationis fre^io com- pescuit. Ait enim, quod dum iii Ecclesia B. INTRODUCTION xlv Medardi Abbatis officio fungeretur ; quendmn Gvernonem nomine ex Monachis suis, in ultimo confessionis articulo se falsarium fuisse confessum^ et inter caetera, quae pei' dive^^sas Ecclesias sig- mentando conscripserat, Ecclesiam B. Audoeni et Ecclesiam B. Augustini de Cant, adulterinis privi- legiis S2Lh Apostolico nomine se nmnisse, lamentabihter poenitendo assertiit. Quin et ob mercedem ini- quitatis quaedam se pretiosa ornamenta recepisse confesstLs est, et ad B. Medardi Eclesiam detulisse. Qtio audito B. Innocentius praedictum est sciscitatus Episcopzwi, si qiLod de plana interlocutus fuerat, jusjurandi religione firmaret f Quod se facturum vir Dei, religionis et veritatis ainator, propostiit. Quo audito Dominus Papa : Eia, inquit, mi frater carissime, indue te ornamentis dignitatis tuae, et praesentibus Electis sub professione canonica 7namim benedictionis inpone : qttod ego impetrata licentia aggressus sum. Ipse quod mirabile dictu est, venera- bilium patriim conventum ejus adventum expectanttum ingredi super sedit ; quoad ego secum intraturus, benedict is 7nte Abbatibus, advenirciu. Haec Pater Sanctissime vobis duximus exaranda ; exorantes, ut si praedictas Ecclesias contra institutiones patrias aliquid usurpare fuerit comprobatum ; vos more solito et debito Ecclesiis sinzuHs suam conservetis in omnibus aequitatem. " Venerabili Patri ac Domino charissitno Alexandro Dei gratia S. R. E. Summo Pontifici E. eadem gratia Ebroicensis Ecclesiae humths minister, servus tuae Sanctitatis, obedientiam de- xlvi INTRODUCTION votam et reverentiam. Quae in schedula scripta sunt, quain vobis cum sigillo 7iostro Cantuariensis praesentat Ecciesia, ab ore bonae ntemoriae Hugonis q2tondam Rothoniagensis Ecclesiae Archiepiscopi, pair is et patrtti niei, accepiums, et sigillo suo signata ad B. Tkomam et Ecclesiain Cantuariensein t^'ans- viissimus ; tit Veritas recordationis antiquae eoriini presufnptionein compescat, qui in spirittt ei^roris et spiritu mendacii indebitain sibi vindicant libertateni. Privilegia autem, quae ex confessione Gaufridi Cata- lanensis Episcopi in praesentia Saiictae recordationis Innocentii Papae adulterina probata sunt, et praedicto Domino nostro Archiepiscopo reddita, de mandato ejitsdemDomininostri igni covibiu^endapropriis mani- bus tradidimus. Conservet Deus personam vestram Ecclesiae sitae per tempora longiora incohimem.''^ These are only samples, and may be compared with the much greater and more far-reaching forging of decretals and Papal Bulls, etc., in the early ninth century, to sustain the increasing and audacious ambition of the Holy See, which decretals were supported by many Popes, and by the most learned Cardinals and Canonists, while most out- rageous pretensions were based on them, which are now treated as mere discreditable litter by honest men of all schools and of all faiths. I should hardly have given so much room to these facts but for the extraordinary point of view still maintained in certain quarters by those persons who claim for ecclesiastical documents that they virtually attest ^ Op. cit, v., vi. INTRODUCTION xlvii themselves without proof and do not need to be stringently verified before they are accepted. Take, for instance, the very latest historian of the Popes, Father Mann,^ who has exceeded all other recent apologists in the absence of critical intelligence in dealinof with historical evidence. In reoard to the very documents we are discussing (against which, as we have just seen, the external evidence is complete) he thinks he has established their authority by quoting the uncritical writers of another age. Thus he says : " In their Monasticon and Syiiodicon Dugdale and Wilkins have re- spectfully registered the Catholic title-deeds of Old England. That was to show wisdom and patriotism " ! ! ! It is fortunate for the cause of historical truth that this has not been the way in which the problem has been approached by all the great critics of another day and of our time. G. Hickes, the most learned of Anglo-Saxon scholars of the seventeenth century, devotes a part of his great Thesaurus to a discussion of spurious docu- ments and the method of testing them. One of the most critical tests he insists on (and he had a very wide experience), is that no genuine Eng- lish documents before the reio-n of Charlemao^ne are dated by the year of the Incarnation, but by Indictions, etc. Thus he says : Nam prima et secunda chartae is this codicis, quae Mthelberhti I, regis nomine factae sunt, confedae esse dicuntur Anno * op. cit. i. 402, etc. xlviii INTRODUCTION ab incarnatione Christ i DCV. indictione odava. Veruin chart as istas 7ion modo " non liberas a suspi- cioiie" ut pro vwdestia loquitur Spebnannwn^ sed plane falsas, illius arguinenta, quibtts addi possunt, ostendunt. Quatnobreiu annum Christi incarna- tionis ad annum indie tionis, ineunii, ant provecto septinio seculo, chartis accessisse tantum abest, ut constet ; ut de eo maximum incertum sit. Vei^um inito octavo seculo eove haud multum promoto, in designandis chartarum temporibus ad annum indic- tionis annus dominicae incarnationis frequentius jam turn usitatus accessit, ut in carta Mthelbaldi regis in superioribus . . . citata? The acute and able analysis which Hickes applied to testing the legitimacy of Anglo-Saxon documents has been in almost every case accepted by modern critics, and notably his chief touch- stone — namely, the method of dating documents. Professor Earle agrees in the main with Hickes, differing only in a small matter. Speaking of the introduction of the method of dating from the Incar- nation, he says : " Bede was the first to plant it in Literature, as in his De Tempor2C7n Ratioue, cap. 45, entitled De Annis Do7ninicae Incarnationis^ and still more conspicuously in his History, which is chrono- logically framed upon it. Indeed, this way of reckoning time holds so conspicuous a place in the structure of his History as to suggest that the skeleton of his work was a series of annals arranged upon a scale of years Anno Domini, * ConctL, p. 125. 2 Hickes, Diss. Efiist. 80. INTRODUCTION xlix like the work of those English chroniclers who must be regarded as his successors in the historical office. . . . The chronological evidence of our early- documents, so far as it goes, tends to the same conclusion. ... If we take a series of eight documents at the highest date where such a series can be formed, with a certainty of their genuine- ness, they will be of the following years : 679, 692, 697, 732, 734, 736, 746, 759. These docu- ments have been selected as a true representative series of the first quality ; and of this series the first five, though all more or less dated, whether by the month, or the regnal year, or the Indiction, or by all these at once, have not the year Anno Domini. On the other hand, the last three aofree in using the era, and from this time the practice is continuous. In the intervening year, which breaks this series into two parts, falls the death of Bede, a.d. 735, and this coincidence harmonises with the rest of the evidence in associating this great practical improvement with the Anglian his- torian and chronolog-ist."^ Let us now turn to the documents cited by Thomas of Elmham, from the collection of charters at St. Augustine's. Of these he copies out the one he calls Carta I. in facsimile in a cursive hand, and also in what he calls scriptura moderfia. It professes to be a grant by ^thelberht of a certain piece of land of his own ("juris mei," he says) lying in the ^ Earle, Land Charters and Saxon Documents^ Intr. xxxii and xxxiii. 1 INTRODUCTION eastern part of Canterbury round about the Church of St. Pancras. This charter is marked as spurious by Kemble/and is so treated by Haddan and Stubbs.^ This conclusion follows, inter alia, from the fact that it is dated by the Incarnation. Birch adds an attesting clause and the names of several witnesses.^ This document is one of the sophistications which was doubtless meant to supply a genuine deed that had been destroyed. The only part of the charter which is acceptable is that containing the boundaries of the land conveyed, which runs thus : In oriente ecclesia Sancti Martini ; in meridie via of (sic) Burhgat ; in occidente et in aquilone Drutingestraete. The next deed is marked Carta II. by Thomas of Elmham((9/.^zV. 1 1 1 and 1 1 2), and professes to convey certain lands called Langport from yEthelberht to the Abbey of St. Peter and St. Paul. This is also given in two forms, in facsimile and in a more recent writing. The charter'* is also marked as spurious by Kemble, and, like the previous one, was doubtless concocted to establish a written title in lieu of one dependent on reputation, for the lands it concerns. It is also dated by the Incarnation and attested by the King, by his son ^dbald or Eadbald, by Augustine, whose name occurs between these two, and by a num- ber of witnesses whose names are impossible and quite imaginary — namely, Hamigisil dux, Hocca comes, ^ Vol. i. 2. 2 iii_ ^2, etc. etc. ^ These are only found in MS. Harl. 358, f. 475. They are appar- ently corruptly copied from the similar clause in the next charter. * CD. vol. i. 3 ; Haddan and Stubbs, op. cit. iii. 53 and 56, INTRODUCTION li Augemund referendarius, Grapho (sic) Comes, Tani- gisil regis optimas Pinca and Geddi. What are names and titles like Grapho and Comes doingina document of the sixth century?^ The boundaries doubtless represent those of an estate belonging to the Abbey. They are /71 oriente ccclesia saiicti Martini. Et inde ad orientein be Siwendoune. Et sic ad aguilonem be Wycingesmarce. Itertnnque ad orientem et ad aMstruni be Burhivaremarce. Et sic ad atistrtnn et occidentem be Cyningesmarce. Item ad aquilonem et orientem be Cyningesuiarce. Sicqtie ad occidentem to Riderescaepe. Et ita ad aquilonem to Druting- straete. Sprott founds upon this charter an imagin- ary council of Canterbury, where it was professedly confirmed,^ To this Council Elmham also devotes a paragraph. He goes on to say that it met on the 5th of January 605, and was attended by ^thelberht, his wife Bertha, his son /Edbald, and St. Augustine.^ The third charter given by Elmham refers to a grant by ^^thelberht of lands at Sturigao, other- wise called Cistelet. This is also given in dupli- cate, — one in early cursive and the other in later script, and in it the king professes to have had it written out by Augemund. It is professedly witnessed by Augustine, the Archbishop, by Bishops Mellitus and Justus of London and Rochester, by the king's son ^dbald, by Hamigisil, Augemund the referendarius. Counts Hocca and Graphio, and * These witnesses also attest with different words (a quite fantastic process), as coftfirmavt, subscripsi, favi, laudavi, consensi, approbavi, benedixi, corroboravi. ^ See Haddan and Stubbs, iii. p. 56. " Op. cit. no, \\i. Hi INTRODUCTION Tanigisil, Pinca, Geddi, and Aldhun, optimates, quite impossible names, and by many others whose names are not given. Those which are given quite condemn the document. It is marked as spurious by Kemble and Haddan and Stubbs, and is dated in the forty- fifth year of the king's reign, on the 5th of the Ides of January. Dr. Bright refers to it as " the spurious charter of y^thelberht marked as third, which," as he says, "uses remarkable language, thus: Cum consilio . . . Archipraesulis Augustini. Ex suo sancto sanctorum collegio venerabilem viruni, secum ab apostolica sede directum. Pet7'um monackum elegi eisque ut ccclesiasticiis ordo exposcit abbatcin prae- postii} The following passage breathes the air of quite a different period : Qiwd monasterium ant ecclesiam, ntdlus episcoporwn, nulhis siiccessorum meorum regum in aliquo laedere aut inquietare praesumat, nuliam omnino szibjectionem in ea sibi ttsurpare azcdeat, sed Abbas ipse qui ibi fuerit ordinatus, intzis ct foris cznn consilio fratrum, secundum lienor em Dei libere eam regat et ordinet'' etc. There are no boundaries given in this charter, and it looks, from the last clause quoted, as if it had been concocted by the Monk of St. Medard. The fourth document as numbered by Thomas of Elmham is the so-called bull of Saint Augustine, in which he is alleo"ed to have conferred great privileges on the Abbey of St. Peter and St. Paul, and of which Elmham says, '' Eja, vere nostra Augustea regia.'' It is also given in two forms in an ^ Op. cit.. Early English Church History, 3id ed., 105, note i. INTRODUCTION liii early and a late script, together with a drawing of the seal or bulla, which was made of lead. The use of such pendent bullae at that time having been con- tested by some, Elmham professes to reply and to quote the example of a foreign bishop who had used one, as was alleged by Philip, Count of Flanders. Elmham says the particular bulla on the document we are discussing contained a representation of the Virgin and Child with a legend round it which could hardly be read [qtiae legi poterit, niinime apparente). The foreign example he had quoted contained the figure of an abbot, and was, he urged, apparently the seal of some abbey dedicated to St. Stephen.^ It was clearly a document of much later date. This Privilege of Augustine is marked as spurious by Kemble. Bright says of it : "a docu- ment called a bulla or privilegium sub bulla plumbea, professing to come from Augustine and exhorting his successors to ordain the Abbots of this monas- tery, but not to claim authority over them, and to treat them as colleao^ues in the Lord's work, is clearly an Augustinian invention." He adds that its language betrays it.^ While the four documents just analysed have been rejected as spurious by all modern scholars, the next one I am turning to, has been generally treated as genuine, notably by Kemble, Professor Earle, and Haddan and Stubbs. I am afraid that, so far as I can see, it must be put in the same category with the rest. It is contained in a 1 Op. cii. 122, 123. 2 Qp^ elf 104^ note 5. e liv INTRODUCTION volume devoted to documents chiefly referring to Rochester, put together by Ernulf, Bishop of that See, and known as the Texttis Roffensis. Bishop Ernulf had once a better reputation than he has now. As I have shown elsewhere, thereare grounds for believing that he was at the back of, and responsible for, the Peterborough forgeries. He was Abbot of Peter- borough before he became Bishop, and I have little doubt that he would have had few scruples in regard to manufacturing a document if a title deed was missing or some privilege was to be secured. The document in question has been said to bear no suspicious contents, and it was certainly spoken of in high terms by the father of Anglo-Saxon studies, namely, Hickes. Earle quotes the latter's very favourable view of it contained in the following words : " Exstantvero {chartae) quae vii. seculo inito, et deinceps confectae erant, vettistissimae. Scilicet charta JEthelberti I. regis Cantiiaroruin, omnium antiquisima . . . cujus apogi'aphum- exstat in " Textus Roffenis,'' folio i \(^a, . . . quae omnimodam ve7'itatis speciem prae se ferty ^ The contents of the charter seems to me entirely to condemn it. Thus it is dated the 4th of the Kalends of May, Indiction vii., i.e. 28th April 604, and yet entirely ignores Augustine and refers to his successor as "the Bishop of Canterbury"; but since Augustine did not die till the 26th of May, this seems conclusive in regard to the genuineness of the charter. In addition to this difficulty the ^ Diss. Ep, p. 79. INTRODUCTION Iv wording of the charter is singular. In it y^thel- berht commends his son Eadbald to the CathoHc faith in an odd phrase : Ego Mthelberhtus Rex filio vieo Eadbaldo adnionitionem catholicae fideioptabilem. It ends with the words : Hoc ami consilio Laiirencii Episcopi et omnium principzwz 7neoTiim, signo sanctae crucis coiifirniavi, eosque jussi iU mecimi idem face- rent. Amen. There are no signatures of the witnesses, who are thus said to have attested it. Again Rochester is called Hrofibrevis, which is ridiculous. Its Roman name was Diirobrevis, while the English called it Hrofa, Hrofeceaster, or Rofe- ceaster. And of Justus its bishop it is said : ubi praeesse videtur Justus Episcoptis. " Ubi praeesse videtur'' could hardly be applied in a Rochester document to the then Bishop of the See. Again, the conveyance is not as usual to the Bishop, but to St. Andrew himself. The King is made to say : tibi, Sancte Andrea, ttiaeque ecclesiae . . . trado aliqtiantulum telluris viei. While I have no doubt myself that the charter is spurious, it is pretty certain that the boundaries mentioned in it really describe property once be- longing to the church at Rochester. They are set out in the vernacular (which is another suspicious circumstance at this date) : fram Sudgeate zvest, andlanges wealles, od nordlanan to straete ; and' swa east frain straete od doddingkyj'nan ongean bradgeat." The letter is given by Kemble, and in his work heads the whole list of A.S. charters.^ ^ See also Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 52. Ivi INTRODUCTION I may here add diat Dr. Bright says that the Rochester tradition is that /lithelberht gave to the church there some land called Priestfield, south of the city, and other land towards the east, and quotes Anglia Sacra, 1. 333. Another charter connected with King ^Ethelberht professes to convey some land at Tillingham to Mellitus, Bishop of London. The deed is pre- served among the documents at St. Paul's, and was published by Kemble in vol. V. of his great col- lection, and is there numbered DCCCCLXXXII. It is undated, which is itself a fatal defect. It is No. 9 in Birch's " Cartularium "^ and is marked as spurious by Kemble, and printed among the questionable and spurious documents by Haddan and Stubbs. It will be noted as significant that in it yEthelberht, King of Kent, is the king who pro- poses to convey the property, while London was in the kingdom of Essex. The witnesses are all impossible names at that time, and include Bishop Hunfrid, Bishop Lothaire (Letharius), Abban, ^thelwald, and ^swina, and the attestation ends with the words et a/iorMin i?mltoru7ii, showing that the deed at St. Paul's cannot at all events be the original. Bishop Browne reminds us that this estate of Tillingham is still in the possession of the Dean and Chapter. The next document we have to deal with is given by Elmham,^ and was also known to Thorne.^ It ^ See also Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 59. ^ Pp. 129 and 131. ^ See col. 1766. INTRODUCTION Ivii professes to be a bull of Pope Boniface the 4th addressed to King yEthelberht, and conferring special privileges on the Monastery of St. Peter and St. Paul. It is marked as spurious by Kemble. Haddan and Stubbs also expressly treat it as spurious. It is dated the 3rd of the Kalends of March, in the eighth year of the reign of Phocas and the 14th Indiction, i.e. the 27th of February 6ri. In it Boniface professes to control the whole Church, per itniversiun orbeni diffusae ciwaingerimus, and to be acting with the authority of St. Peter. He proceeds to grant privileges of exemption quite unknown at that time. He says {inter alia), Unde interdicimus in nomine Domini nostri Jesu Christi ex aiictoritate ipsius beatissimi apostolortun prin- cipis Petri, cujus vice huic Roinanae praesidemzis ecclesiae, lU a praesenti nullus praesulum, mtllus saectilarium praesumat in dominium htijtts ecclesiae aliquo modo sese ingerere, vel quamlibet imperandi potestatem sibi 2isu7^pare, vel alicujus inqtdetudinis molestias inferre, vel aliquam oninino consuetudinem, quamvis levissimam, sibi attribuere, vel etiam, nisi 7^ogatu abbatis aut fratrum, in ea missas facere. etc. etc. Certain decrees professing to be those published by a Council at Rome which was attended by Bishop Mellitus are extant. They have been treated, however, as spurious by those who have examined them, and are so called by Haddan and Stubbs.^ They are derived from a very tainted source, ^ Op. cit. iii. 62-64. Iviii INTRODUCTION namely, Gratian, chap, xvi., and by him from Ivo, Decretales, vii, 22.^ Dr. Bright calls the decrees "an absurd forgery,"- and he especially refers for proof to the following sentence in which monks are spoken of as being- authorised to act as priests : '^ Sunt nonnulli fulti mdlo doginate, audacissime quidem zelo magis aniaritudinis quam dilectione infiaminati, asserentes monachos, quia imindo mortui stmt et Deo vivtint sacerdotalis officii potentia in- dignos neque poenitentiam neque Christianitatem largiri neque absolvere posse per sacerdotali officio Divinitus ijijunctam potestatein^ We must now turn to another series of notorious forgeries preserved in the Gesta Pontificum of William of Malmesbury. "These," say Haddan and Stubbs, " were produced for the first time by Lanfranc in 1072 a.u. at the Council of London, for the purpose of establishing the supremacy of Canterbury over York, then fiercely disputed, and they were confessed by Lanfranc himself at the time to be relics of the fire at Canterbury which four years previously had destroyed both originals and copies of all other documents.^ These letters are not mentioned by the English bishops in their letter to Pope Leo iii. in 801 a.d., although they would have been directly to their purpose, and although they do mention in some detail the series of letters in Bede relating to the position of the see of Canterbury. Moreover, ^ See Mansi, x. 504. ^113, note 2. 2 See Eadmer, Hist.^ Nov. I. INTRODUCTION Hx the Malmesbury series of letters and the Bede series, of which the latter are unquestionably genuine, present in several instances pairs of letters from the same Pope to the same Archbishop at the same date and of different tenor. The view maintained in one series of these documents, of the original position of Canterbury relatively to London and York, and of the steps by which that original position was gradually changed, differs irrecon- cileably from the view in support of which the other and much later series was produced. The letters of this later date represent Canterbury as intended from the time of Justus, if not of Laur- entius, nay even by Gregory himself, to be the seat of the primacy of England, including York. Those of earlier date represent it as in the first instance not intended to be the seat of an archiepiscopate at all ; and when circumstances had determined this much in its favour in opposition to London, — a step apparently taken formally on the accession of Justus, yet possibly on that of Mellitus, — then as being placed on a level with York and no more, — a step dating with Archbishop Honorius in 634 A.D., while Theodore's conduct first obtained a superiority over York (669 a.d. sg.) in point of fact, and it was not until the time of Anselm that a similar superiority was established in point of right." ^ Plummer, commenting on this issue, says of the Malmesbury letters that "they lie under the gravest suspicion of having been forged. ... It ^ Oy>. cit. iii. 65 and 66. Ix INTRODUCTION is to be hoped that he {i.e. Lanfranc) had nothing to do with their composition." He says that the conclusion of Haddan and Stubbs errs if at all on the side of leniency/ The first of these forged Malmesbury letters professes to have been written by Pope Boniface iv. to y^thelberht, and to have been sent by Bishop Mellitus in the reign of Archbishop Laurence. Brig-ht calls the letter an Ausfustinian invention meant to establish the superiority of that com- munity over others.^ The following sentence has entirely the sound of a much later age : " Quae nostra decTcta, si quis sticcessoruvi vestroj'um sive regum sive Episcoporu7n, clericorum sive laicoruni ii^rita facer e tentaverit, a principe Apostolorum Petro et a cunctis successoribus siiis anathematis vinculo subjaceat,'' etc^ The letter is dated Anno Dominicae Incarnationis 615, a mode of dating which, as we have seen, belongs to a much later time, while the date itself cannot be equated with the journey of Mellitus to Rome. Thomas of Elmham, in order to get over the difficulty, invents a second journey of Mellitus to Rome in 615.* Plummer suggests that this statement of Elmham is probably a mere inference from the erroneous date in Malmesbury.'' He was not the only person who was mystified by it. Haddan and Stubbs say : " The date of the particular letter with ^ Plummer, Bede, ii. 54. - Op. cit. 113, note. ' Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 65. * Op. cit. Tit. iii. 5. ^ Op. cit. ii. 84. INTRODUCTION Ixi which we are here concerned is plainly erroneous as it stands in W. Malms. Spelman, from the MS. Annals of Peterborough, has a copy with a different date equally erroneous.^ He says : acttim sane anno Incarnationis sexcentcsiuio quarto decimo, iinperante Foca August piisswio, anno wtperii ejusdem prin- cipis octavo, Indictione xiv. tertio die Martiarum, Mthelbej'ti regis regni anno quinquagesimo tertio, which he would correct into sexcentesimo decimo and (with another MS.) ' Indictione xiii.' Ussher, from a MS. in the Cotton Library once belonging to St. Augustine's, gives a like date to that in Spelman except that the Indiction is xiii. and the day is quart a Kalendarzim, with no month added." Haddan and Stubbs then continue : " The true date, if the letter be genuine, is 6io a.d., eighth year of Phocas, thirteenth Indiction, and the fiftieth year of Ethelbert according to Bede's reckoning, the forty-fifth according to the Anglo- Saxon Chronicle.'' ^ This is, of course, a mere hypothesis of the two writers. It was most mis- leading of them to put it at the head of the letter in the text, as if it had any real foundation ; and they have misled Mr. Birch, who has also put the letter between the years 6io and 6ii. It is well to note that this forgery was quoted in the letter of Pope Alexander ii. to Lanfranc as reported by Eadmer. " This," say Haddan and Stubbs, "was after 1072 a.d." — i.e. after the year of the famous Lanfranc forgeries. ^ S.I. 130 ; W. App. iv. 735. ^ Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 66. Ixii INTRODUCTION It is clear from this analysis that none of the papal letters or of the other documents, domestic or foreign, which profess to secure privileges for English monasteries or to convey lands to them from the death of Pope Gregory to that of Boniface iv. and not contained in Bede are genuine. With Boni- face v. we again meet with a document having some claim to authenticity, and of which the best warranty is that it is contained in Bede. I mean the letter which Pope Boniface sent with the pallium to Archbishop Justus. We will pass this by at present, and revert to it when discussing Bede later on. This is not the only letter, however, which has come down to us associated with Pope Boniface v. and Justus. Another one is preserved in the series recorded by William of Malmesbury, which, as we have seen, are now treated as forsferies of the eleventh century prepared for Lanfranc when he was having his polemic in regard to the primacy of Canterbury. This is the special subject of the letter in question. It is marked by Haddan and Stubbs as "questionable." What this word really means with them must be gathered from their discussion of the Malmesbury charters already referred to.^ Of the letters alleged to have been written by Boniface v. to Justus and to iEdwin and iEthelberga of Northumbria two are cited by Bede, and there- fore stand on a different footing to those already quoted. One of the three, however, is not con- Op. cii. iii. p. 65, note. INTRODUCTION Ixiii tained in Bede. It refers to the privileges and primacy of Canterbury, and is one of the too well- known Malmesbury group. It is marked as ques- tionable by Haddan and Stubbs,^ and analysed by Plummer,^ and must be included in the strictures of these able critics on that collection. I shall have more to say of the other two letters of Boniface v. reported by Bede, farther on. We next have two grants of land dated in 6i6 and 6i8 respectively, professedly made to Archbishop Laurence by y^dbald or Eadbald,son of yEthelberht. They are both marked as spurious by Haddan and Stubbs.^ I have discussed them in the text.* Passing on a few years we have three reputed letters written by Pope Honorius to Archbishop Honorius of Canterbury and to yEdwin, King of Northumbria. Of these again, two occur in Bede, and will be discussed later. The third one does not occur in Bede, but is found among the notorious series contained in William of Malmesbury, and was clearly concocted for the same object — namely, to sustain Lanfranc in his struCTcrle to secure the absolute supremacy of the see of Canterbury. Of this letter Haddan and Stubbs say : " This is the third of the series of letters in William of Malmesbury. This particular letter is directly at variance with the certainly genuine letter just preceding it, written by the same Pope to the same Archbishop, at probably the same date. The establishment of a definite ^ Op. cit. iii. T}) ^r'd 74. - Bede, ii. 191, 192. ^ Op. cit. iii. p. 69. ■* Infra^ 235. Ixiv INTRODUCTION order between Canterbury and York, and of the downfall of the latter, of which Pope Honorius was certainly ignorant when he wrote either letter, is no doubt the most natural thing in the world for the Pope to do precisely at the time when the see of York had come into being by the previous success of Paulinus ; but the establishing of two inconsistent arrangements on the subject at the same time may be fairly set aside as impossible."^ We will now pass on to other evidences. For the history of the Popes at this time, which includes some dramatic passages, the main authority is the so-called Liber Pontificalis. I discussed this work in the introduction to my previous volume, and took my place alongside of my master Mommsen in the great polemic between him and Duchesne in regard to its date. I am more than ever convinced that Mommsen is substantially right, but I think now that we may fix the date of the work a little more closely. I agree with him that it is quite incredible that in the voluminous works of Pope Gregory not a reference should have been found to this book if it had really then existed. I know of no actual reference to it until we get to the time of Bede, who not only quotes it but does so by name. This is a terviiims ad qtiem, therefore. On the other hand, Mommsen has pointed out that there is a passage in the book which seems taken from a work of Gregory. This would be a ternmius a quo. The date of the book would therefore come ^ Haddan and Stubbs, p. 86. INTRODUCTION Ixv between these two extreme dates rather more than a century apart. There is another passage in the Liber which has been apparently over- looked, and which seems to me to give us another clue. In the account of Pope Martin i., when speaking of his tomb at Sta. Maria Maggiore, we read : " Qui et 7nulta mirabilia operatiLV usque in hodiernuni diem"^ showing that this part of the work was not only not contemporary with, but was written a considerable time after Martin's death. I believe the work was not compiled at all until considerably later than the time of Martin. It seems to me that the Libe7' Pontificalis and the Liber Diurnus are complementary to each other, and were written about the same time. The Liber Dizirnus has been shown to have been very prob- ably written towards the end of the seventh century, and it is to the same period I would assign the compilation of the Liber Pontificalis. It seems, further, very likely that both were written in the time of Pope Agatho, about whose pontificate there is such a long and detailed notice in the Liber Pontificalis, much longer than that of any Pope who preceded him ; the only other life which approaches it in length being that of St. Vigilius. I cannot deal with the question of the Popes' lives and careers without once more animadverting on the nature of the work now being published on them by Father Mann. It is not really a history, * Op. cit. ed. Mommsen, p. 184. Ixvi INTRODUCTION but a sustained apologia for the Popes' faults and the Popes' mistakes, with a polemical dis- ingenuousness running all through its treatment of the authorities. Its theological rancour is most distasteful to anyone who does not revel in the theories of Innocent in. and his inquisitors. For the history of Byzantium at this time I have not thought it necessary for my purpose (which is only to supply a sketch of the doings there as a background to my picture) to have recourse to the orig-inal authorities. I have relied in rep"ard to it upon the truly admirable edition of Gibbon of my friend Professor Bury, whose new notes are most illuminating and full of evidences of his versatility and manifold learning, and upon his two recent monographs on Byzantine history. For the Merovingian period in Gaul, I have used Gregory of Tours, and have also had constantly by me the second volume, part i, of the most recent and very excellent history of France edited by M. Lavisse (Paris, 1903). For Spain, and especially the doings of its Church, I have chiefly used L' Espagne Chr(^tienne, by Dom H. Leclercq (2nd ed., Paris, 1906), a very fair and learned book. For the sagas about the Anglian slaves I have used the Whitby monk's very crude pamphlet as well as Bede. I have discussed it in my introduction to the previous volume, pp. xlii-xliv, and have nothing to add to what I then said. We will now turn to Bede. In using Bede, I have naturally quoted from INTRODUCTION Ixvii Mr. Plummer's very ideal edition of his historical works, and also used his catena of notes and illus- trations, which contain the results of great and wide reading and good judgment, and are most illuminat- inof. The work must Iouq- remain the fountain to which all students of the early English Church will turn as the authoritative edition. In quoting from the first volume, which contains the text, I have given the book and the chapter according to Bede's numeration ; when quoting from the second one, which contains the notes, I have given the volume and page. Besides Mr. Plummer's work, I have also had Smith's edition by me. The latter will always remain a fine monument of English scholarship in days when scientific editions were scarce. Its appendices contain discussions on various points and difficulties, several of which are still useful and contain much out-of-the-way learning. There is another edition of Bede which is most useful, not only because its author was a very good Latin scholar, but also because its introduction and notes are full of learning. I refer to the Rev. Joseph Stevenson's translation of Bede's Ecclesiastical History and minor works in vol. i. part 2 of the Church Historians of England. Bede has in his preface gone into the question of his authorities. I will borrow Mr. Stevenson's excel- lent version of that part of this preface which deals with his sources for the period dealt with in his great work specially used in this volume. He says : " To the end that I may remove both from yourself and Ixviii INTRODUCTION other readers or hearers of this history all occasion of doubting as to what I have written, I will take care briefly to intimate from what authors I chiefly learned the same. "My principal authority and assistant in this work {auctor ante omnes atqiie adjutor optisculi hujus) was the most learned and revered Abbot Albinus (he was Abbot of St. Peter and St. Paul at Canterbury), who, educated in the Church of Canterbury by those most venerable and learned men, Archbishop Theodore of blessed memory and the Abbot Adrian, carefully transmitted to me by Nothelm (afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury), the pious priest {I'eligiosuin presbytei'tmi) of the Church of London, either in writing or by word of mouth of the same Nothelm, all that he thought worthy of memory that had been done in the province of Kent, or in the adjacent parts, by the disciples of the blessed Pope Gregory, as he had learnt the same either from written records or the traditions of his ancestors. The same Nothelm afterwards going to Rome, having, with the leave of Pope Gregory, who now presides over that Church {i.e. Gregory ii.), searched into the archives of the Holy Roman See, found there some epistles of the blessed Pope Gregory and other popes ; and returning home, by the advice of the aforesaid most reverend Father Albinus, brought them to me, to be inserted in my history. Thus from the beginning of this volume to the time when the English nation received the faith of Christ we have INTRODUCTION Ixix learnt what we have stated from the writings of our predecessors, and from them gathered matter for our history ; but from that time till the present, what was transacted in the Church of Canterbury, by the disciples of Christ or their successors, and under what kings the same happened, has been conveyed to us by Nothelm, through the care of the said Abbot Albinus. They also partly informed me by what bishops and under what kings the provinces of the East and West Saxons, as also of the East Angles and of the Northumbrians, received the faith of Christ. In short, I was chiefly en- couraged in venturing to undertake this work by the persuasions of the same Albinus. . . . But what was done in the Church throughout the different districts of the Northumbrians, from the time when they received the faith of Christ till this present, I received not from any one particular author, but by the faithful testimony of innumerable witnesses, who might well know or remember the same ; in addition to what I had of my own knowledge." ^ It was to Albinus, above named, that Bede wrote a letter which is affixed to his Ecclesiastical History. The last phrases of the dedication are worth recording here for their tender thought : " Teque amantissime pater, supplex odsecro, ut pro Tizea fragilitate ctLm his qui tecinn suitt fanmlis Christi apud piuvi Judiceni sedulus intercedere me^nineris ; ^ Op. cit. ed. Stevenson, vol. i. part ii. pp. 306 and 307. I have inserted the Latin words here as elsewhere when the sense was the least ambiguous. / Ixx INTRODUCTION sed et eos, ad quos eadem nostra opuscula pervenire feceris, hoc idem facei^e moniieris. Bene vale, semper amantissime in Christo pater optime.'' The various documents quoted by Bede in re- ofard to the mission of Auo-ustus have been for the most part accepted without dispute, except the one containing the questions of Augustine and the responsions of the Pope above named. Mr. Plummer has shown the great probability that the letter of Boniface to Archbishop Justus has been put together from two separate letters by conflation, and that otherwise it is a genuine document/ In regard to the letters quoted by Bede as having been written by Pope Boniface v. to y^dwin and yEthelberga of Northumbria, there is a considerable difficulty. There is no reference in them to any ecclesiastic, whether a bishop or otherwise, and it is especially noteworthy that Paulinus should not be named in them. The letters have previously aroused comment. Thus Stevenson says : " As Pope Boniface v. was buried 25th October 625, this letter [i.e. the letter to ^Edwin) must have been written before that date. There is, therefore, some little inaccuracy in the order of Bede's narrative at this point, since he places this letter after events which occurred in the previous year."^ Again, Bede tells us Paulinus was consecrated Bishop by Justus on the 21st of January 625, and yEdwin was probably married in June of the same year. On the 20th of April 626 yEdwin's daughter 1 Plummer, Bede, ii. 92 and 93. - Op. cit, p. 371, note i. INTRODUCTION Ixxi was born. ^dwin was baptized on the 8th of June 626, Now the two letters to ^dwin and ^thelberga are expressly stated in their text to have been sent by Boniface, who died on 22nd October 625 — that is, many months before yEd win's con- version, and when there was no reason to think he would be converted, and only four months after the probable date of his marriage. Boniface never- theless addresses the latter as Vir gloriosus. He styles JpA\\Q\hergd. gloriosa JiHa ^delberga, and also refers to the King of Kent 2<.s gloriosus filiiis noster AudiLbaldus. Again, Boniface in his letter to yEthelberga says that he had heard with grief that yEdwin up to that time had delayed to listen to the preachers, and this suggests a difficulty, in that -^thelberga could not have reached York until the end of July, and the tidings of yEdwin's delays could hardly have reached Rome before the end of October, when Boniface was dead. Could " Boniface," says Bright, " in the address, be a scribe's error for Honorius ? " ^ To this explanation Mr. Plummer, who does not deny the difficulty, replies that in the letter he speaks of himself as the Pope who had received the news of ^dbald's conversion. " This might be Boni- face v., who succeeded in 619, but could hardly be Honorius." ^ It would seem, in fact, that there is no escape from the position except by treating the letters as spurious, which is confirmed by the very strange ^ Bright, 1 30, note 6. ^ Plummer, Bede, ii. 97. Ixxii INTRODUCTION language attributed to the Pope when addressing the Queen about her husband. This view is strengthened when we turn to the letter supposed to have been sent by Pope Honorius, the successor of Boniface, to i^dwin. It is addressed to his most excellent and eminent son ^dwin, King of the Angles (excellentisswto atque pj^aecellentissinio), and claims to be an answer to a letter from the King asking for certain favours, and telling him he had sent the palls of the two metropolitans (meaning, apparently, he had sent them to y^dwin). This letter is not dated, nor is it quite easy to find a date for it, nor is it contained in the Anglo- Saxon version of Bede, nor again is its phraseology very comfortable. Nor can we understand how the Pope comes to speak of Edwin's requests on behalf of his own bishops, pi^o vestris sacerdotibus ordinanda sperastis. ^dwin only had one bishop, — namely, Paulinus, — and there was only one other bishop in England at the time — namely, the Arch- bishop of Canterbury, who it is difficult to under- stand could have been in any way ^Edwin's bishop. The paragraph about the palls, too, seems to me very suspicious. Why should he mention the two palls when writing to the King ? This becomes still more strange when we find him at the same time writing to Archbishop Honorius, then primate of all England, and sending him a pall, but not saying a word about his having sent one to Paulinus, and thus cutting his archdiocese in two and giving one half of it to another without giving INTRODUCTION Ixxiii him any notice. The very fact of sending two palls at one time is in itself suspicious. So is the reason he gives for it — not in order to constitute a new metropolitan, but "to the intent that when either of them (he styles both of them metropolitans) shall be called out of this world to his Creator, the other may by this authority of ours substitute another bishop in his place." The deputing of the power by a Pope of conferring the dignity of a metropolitan upon any one at this time would be most unprecedented and unlikely. A further sign of falsity is the amusing suggestion of the Pope that the recently converted King should spend his days in reading the works of St. Gregory {'' Praedicatoris igitur vestri domini 77iei apostolicae niemo7'iae Gregorii frequenter lectione occupaii"), when it is quite certain he knew no language save his own Northumbrian speech. I confess that this Northumbrian letter, which con- sists almost entirely of pious rhetoric, like the Northumbrian letters attributed to Pope Boniface v., has all the signs of being a forgery, and it is curious to me that the suo'o-estion does not seem to have been made before. These letters seem to me to have been concocted in order to establish a claim for the Northern province to have a metropolitan of its own. The sophistication may well have been the handiwork of Paulinus, and the statement that he left his pall to Rochester, as stated by Bede, has the appearance of having been inserted to give further colour to the claim. Anyhow, the internal evidence of the letters entirely condemns them. Ixxiv INTRODUCTION This completes our survey of the letters and similar compositions quoted by Bede. There is still another document which he uses. Speaking of King i^thelberht, he says that amongst the benefits which his thoughtfulness conferred on his people {qiiaegenti suae conszilendo conferebat) he drew up for them, in concert with his Witenagemot {cum consilio sapieittium), judicial decisions {decreta illi judici- oriwi) after the manner of the Romans, which were written in the Anglian language and were extant in his day and remained in force among the people. The first thing laid down in this code is the penalty to be paid by any who steals any- thing belonging to the Church, to the bishop, or the other orders. He evidently, said Bede, wished to give protection to those whom he had welcomed together with their doctrine {volens scilicet tui- tionem eis, quos et quorum doctrinam stisceperat, praestare -y^ in the A.-S. version, i)a nu gena o\> dir mid him haefde and gehaldene synd). These dooms, as they were called, are supposed to be still extant, being preserved for us in the common place-book of Bishop Ernulf (i 114-24), known as the Textus Roffensis. The dooms in question have been thought to be rather an epitome than the full code, and they may well have been written down later than ^thelberht's reign, and seem to reflect a time when the status of the Church was better established than in his day. The position given to Churchmen when compared with that of laymen, as * Bede, book li. 5. INTRODUCTION Ixxv measured by their treatment by these laws, is a too attractive one for so early a period.^ In writing- the following- pages I have, in addition to the materials supplied by Bede, ransacked the lives of the various persons who come within the limits of my subject and which are contained in the Acta Sanctorum. The matter of any value in these lives not in Bede is very slight, and consists first of incidents and stories with local colour and depicting the thought of the times in a picturesque and useful way which are scattered through the, for the most part, very otiose and jejune notices of miracles ; and secondly, of accounts of the transla- tions of the bodies of the saintly men. The authors of most of these lives were very late. Not one at this period is contemporary ; and the best of them, for the picturesque details he gives, was Gocelin. I have also freely used the account of the history of the Abbey of St. Augustine written (as was, I ^ The late Sir F. Palgrave, a very sane critic of early history, writes thus of these dooms : "They now exist in a single manuscript ; the volume compiled by Ernulphus, Bishop of Rochester, and the opening paragraph or section, containing the penalties imposed upon offenders against the peace of the Church and clergy, seems to corre- spond in tenor with the recital given by Bede. But it is difficult to believe that the text of an Anglo-Norman manuscript of the twelfth century exhibits an unaltered specimen of the Anglo-Saxon of the time of Ethelbert. The language has evidently been modernised and corrupted by successive transcriptions. Some passages are quite unintelligible, and the boldest critic would hardly venture upon conjectural emendations, for which he can obtain no collateral aid. Neither is there any proof whatever of the integrity of the text. It cannot be asserted, with any degree of confidence, that we have the whole of the law. Destitute of any statutory clause or enactment, it is from the title or rubric alone that we learn the name of the Legis- lator" (Palgrave, English Commomvealih^ i. 44 and 45). Ixxvi INTRODUCTION think, proved by its editor, Hardwick) by Thomas of Elmham, a monk of the abbey, who was its treasurer in 1407. Thomas subsequently became prior of Lenton, in Northamptonshire, was ap- pointed vicar-general to Raymund, Abbot of Clugny for the kingdoms of England and Scotland in 141 6, and in 1426 commissary-general in spirituals and temporals for all vacant benefices belonging to the Cluniac order in England, Scotland, and Ireland.^ His work on St. Augustine's Abbey was planned on a great scale, and only a fragment dealing with the first two hundred years was completed. In this he incorporates the material published by his predecessors Sprott and Thorn, annalists of the abbey, which are very scanty for the period in question. He has given copies of all the charters existing at St. Augustine's when he wrote, and which unfortunately, as we have seen, were nearly all forgeries. He also gives some notices of the successive abbots of the same abbey, which add very little to Bede's account. He supplies us with a certain number of epitaphs, which may in some cases have been composed long after the deaths of the persons commemorated, and he has preserved a very interesting account of the books, ecclesiastical furniture, and relics which, in the opinion of the tenants of the monastery when he wrote, and no doubt for many centuries before, were associated with Augustine and his mission. This information ^ Op. cit. ed. Hardwick, xxii-xxiv. INTRODUCTION Ixxvii I have incorporated and criticised. What strikes one in reading his pages is how very Httle, if any, more knowledge about the mission was possessed by the monks of St. Augustine in the time of Sprott, Thorne, and Elmham than that contained in Bede's immortal work. It may be noted by my readers that there is hardly a reference in the following book to what was made a fetish by Mr. Freeman and his scholars — namely, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. This is be- cause, in the period we are dealing with, I look upon it as a worthless authority. We now know it to be a compilation of the end of the ninth or beginning of the tenth century. So far as I know, it does not contain a single reliable fact or date about St. Augustine and his mission which is not derived from Bede. Leaving- the original authorities and turnino; to later ones who have used and discussed them in their works, I shall limit my notice to those I have alone found helpful — namely, writers in whose works new or fruitful ideas occur — and shall neglect those conventional authors who have simply followed other conventional ones. Among the former I must put in the front rank two historians who have done a great deal to illumin- ate the portion of English Church history dealt with in the following pages. I mean Professor Bright and Bishop Browne of Bristol, whom I have coupled in the dedication to this volume. The former modestly entitled his work Chapters of Early English Church Ixxviii INTRODUCTION History. It has gone through several editions. I quote from the third. There is not a page in it which is not full of learned research, ingenious suggestion, and sound induction, which have greatly helped me. My old friend Bishop Browne still remains among us. He has filled the roles of professor, don, bishop, and historian with the same indomit- able vigour and energy, and has found time to do many things. His lectures on the early crosses and sculptured stones of Britain did much to put the subject on a scientific basis. Among the works he has written, those which I have chiefly used here have been two published by the S.P.C.K. — namely, Aitgustine and his Companions, and The Conversion of the Heptarchy, in both of which his local and archseolosfical know- ledge and his keen insight have greatly helped him and me. A third work of the same utility and high level was prepared by Canon Mason for the millennium of St. Augustine. It contains excellent and scholarly translations of the documents relating to the latter's mission, printed in juxtaposition with the Latin texts, and with useful notes and also four dissertations full of suggestiveness and value. The first one is written by my most industrious and many-sided friend Professor Oman, and discusses the political outlook in Europe in the year 597 at the time of the mission. The second, by the Editor, refers to the mission of Augustine and his companions in relation to other agencies in the INTRODUCTION Ixxix conversion of England. The third is by one of my oldest friends, also a many-sided person trained in a science which demands a picturesque eye for scenery and geology, Professor M'Kenna Hughes of Cambridge. It deals with the puzzling question of the landing-place of Augustine. The fourth is by the Rev. H. A. Wilson (a most competent authority). It discusses some liturgical questions relating- to the mission of St. Auq-ustine. To these helps I must add the lives in the Dictionary of Christian Biography, of which that of Augustine is by the Rev. G. F. Maclear, D.D., the author of a work published by the S.P.C.K. on the Conversion of the West, etc. Those of Archbishops Laurence, Mellitus, Justus and Honorius ; of Romanus and Damian Bishops of Rochester, andofThomasandBerhtgils(or Boniface), Bishops of East Anglia, are by the master-hand of Bishop Stubbs ; while Archbishop Deusdedit's is by the Rev. C. Hole. That of Paulinus of York is by a most competent scholar and authority on the history of the Diocese of York, Canon Raine. Other lives in this fine work containing up-to-date information are those of ^thelberht, King of Kent, and his son. King yEdbald, by Professor Bright, already eulogised ; yEthelfred and ^dwin. Kings of Northumbria, by Canon Raine ; Queen Bertha, wife of ^thelberht, and y^thelberga, wife of i^dwin, by Bishop Stubbs. Bishop Stubbs was also responsible for the lives of Penda, King of Mercia, Redwald, King of East Anglia, and Sabercht, King Ixxx INTRODUCTION ^ of the East Saxons. I have given these names because it would be difficult to match a more com- petent body of biographers to deal with the lives. It is a practice which I deprecate to sink the authors of such monographs in the name of the great work in which their contributions are con- tained, and thus not only to do them an injustice, but to depreciate the value of the borrowed matter, if any. Turning from the actual biographies to other matters discussed in the following pages. First is the account to be found here of the English ecclesiastical architectural remains still existing, which date from this early period and which I have tried to make fairly complete. In regard to them I have had the help of four friends, one unfortunately dead, who have done much to revolu- tionise the history of early architecture in this country and to put it on a scientific basis. On this subject those who write with the greatest authority must always place in the first rank our " Father Anchises " Micklethwaite, the architect in charge of Westminster Abbey, who was the first to teach the great lesson which Mr. Freeman was so loath to learn- — that the plan of a church is the first element in its analysis ; that its history must be found in the inside rather than the outside of the building ; and that some technical knowledge of the craft of the builder as well as of the architect is necessary to anyone who professes to describe a building. He swept away many foolish legends INTRODUCTION Ixxxi with his berserker's vigorous arm, and he was the founder of the scientific treatment of Anoflo-Saxon architectural remains. The result of some of his work in that behalf will be found condensed in the following pages. Those who followed him the other day to his fitting home in the picturesque cloisters of Westminster Abbey, where his requiem was sung by the choir-boys he loved so well, lost a kind, pictur- esque, masculine-minded friend ; and one of his pupils in this inquiry must be allowed to write with a little emotion on an occasion when he is appor- tioning his various obligations. With him I must mention three of his ac- complished pupils who have all illuminated the subject of early Anglo-Saxon architecture, all valued friends of mine and gifted with acute insight and knowledge — St. John Hope, C. Peers, and Baldwin Brown. I have freely used and quoted their writings. In regard to matters of early ritual, I have depended on the master work of Duchesne. In discussing the question of the library of books which Thomas of Elmham associates with St. Augustine's name, and claims that he and his companions brought them to England, I have followed in the footsteps of a not sufficiently appreciated authority, the late Professor Westwood, and of an acknowledged living master, Dr. James of King's College, Cambridge. I am under obligations to all these scholars and students, and to others from whom I have Ixxxii INTRODUCTION learned occasional facts. I take off my hat to them all. Their work has made mine possible. I may be forgiven for including in my gratitude my patient wife, who has made my life so bright ; my good sons, who have helped me by their advice, as well as in other more onerous ways ; my kind friend the publisher ; his delightful son, John Murray, jun., the heir to many genera- tions of "John" Murrays, who has read through my proofs, and the other members of the ever-patient staff in Albemarle Street. Lastly, the printer, the reader, the compiler of the excellent indices to this and my previous volume, and the skilful persons who made my maps and plates. May we all meet again in Walhalla. HENRY H. HOWORTH. THE EMPERORS, POPES, AND THE KINGS OF THE FRANKS AND VISIGOTHS, FROM 595 TO 664 Emperors of Popes of Kings of the Franks. Kings of the Byzantium. Rome. Visigoths. 59S 13th year of 5th year of 2ist year of Childebert, 9th year of Maurice. Gregory. King of Austrasia and Reccared. Departure of Burgundy, and the Augustine irth of Chlothaire 11., from Rome. King of Neustria. 596 *' '* Theodeljert, King of Austrasia. Theodoric, King of Bur- gundy. ■■ 597 „ „ ,, 598 „ ,, ,, 599 ,, ,, ,, ,, 600 II II II II 601 Liuva II. 602 Phocas. II II 603 ,, II Witteric. 604 II Sabinianus. II II 605 ,, 1, ,, ,, 606 II Boniface 11 1. (?) II II 607 Boniface iv. II 608 11 II 609 ,, ,, „ ,, 610 Heraclius. ,, ,, Gondemar. 611 " II II II 612 Theodoric unites Aus- trasia to Burgundy.^ Sisebut. 613 Chlothaire 11., sole King 1, 6i4 of the Franks. 615 Deusdedit. II 6i6 II 617 ,, ,, II 618 II Boniface v ,1 II 619 ,, „ „ ,, 620 ,1 ,1 ,, ,, 621 II II ,1 II 622 ,1 II Dagobert i., King of Reccared 11. 623 II 11 Austrasia. and Suinthiia. 624 11 II ,1 ,, 625 „ Honorius I. II ,1 626 II 11 11 II 627 II II II II 628 ,1 II Death of Chlothaire 11. II 629 ,1 1, Dagobert sole King. II 630 1, 1, ,, 631 ,1 II II Sisenand. 631 „ ,1 Sigebert, sub-King of 1, 633 ,, ,, Austrasia. )i 634 ,, ,, ,, 635 „ ,, ,, ,, 636 ,1 ,1 ,, Chintila. 637 II Severinus. Death 'of Dagobert i. ; II 638 „ II Chlovis II. succeeds him II 639 " >• in Neustria and Sige- bert in Austrasia. " 640 John IV. ■• Tulga. Ixxxiii THE EMPERORS, POPES, AND THE KINGS OF THE FRANKS AND VISIGOTHS— coKiimied Emperors Popes ok Rome. Kings of the Franks. Kings of the OF Constanti- Visigoths. nople. 641 Constantine in. Constantine iv. Constans 11. John iv. Chlovis II., King of Neustria ; Sigebert, King of Austrasia. Tulga. 642 Theodore. Chindesvvintha. 643 „ » 644 ,, II 645 ,, >i 646 ,, » 647 648 649 '• " Martin i. Recceswintha, 650 651 652 ;; as see iated with his father. 6i;^ Recceswintha 654 Eugenius iv. sole King. 655 656 " On Sigebert's death, his " brother, Chlovis 11., • reunited the Frank Kingdom and died the same year. Chlothaire ill., son of 657 Vitalian. Chlovis 11. ,, 658 „ „ ,, 659 ,, ,, ,) 660 jj ,, ,, 66 1 J, Childeric 11. elected jj 662 „ King of Austrasia his ,, 663 jj brother, Chlothaire, ,, 664 1 ,, only retaining Neus- ,, tria. ^ End of the mission of St. Augustine. GENEALOGY OF THE DESCENDANTS OF CHLOTHAIRE IL GOMATRUDIS. Chlothaire 11., t628. I Dagobert I., t 638. I I Nantechildis. I Sigebert, t 656, King of Austrasia. Chlovis ii., t 656, King of Neustria and Burgundy. On his brother's death re-united the Kingdom of the Franks and soon after died. St. Baldechildis (or Bathildis), a Breton. Chlothaire mi., sole King of the Franks, 656-661. When he was de- prived of Austrasia, he retained Neustria. Childeric ii., elected King of Austrasia, 661. Theodore hi. Ixxxiv THE ENGLISH ARCHBISHOPS AND BISHOPS, AND THE ABBOTS OF ST. AUGUSTINE'S, FROM 597 TO 664 Abbots of SS. Archbishops of Peter and Paul Bishops of Bishop of London, Canterbury. {i.e. ov St. Augustine's). Rochester. ETC. ETC. 597 Augustine landed 598 in England. Petrus. 599 „ ,, 600 II 11 601 602 11 II 603 Augustine re- II 604 ceived the Pall. 11 Justus. Mell tu^. 60s Laurentius. 1, II 606 II II II 607 ,, Johannes. II 608 II 1, II 609 II 11 ,, 610 II II II 611 II 612 II II 6,3 II 11 II 614 II ,, I, 615 „ „ II 616 1, II 617 „ ,1 ,1 Mellitus expelled, and 618 II Rufinianus. II London reverted to 619 Mellitus. „ „ paganism. 620 621 622 623 >> >> » " " " Bishop of York. 624 Justus. ,, Romanus. 625 „ 1, II Paul nus. 626 ,1 Gratiosus. 627 „ 1, ,, * 628 I, II II 629 ,, „ ,1 ' 630 ,, „ 11 1 631 ,, ,, 1, 632 11 ,1 633 ,, ,1 1, Paulinus abandons his 634 11 1, see. 63s 636 Honorius. '. 637 „ „ circ, 637 Rom- Bishops of 638 1, Death of Grati- osus, followed anus drowned. Paulinus (late DUNWICH. 639 ,, Bishop of by a vacancy York). 631 Felix. of two years. II 632 640 ,, Petronius. II 633 641 ,1 II 634 642 „ ,, 11 635 643 „ ,, 1, 636 644 „ „ Ithamar. 637 64s „ ,, ,1 638 646 " " " 639 640 g THE ENGLISH ARCHBISHOPS AND BISHOPS, AND THE ABBOTS OF ST. AUGUSTINE'S— coniimied Abbots of SS. Archbishops of Peter and Paul BiSHOl'S OF Bishops of Canterbury. (i.e. OF St. Augustine's). Rochester. DUNWICH. 647 Honorius. Petronius. Ithamar. 641 Felix. 64S ,, „ 642 ,, 649 J, „ 643 „ 650 ,, ,, 644 ,, 6si jj ,j 645 „ 652 j^ J, 646 ,, 653 Interregnum. „ 647 Thomas. 654 Deusdedit. Nathanael. ,, 648 655 „ J, 649 656 J, ,, 650 „ 657 ,, Damian. 651 „ 65S ,, J, 652 Berchtgils or 659 J, J, 653 Boniface. 660 J, 11 654 „ 661 ,, 655 662 ,, ,, 656 663 jj ,, 657 664 Death of Deus- dedit, who probably died of the plague. Death of Dam- ian (?), who probably died of the plague. 658 659 660 661 662 663 66s 666 667 668 66q Death of Boni- face. THE EPISCOPAL SUCCESSION FROM AUGUSTINE TO DAMIAN 1 Augustine. Laurentius, iine prole. Mellitus, iine prole. Justus. Romanus, Rochester, sine prole. Paulinus, York and Rochester. Honorius. Thomas, sine prole. Ithamar. Deusdedit. I Damian, sine prole. ^ This table I owe to Bishop Browne. Ixxxvi Boniface, sinepreU. GENEALOGY OF THE KINGS OF KENT AND ESSEX ^Ethelberht. KORMENRIC, King of Kent. Bertha, d. of Charibert, King of Paris. sine prolt. -t.DBALD. _ Bertha, ^thelberga. ^dwin, I I his step-mother. I King of I I Northumbria. sine prole. RiCULA. Sledda, King of Essex. I S.MJEKCHT or SeBERT. SiGEBAL /ErMENRED. .(ErCONBERHT. SeXBURGA, yENSWITHA, (/.of Anna, sine prole. King of East Anglia. GENEALOGY OF THE KINGS OF EAST ANGLIA Tytla. Redwald. Eni. EORPWALD, sine prole. Sigeberht (the learned), sine prole.* Ethelhere. Hereswid. Ethelwold, sine prole. Sex- Ercon- St. BUKGA. BERHT, EtHEL- I King of BURGA, I Kent. sine prole. Tunbert. ^thel- Ecgfied, Wit- Aldwulf. Alfwo I DREDA. King of BURGA (?), I J I North- sine prole. I umbria. sine prole. \ I sine prole. Ecgric, a kinsman of Sigeberht, was put on the throne on the abdication of the latter. He died sine proh Ixxxvii GENEALOGY OF THE KINGS OF DEIRA .EARL, :ig of the ercians. Uffi. I Aelle. jEDWIN; ^ID. /EUFRID. Wusc- FRED, sine jirole. i^THELBURGA, d. of Eadbald, King of Kent. ACHA, married /Ethelfrid, King of Bernicia. /Enfleda, married Oswy, King of Bernicia, sine prole. .^DEL- HUN. jEthel- DRED. OSRIC. I OsWY. Unknown. Hekeric. Beorh I TRIG. Hilda. Heres WID. GENEALOGY OF THE KINGS OF BERNICIA .iEthelric. I /^LTHELFRID. AcHA, sister of ^Edwin, King of Deira. sine prole. ./Eanfred. Oswald. Oswy. OSWUDU. Oslac. Oslaf. /Ebe ADDENDA My attention has been called by Mr. E. G. Gardner to an ambiguity in my description of his edition of the Dialogues of Pope Gregory in my former volume. He tells me that he alone is responsible for the notes, Mr. Hill having merely contributed the descriptions of the plates. Page xlvii, lines 1 1, etc. By an inadvertence I have attributed the lines in inverted commas to Father Mann himself. They are really quoted by him from Cardinal Pitra. The whole passage taken from Pitra should be read by those who want to study the utterly unscientific way in which that much- trusted Roman Catholic historian treated his authorities, — a more credulous unscientific method it would be difficult to imagine. Page 2 1. I have inserted a photograph of this table in my volume on Gregory. It only reached me after the text of that book was written, so that I could not accompany the descrip- tion with a picture. Pages 39 and 40. A more careful consideration of the facts has led me to doubt the universal conclusion in regard to the paternity of Queen Bertha which I have adopted in the text, and which is based on the statement of Gregory of Tours. I now think the difficulty of the chronology makes it possible that she was the daughter of Charibert, King of Paris. I am disposed to think now that Gregory of Tours may have been mistaken, and that she was in all probability the daughter of Chlothaire, the second King of Neustria, and therefore sister of Dagobert the First. This explains other things. Thus Thomas of Elmham actually makes her the daughter of Dagobert, and not of Charibert. Again, when iEthelberga, daughter of Bertha, was driven out of Northumberland she sent the royal children to the court of Dagobert to be brought up. Bede says of the princes : " Misit i?t Galliam nutriendos regi Daegberecto qui erat amicus illius.'^ xc ADDENDA Bede, it is true, says amicus and not fraier, but he may have been mistaken in this. The explanation here given also accounts for the number of young princesses from England who took the veil in nunneries in Dagobert's realm. Page 59. " The Harbour of Richborough is described emphatically as ' statio tranqiiilla' ^ It was that most affected by the Romans ; indeed, we never hear of an Emperor, general, or army landing at any other place, and its almost exclusive use seems to have made it a household word at Rome among poets and others." 2 Elstob has translated an Anglo-Saxon verse given by Hickes, referring to the traditional season when Augustine's landing took place. It runs thus : — When rough March begins Loudly boisterous, Bearded with grey frost, With showers of rattling hail He terrifies the world. When eleven days are past, Then did Gregory, That glorious saint, In Britain most renowned, Amidst the Heavenly host Illustrious shine. ^ Page 65. In Mr. E. G. P. Wyatt's interesting Memoir oft St. Gregory, and the Gregorian Music published by the Plain-Song and Mediaeval Music Society, there is a conjectural setting of this litany.* Page 97. The arguments against the chair being Augustine's are, says Stanley : ist, the use of Purbeck marble in it ; and 2nd, the fact that it is made of one stone, while Eadmer says the original was made of several. Page 128. A dalmatic was a long, sleeved, white tunic, with a purple band [clavus) from either side of the neck downwards (Isidore, Etym. xix. 22, speaks of it as ^^ tunica sacerdotalis Candida cum clavis ex purpura"). It was and is a clerical, but not a priestly garment, and could be worn by every clerk in orders when taking part in the service, from a deacon up to a pope, and was so called from having been first used in Dalmatia. It was not ^ Amiii. Mar. xxvii. 9. - T. G. Faussett, Arch. Joiirnaly xxxii. 372. ^ Elstob, Appendix to ^.-.S", Hotnily, p. 26. * Vide op. cit. p. 7, ADDENDA xci only used by ecclesiastics, but also, as I have said, by kings and emperors on solemn occasions. Page 171. This fabulous story about the foundation of Westminster Abbey is told in several mediaeval tracts. Some of them were printed by Dugdale in his Mojtasticon, one only having an author's name, namely, Sulcardus, who was a monk of Westminster. As this is dedicated to Abbot Vitalis, who flourished 1076-82, it gives us its date. The tomb of Sulcardus, according to Pits, was in the Abbey in his time, and bore the words, Sulcardus t?ionachus et chronigraphus?- The story was incorporated by two such responsible historians as William of Malmesbury and Ralph of Diss, and is also referred to in a famous charter attributed to King Eadgar, which is a measure of the credulity of the times and of the daring flights which the monkish reporters of miracles were willing to take. As it is picturesque, it may interest my readers, being a fair sample of mediaeval thought, and I therefore propose to condense it from the various reports in Dugdale. They tell us that the original Abbey was built by King Sabercht of Essex. When the building was finished and the time had come when it was to be conse- crated, Mellitus the Bishop went to perform the ceremony, and was encamped in some tents or booths half a mile from the building {fixis tentoriis a diinidio viileario). On the evening of the Sunday, when the ceremony was to be performed, a person in the garb of a traveller who was on the other side of the Thames, summoned a fisherman to ferry him over to the church, offering him a reward, and bade him wait in order to take him back. The boatman was struck by the majestic appearance of the traveller. After he had entered the new church he noticed that it became suffused with flaming light, and heard an angelic choir singing partly within and partly without, while the angels were seen ascending and descending a ladder like that of Jacob. Presently the strange visitor returned to the astonished boatman. As they were recrossing the river he bade the fisherman cast out his net, which he did, and thereupon caught a great multitude of fish which almost sank the boat. Among these was a large salmon {Salmo), which the traveller picked out, bidding the fisherman present it to Mellitus and to say that St. Peter had sent it to him, while he was to retain all the rest for himself in payment for his services. He further told ^ See Wright, Biog. Britt. ii. 45. xdi ADDENDA him that he was, in fact, St. Peter (" the heavenly janitor," as one of the tracts call him), and that he had been to consecrate the church, which he had determined to dedicate to himself. He bade him tell all this to Mellitus. In the morning the fisherman went to the Bishop with the salmon, and reported his adventure. The latter was greatly astonished, and on opening the doors of the BasiUca he found all the signs of the church having been consecrated. The pavement was inscribed with certain letters alphabeti iiiscriptione signatum (one account says in both Greek and Latin letters) ; the wall was marked in consecrated oil with a number of crosses in twelve places {paj-iete?n bis sents in locis sanctificatis oleo litnm), while there were also there the remains of twelve half-burnt candles. Assured that the state- ment of the fisherman was genuine, the Bishop informed the people, who with one voice glorified God. One of the notices says that the fish was called Esiceus, and it adds : Ab ilia itaque usque in hodier?iam diem ejus piscatoris progenies Esiciorum decimacionem Deo et sancto Petro, prout audent, conferunt} Stubbs, in referring to the fabulous account, adds that nothing is known of Westminster till the time of Dunstan. When the Saxon Church there was afterwards amplified by the Confessor, it was natural to look out for an early founder for it, and to attribute it to the first Bishop of London ; so when the life of Erkenwald was written, his education was naturally assigned to Mellitus as the Apostle of London. Baronius, whose credulous suggestions have no limit, goes so far as to suggest that the chief business of the alleged visit of Mellitus to Rome was in connection with the consecration of Westminster. Thomas of Elmham has invented a second visit of Mellitus to Rome in connection with the alleged introduction of monks at Christchurch, Canterbury.- In regard to this earliest known school at Canterbury, we read in the life of St. Furseus, as paraphrased by Bede, how Sigeberht, King of the East Angles, having become a Christian, founded a school and obtained a bishop, Felix, from Kent, and we are told appointed pedagogues and masters for the boys, after the fashion of Canterbury {eisque paedagogos ac fnagistros juxta morem Cantuat-iorut/i praebenie).'^ This Canterbury school thus ^ Dugdale, Man. ed. 1655, vol. i. 55-58. ^ Op. cit. ed. Haidwick, 134. ^ Bede, iii. ch. 18. ADDENDA xciii referred to in 630 can only have been founded by Augustine, as Mr. Plummer suggests. Page 179. A ghost story was told of St. Augustine's tomb, namely, that on one occasion when its keeper had greatly neglected it, a blaze of light filled all the church. In the midst of it there appeared a boy with a torch in his hand, and with long golden hair about his shoulders. His face was as white as snow, and his eyes like stars. He rebuked the attendant for his neglect, and then withdrew again into his tomb. As late as the time of James i., a monument used to be shown in the eastern transept of the church at Reculver, claiming, says Stanley, to be the tomb of ^thelberht. On it was the inscription — " Here lies Ethelbert, Kentish King whilom." This, says Stanley, may have been ^thelberht the Second. Bede's testimony makes it clear that ^thelberht the First was buried at Canterbury. Page 192. As to the ritual introduced by St. Augustine, a few additional words may be said. There can be no doubt that substantially it was that then used at Rome. When Arch- bishop /F^thelheard demanded from the prelates at the Council of Clovesho in 798 an exposition of their faith {ibi sollicito ab eis scrutinio quaesivimus qualiter apud eos fides catholica haberetur et quomodo Christiana religio exercereiur), they replied unani- mously: '■'• NotiDJi sit paieniitati tune, quia siciit primitns a sanda Roma7ia et apostolica sede, beatissimo Papa Gregorio dirigejite^ exarata est, ita crediinus." ^ The Faith they claimed to be the same, but in accordance with his own practice Gregory had conjoined them to qualify the Roman use by those of other Churches, and notably that of Gaul, in cases where they should deem it better — that is, more edifying. Dr. Bright says of Augustine that he apparently inserted in the liturgy the Gallic benedictio populi, and, as he says, the 16th Canon of the Council of Clovesho in 747 seems to imply that there then existed certain other variations in the English Mass book. Again he says : " We infer from a letter of Alcuin to Eanbald 11., Archbishop of York in the end of the eighth century, that there were then in use some larger sacramentaries representing 'an old use' which did not entirely agree with the Roman." 2 As we saw in the former volume, St. Gregory ^ Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 512. 2 Alcuin, Eps. 171 ; Op. 1-231 ; Bright, 103 and 104. xciv ADDENDA apparently made a change in the services of the Canonical Hours, so that the Use on the subject, at his Monastery of St. Andrew's, was different to the standard Benedictine one, and we can hardly doubt that it was Gregory's Rule on the subject that was introduced into England by Augustine. The Canterbury monks apparently, presently adopted the Rule of St. Benedict on the subject. St. Dunstan, however, out of veneration for St. Gregory, ordered the monks to change the course of St. Benedict for that of St. Gregory during Easter week.^ Lanfranc cared less for the apostle of the Saxons and abolished the custom. - It was beUeved in the English Church, according to Haddan and Stubbs, as early as the eighth century, when it is assumed in the answers ascribed to Archbishop Ecgbert by the Council of Enham in the eleventh century, that Pope Gregory gave the English a rule for the observance of the Ember days. In his Dialogue Egbert says : the English Church kept the first Ember fast " iit fioster didascalus beaius Gregorius, in suo Antiphonario et Missali Libra, per pedagogu/n nostmm beatuni Augustinum transmissit ordinatum et rescriptum.'^ ^ Such a rule is given by Muratori, but Haddan and Stubbs doubt the authenticity of the injunction in the form there given. It provides for four fasts — spring, summer, autumn, and winter. The first in the first hebdomada of Quadragesima. The second hebdomada after Pentecost. The third in the full hebdomada before the autumnal equinox, and the fourth in the full hebdomada before Christmas. The fast to be always on the sixth day, except from Easter to Pentecost, and when it happens to be a great fast day."* In a letter written by St. Boniface to Pope Zacharias, he reports that a certain layman of great position had reported to him that in the time of Gregory he had given permission for people to marry an uncle's widow, or a cousin's wife, or people in the third degree of consanguinity, and he had himself taken advantage of the licence. Boniface declares that he cannot believe this to be true, since in a Synod of London held in ' Septem horae cationicae a inonachis in Ecdesia Dei more cationicorum propter auctoritatem S. Gregorii celebrandae sunt {Co}tcord. Monach., iii. 899). ^ Wilk, Cone, inter Const. Lanfr., i. 399, quoted by Lingard, i. 301 note. ^ Haddan and Stubbs, 411 and 412 ; Plummer, Bede, 56 and 57. * Mansi, x. 446 ; Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 52 and 53. ADDENDA xcv transmarine Saxony, i.e. in England, a country where he was born and brought up, which Church had been founded by the disciples of St. Gregory, i.e. Augustine, Laurence, Justus, and Mellitus, it had been affirmed that such marriages involved a very serious wicked incest and a horrible and a damnable wickedness according to Holy Scripture.^ In a letter from Pope Zacharias to Boniface, he reports that in an English Synod held under Theodore in the country where Augustine, Laurence, Justus, and Honorius (Mellitus is curiously not mentioned) had first preached the faith, it had been declared that Baptism, when only one person of the Trinity was involved, was invalid. - Gratian, the source of many sophisticated and false docu- ments which passed current in prgecritical days (in this case he derived them from Ivo Decret. iv. 29), publishes a number of fragments professing to be derived from letters of Augustine, which are false according to Jaffe. They prescribe rules for the use of meat, fish or wine, milk, eggs, and cheese on Sundays by those in "Orders."^ Page 211. Bishop Stubbs, referring to the alleged decrees of this Council of Rome in his article on Mellitus in the Did. of Chr. Biog., says they are most suspicious. They state that they were meant to secure peace for the monks {de vita 7)iotiachoru7n et quiete orditiationis). Stubbs adds that two versions of the decree are extant, both of which he says are spurious. In them attempts to restrain the monks from undertaking any priestly office are forbidden. Cp. Labbe, Co7ic. v. 619 ; Mansi, Cone. X. 504; Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 64 and 65. It was to Mellitus as Bishop that ^thelberht in a forged charter is made to endow the Church of London with the Manor of Tillingham.'* Page 212. Dr. Bright, speaking of the Monastery of St. Peter and St. Paul at Canterbury, says : " The monastery as it grew in resources, became a conspicuous specimen of monastic exemp- tion from diocesan rule ; it was called " the Roman Chapel in England," as being immediately subject to the Pope (see the documents quoted by Elmham).'' Eugenius the Third said that 1 Eps. of Boniface, ed. Wlirdlvvein, p. 108 ; Haddan and Stubbs, pp. 50-51. - Epp. Bon., ed. Wiirdtwein, Ixxxii. ; Haddon and Stubbs, iii. 51 and 52. '^ Gratian, Dist. iv. Canon vi. '' V'ide ante, v. 215. '' ed. Hardwick, pp. 386, 392, and 404. xcvi ADDENDA the monastery was Beati Petri juris, etc., while an earlier Pope, Agatho, forbade any sacerdos (bishop) to exercise authority in the monastery {praeier sedem apostolicam), it being specially under the jurisdiction of Rome. Its community carried on a tradition of jealous independence as regards the archbishop, and a sort of standing feud with their neighbours of the metropolitan cathedral, and did not shrink from documentary frauds in support of their programme.^ Page 213. Thome says that there was a statue of y^thelberht in the East Chapel (perhaps the apse is meant) of the Church of St. Pancras. ^ This has, of course, been long since destroyed. There was still to be seen, however, in the fifteenth century in the screen of the church a figure of the sainted King holding a church in his hand. Page 223. In view of the very slight intercourse between Rome and the Church of Gaul at this time, it will be well to refer to one proof that Aries still obtained thence the recognised metropolitan badge of its Bishop. In a letter of Theodoric 11., King of Burgundy, written on August 23, 613, printed in the Mon. Gerin. Hist, Epp. 6, p. 455 {vide), and written to Boniface the Fourth, he asks for the pallium to be sent to the newly consecrated Archbishop of Aries, named Florian. The Pope commends to the King the care of the Church and of its Patrimony in Gaul, while in a letter written directly to Florian ° he states that he had sent the pallium, speaks of the good reports which had reached him of the Archbishop, and begs him to put down simony, and to live worthily, and he also commends to him the Patrimony of which Candidus still had the care. Page 23 T. Sabercht, sometimes called Saba, King of Essex, and patron of Bishop Mellitus according to Stubbs, probably died in the same year as his uncle /Ethelberht, i.e. 616. We are told that he was buried at Westminster, and when in 1308 his alleged tomb was opened to allow of the transfer of his bones, his right hand and arm are said to have been found covered with flesh and uncorrupted.^ As Stubbs says, Sabercht's sons must have been grown up at the time of his conversion, for they continued heathens at the time of his death, ^ Bright, 113-114 and notes, - Op. cit. wjT. 3 /^, p, 453_ * Annates Paulini, p. 140; Cliron. S. Paiili, ed. Simpson, p. 225. ADDENDA xcvii which took place probably about 6i6.^ According to Bede, Sabercht had three sons. Florence of Worcester in his genealogies gives the names of two of them, Saexraed and Saeward.^ The third, on very slight grounds, was named Sigeberht by Brompton.^ Page 236. In a life of St. Laurence by Gocelin, which is still unpublished,^ are some fabulous tales about a journey he is sup- posed to have made to Scotland, and a story about the Church at Fordoun into which Queen Margaret was unable to enter. Bishop Stubbs says that out of 250 churches in England dedicated to St. Laurence, some few may have been dedicated to the Archbishop.^ One in the Isle of Thanet may pretty certainly be claimed to have been so. Page 242. Some relics of St. Mellitus were preserved at St. Paul's in 1298.^ Page 243. In regard to the hortatory letter of Boniface here mentioned, Stubbs reminds us that some such letter was referred to by the eight English Bishops who about 805 wrote to Pope Leo the Third, asking for the pall for the Archbishop. In that letter the Pope says of Mellitus and Justus : " Qui ambo susceperunt scripta exhortatoria a poniifice Romanae et apostolicae sedis Bonifacio, data sibi ordinandi episcopos auctoritate ; cujus auctoritatis ista est forma. Delectissimo fratri Jiisto Bonifacius." There is preserved in the Canterbury archives an ancient list of palls. Among the recipients of the vestment Mellitus is men- tioned, and Gervase of Canterbury and Ralph de Diceto both say that he received a pall. Gervase accounts for the fact by supposing that the Pope sent three palls to St. Augustine, for the three churches of Canterbury, London, and York, and that they were used by the three first archbishops ; but, as Stubbs says, the story is based on a mistake, adding that there can be no doubt that neither Laurence nor Mellitus ever received a pall, hence probably why they consecrated no bishops.'' Page 257. The Derwent (the White or Clear Water) is a tribu- tary of the Ouse. At Aldby, says Freeman: "There stood a royal house of the Northumbrian kings, the apparent site of which, ... a mound surrounded by a fosse, still looks down on a picturesque point of the course of the river.^ 1 D.C.B. iv. 594. 2 M.H.B. 629. ^ Ed. Twysden, c. 743. * See Hardy's Catalogtie, i. 217, 218. 5 D.C.B. iii. 632. « See Stubbs, D.C.B. iii. 900. ■^ Stubbs, D.C.B. iii. 901. ^ Freeman, iii. 355. xcviii ADDENDA Page 259. In the letters attributed to Pope Boniface the Fifth, which I have argued are spurious, there are two sentences which are archaeologically of some interest. He professes to send King ^Edwin as blessings from his protector, St. Peter, a camisia or soldier's shirt ^ ornamented with gold and a camp cloak (lena) of Ancyran fashion, while to /Ethelberga he sends a silver mirror and a gilt ivory comb.^ Page 262. Taylor, in his Words mid Places^ gives the meaning of the name Goodmundham, as the place ijiavi) of the protection {inund) of the Gods, which seems to me very doubtful. It is probably made up, like many similar place names of the same class, from a personal or family name, Godmund and ham. This is also suggested in Murray's Yorkshire. Page 263. In regard to the story of Run, Dr. Bright says it is plainly a Welsh fiction, possibly based on some confusion between Paulinus and Paul Hen, the Welsh founder of Whitland, in which Bede's account of Paulinus is transferred to Run. Urbgen or Urien, the father of Run, had fought against Theodoric forty years before. Two Welsh MSS. of Nennius, appealing to the authority of two Welsh Bishops, read Run . . . i.e. Paulinus. Dr. Bright says the equation is to him incredible. It has, however, been favoured by Bishop Browne.^ Page 263. The wooden sanctuary here mentioned, according to Raine,"* was carefully preserved and enriched with splendid altars and vessels by Archbishop Albert.^ Dr. Bright adds that the remains in the crypt at York Minster, assigned by some to Paulinus, have been attributed by others to Archbishop Albert just named.*^ The only thing which actually commemorated Paulinus at York Minster was an altar jointly dedicated to him and St. Chad.''' Page 269. The only memorial I know of Justus is the name of St. Just, to which the church of Penwith, in remote Cornwall, is dedicated. Page 319. Sigeberht, who is called Christianissimus atque doctissiinus by Bede ^ and also boniis et religiosus,^ became King of East Anglia. He was apparently a stepson and not a son of Redwald. The pedigrees in Florence of Worcester and ^ Jerome, Eps. Ixiv. 2. - Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 77 and 79; Bright, 131. ^ See Bright, 135, note. ^ Historians of York, i. 104. * See Bright, 136, note. ^ lb. "^ Raine, D.C.B. iv. 249. 8 Op. cit. ii. 15. 9 iii, 18. ADDENDA xcix William of Malmesbury do not make him his son, while they make him a brother of Eorpwald. Florence calls h\m /rater suus ex parte matris} and William of Malmesbury says fratre ejus ex matre? In this case he would be Redwald's stepson, and this, perhaps, accounts for his having been driven out of the country by the latter.^ Pits says that Sigeberht corresponded with Desiderius, Bishop of Cahors, and that his letters are preserved at St. Gallen.4 Page 327. Bede says the body of /Edwin was afterwards recovered and buried at Whitby.^ Page 333. This monastery, of which St. Eansuitha was the Abbess, says Bright, was washed away by the sea in the six- teenth century. In 1885 some workmen employed in the present church found behind the altar a reliquary containing a skull and some bones, which had evidently been hid there at the Reformation. I have given a photograph of it. These relics of the foundress are now preserved in a closed recess on the north side of the sanctuary.^ She is still, says Bright, re- membered as the local saint. 1 F.C. W. Y. i. 260. 2 ^_ jif^ I g7_ ^ Inimicitias Redualdi fugiens — Bede, iii. 18. * Smith, Bede, iii. 18. ® iii. 24. ^ Op. cit. 126, note 2. vBebbanburh ENGLAND A.D. 597 to 652. Hrofeceastre '^^i^-'^^"^?^ I L IN L I CCantwarabyri^ -- Retesbur^h SUTH SEAXNA 7Q To face p. i. SAINT AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY CHAPTER I Having surveyed the life and work of Saint Gregory from his birth to his death, as it affected other parts of Europe, we are now in a position to understand rather better the meaning and the ERRATA. Page 34. For " Christianitas " read " Christianitatis." Page 4 1 , footnote. For " Brown " read " Browne." Pao^e 53. For " 'Povroviriai " read " 'Povtovitim" Page 65, last line but two. For " though " read " since." j^ ^ v^j^v- o y Ljiyjii III 1113 iiiiabiuiiary worK. Caesar's two voyages to Britain were mere transient raids. It was a hundred years later that X Bebbanburh ENGLAND A.D. 597 to 652. P^ sCetereht "\ D E R^A? ^Eqrfet.viv, y , ^ ^Godmu\dingaham To face p. i. SAINT AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY CHAPTER I Having surveyed the life and work of Saint Gregory from his birth to his death, as it affected other parts of Europe, we are now in a position to understand rather better the meaning and the results of the most romantic and in many ways far-reaching of his labours, namely, his mission to Britain. The green island, girdled and buttressed by white cliffs, which lies beyond the turbulent "Channel," had exercised a great fascination over the greatest of the Ancient Romans, Julius Caesar, and had tempted him to prosecute his most risky and picturesque venture. Six hundred and fifty years later, it similarly fascinated the greatest Roman of the Middle Ages, Gregory, to make another venture, also risky and picturesque, and the fruits of which have been long-lived. To understand that venture we must look at a bigger horizon than bounded the great Pope's vision in his missionary work. Caesar's two voyages to Britain were mere transient raids. It was a hundred years later that 2 SAINT AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY the conquest of the island began, and it went on till the greater part of it was absorbed in the Empire. It presently became one of its richest and most prosperous provinces, and for three centuries and a half it benefited by its laws, its orderly government, and administrative skill. Then it passed again into oblivion. The terrible disasters which overtook Rome, its internal decay, the load of taxation and consequent poverty of the crowd, and the increasing dissipation and luxury of the upper classes, had sapped the Spartan virility of the race, and destroyed the old heroic spirit and fortitude of its citizens. These virtues, which con- stituted the great prop of the Roman State, had all been replaced by meaner endowments. Its armies were chiefly recruited by mercenaries, and were wasted in cruel fights between rival claimants for the prizes it still had to offer. Mean- while the stalwart peoples beyond its borders, who had been kept at bay by the discipline of the Roman soldiery and the skill of its leaders, began to have their day. Those whose relatives when defeated had been ruthlessly slaughtered or made to supply the craving of the debased Roman crowd for bloody and cruel entertainments in the circus, came faster and faster across the sacred boundaries of the state, and, like the insects that thrive on rotten trees, or the wolves that pursue a retreating army, they made the problems of revival or defence almost insoluble. Their memories were reddened with many lurid patches, and their javelins and swords completed THE "PASSING'' OF ROMAN BRITAIN 3 what moral and material decay had begun. When this took place, and those in command were at their wits' ends to meet the ubiquitous attacks, it was natural and necessary to abandon the isolated parts of the Empire where the cost of defence seemed hardly to pay for the benefits secured. Thus it came about that Britain, which had always needed a strong garrison and was now assailed by foes from the west and from the east, from Ireland and from Germany, was at length abandoned, the soldiers withdrawn and the richer and more vigorous among its civilian population who could go, went away to Gaul or Italy. Those who were left were mainly peasants and labourers, or small farmers, and were either driven into the western parts of the island, or reduced to servitude. Mean- while all the maritime districts from the Solent to the Firth of Forth were occupied by German- speaking and German-thinking folk, who had very few amiable ties with Roman ways. Gaul, though in a less degree, also saw its Roman civilisation jeopardised by tribes with similar endowments. They made access to Britain by Roman travellers and Roman merchants virtually impossible, for they occupied the seaboard of the Channel along its whole length on either side, and thus controlled all the ports of departure and arrival. It required only two or three generations of this paralysis of communication to completely destroy the memory of such a place as Britain among the ruling classes either in the western or the eastern Rome, and it is 4 SAINT AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY not wonderful that it should have passed out of men's memories and that its name should have had no more meaning for them than the half-mythical lands of Thule and Scandia. How much this was the case may be gathered from the works of such an accomplished and gifted writer as Procopius, who flourished in the busy reign of Justinian, and who tells us only fantastic fables about " Brittia." He says that no one could live in the mist and fog beyond the Roman wall, and speaks of the country as a land, whither the ghosts of the departed were ferried by night by unseen boatmen, etc. etc. He clearly had no real knowledge about it.^ We may gather the same conclusion from the abundant writings of St. Gregory, who had some reason for curiosity. The preparations made for his mission to the Anglians, and the references he makes to them in his letters, show how scanty his knowledge really was until his monks sent him more precise information. The same causes isolated the Celtic peoples of Wales and of Ireland. It must be remembered that their Christianity was in the main the child of post-Roman times. It was after the legions had left, and when the land was being harried and worried by its foreign foes, that the afflatus for the new faith spread like wildfire among these im- pressionable folk, and created a great crowd of de- votees, anchorites, and monks. Their Christianity ^ Procopius, de bell. Vandalico^ lib. i. chap. i. BRITAIN A FORGOTTEN LAND 5 was orthodox, but its ties were with Gaul and not Italy. Lerins and Tours were its foster-mothers, and Brittany and Western Gaul, with which they kept up a connection, were the only parts of the Continent they knew much about. They clung to traditional ritual usages which had once prevailed widely in Gaul, and which had either not taken root in Italy or had been superseded there. They had little or no intercourse with Rome during the sixth century, and the traditional Primacy of St. Peter's chair was a pious legend with them and no more. They managed their own discipline and were tenacious of their own customs. The Pope, although he knew of the existence of the British Church, seems from his letters to have had no detailed or even partial knowledge of its ways, and perhaps doubted its orthodoxy. The great island and its satellite beyond St. George's Channel were, in fact, as much an unknown land to Gregory as Western China was to the great missionary societies who first sent evangelists there. There must have been some moving cause to make the overloaded Pope take so much interest and show so much solicitude in Christianising the pagan parts of Britain. It has been suggested, but the notion seems to me very far-fetched, that the idea was first communicated to him by his friend Eulogius, the Patriarch of Alexandria. This view is based on a sentence or two in a letter written by Gregory to the latter in July 598, in which he says that, while the nation of the 6 SAINT AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY Anglians still continued to worship sticks and stones, he had determined, through the aid of the prayers of Eulogius, to send them a monk of his monastery. His actual words are : Exvestrae mihi orationis adjutorio placuit, etc. Later on in the letter, Gregory, having reported the success of the mission, says that he had sent Eulogius the news, to let him know some results of what he was doing " at Alexandria by his acts, and at the end of the world by his prayers " [quid in mundi finibus agitis orando)} These cryptic sentences are assuredly an un- steady peg to hang such a big conclusion upon, as that it was Eulogius who persuaded Gregory to his famous missionary work. Another suggestion has been made which seems more plausible. We know from a letter which Gregory wrote to his agent in Gaul, the priest Candidus, in September 595, that he had then heard of the traffic in Anglian boys ; doubt- less prisoners taken in the fierce wars of the different tribes. In the letter the Pope bids Candidus spend the money he had collected from the patrimony of St. Peter in Gaul in buying clothing for the poor and in redeeming Anglian youths of the age of from seventeen to eighteen, who, he suggests, might profit by being given to God in monasteries. He urges this course since, as the money collected in Gaul could not be spent in Italy [i.e. because it was of light weight), it might be profitably spent there. He further told him that * E. and H. viii. 29 ; Barmby, viii. 30. THE REASON FOR THE ENGLISH MISSION 7 if he should succeed in getting any of the ablatae {i.e. arrears of rent), he was to spend them in the same way. Inasmuch as the boys in question would be pagans, the Pope wished a priest to be sent to Rome with them, so that if any were sick and about to die on the way he might baptize them. He thus seems to suggest that except in cases of necessity his agent was not to baptize the boys, but to reserve them for himself, and he bade nim lose no time in prosecuting his com- mission diligently.^ This notice is particularly interesting, for it shows that when it was written, Gregory was fully aware of the abominable traffic of which the Jews then had the monopoly, and in which the children captured in war were publicly or privately sold to become slaves or for baser purposes. It is clear, also, that he had in con- templation making a certain number of them into monks, probably in order that they should become missionaries ; and further, that he had ordered some of them to be sent to Rome that he might him- self baptize them, and it is almost certain that he actually saw and conversed with them. The extent of the nefarious traffic here named is hardly sufficiently appreciated, and a few references may be profitable. Eusebius, in his Life of Constantine^ tells us that that emperor had passed a law forbidding Jews to have Christian slaves, and ordering them to be freed * E. and H. vi. 10 ; Barmby, vi. 7. " iv. 27. 8 SAINT AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY when they did so. A similar provision is contained in Justinian's Code.^ Gregory himself refers to Jewish traders in slaves in several of his letters. In one^ he forbids Jews holding Christian slaves [Eis ta77ien Christiana 7nancipia habere non liceat). In another,^ written to the Praetor of Sicily, Liber- tinus, he complains of a Jew called Nasas who had acquired Christian slaves and devoted them to his own service and use, and ought to have been punished accordingly, and he now bids his agent punish this most wicked of Jews {quidam scelerat- issirnus Judeoruni), and compel him to set at liberty, without any equivocation whatever, the Christian slaves he had acquired. In a third letter,^ written to Bishop Januarlus, Gregory complains that male and female slaves who had fled to the Church from Jewish masters for the sake of the faith {fidei causa), had been restored to them or paid for according to their market value ; such payments he denounced as causing the poor to suffer by improper spending of money by the patronage of ecclesiastical compassion {ecclesiasticae pie talis). ^ Lib. i. tit. 9, lo : '''' Judaeus servum Christlanum nee comparare debebit, nee largitatis aut aliqiiocunque titulo eonseqiietur. Quod si aliquis Judaeorutn . . . non solum mancipii damno ntulteiur, verum etiatn eapitali sententia puniatur. . . . Ne Christianum mancipium haereticus vel paganus vel Judaeus habeat vel possideat vel cir- cumcidatP Again, in the Visigothic laws of King Reccared, xi. 2. 12, we read: '"'• Nulli Judaeo liceat Christianum mancipium comparare nee donatutn accipere . . . servus vero vel ancilla, qui contradixerint esse Judaei, ad libertatem perducanturP E. and H. vii. 21, note. * lb. ii. 6. 3 7^. iii 27. * lb. iv. 9. JEWISH TRAFFIC IN CHRISTIAN SLAVES 9 In a fourth^ the Pope complains that in the city of Luna many Christians were in servitude to Jews, and he bids the bishop have them released, unless they were husbandmen who were tenants of Jews and had become such by conditions of their tenure ; which seems an inconsequent exception. In a fifth ^ he urges, that if any slave of a Jew, whether Jew or pagan, wished to become a Christian, the Jew was not to be permitted to sell him. In cases where pagans had been brought from foreign parts for sale, the Jew might have three months' grace in which to find a purchaser, who must be a Christian. After that he was not to be permitted to sell him, but he was to be unreservedly released. In a sixth ^ Gregory writes to Candidus, his agent in Gaul, to say that a certain Dominicus had complained to him that four of his brothers were detained by the Jews as slaves at Narbonne. In a seventh,* written to F'ortunatus, Bishop of Naples, Gregory speaks of Christian slaves whom Jews bought from the territories of Gaul, and on whose behalf the bishop had acted with solicitude, and he declares that such traffic should be for- bidden. The Pope says, however, that he had been embarrassed by the decisions of the secular judges, who had decided the traffic to be legal in the case both of Christians and pagans {co7nperi7nus hanc illis a diversis judicibus 7'eipublicae ^ E. and H.'w.ii. ^ lb. vi. 29. * lb. vii. 21. ^ lb. ix. 104. lo SAINT AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY emptionem injungi atque evenire ut inter paganos et Ckristiani pariter comparentur). It would seem that Jews used to make journeys to Gaul to buy slaves, for whom they had orders. The Pope enjoins that all slaves who were in their hands must be handed over to those who ordered them, or be sold to Christian purchasers, within forty days, or be released. If such slaves should fall sick, the time of their release must be postponed till they were well. If, however, some such slaves should still remain in their hands from the previous year, before the Jews knew of the inhibition, they were to be permitted to sell them to Christian purchasers even if the bishop had taken possession of them. In the eighth and ninth letters,^ Gregory, writing to Brunichildis, the Queen of the Franks, and her grandsons, complains that they had allowed Jews to possess Christian slaves in their dominions. Lastly, we have a letter' in which a "Samarean " {i.e. doubtless a Samaritan) had a Christian slave who had been given to him by his Christian master, which the Pope denounces as not only wicked but illegal. It is therefore quite plain that in the time of Gregory Anglian slaves were being sold in Gaul and in Italy, and that some of them had actually been redeemed by order of the Pope and with the Church's funds, and had been sent on to Rome. It is pro- bably on this foundation that the pretty story to which I will now turn was built. ^ E. and H. ix. 213 and 315. ^ lb. viii. 31. THE STORY OF THE ANGLIAN SLAVES ii • The Whitby Monk tells us it was reported among the faithful that before Gregory became Pope there arrived at Rome certain " of our nation," having fair complexions and flaxen hair {crinibus candidate albis). When he heard of this, Gregory desired to see them. Being attracted by the appearance of the boys, he asked of what nation they were, to which they replied they were ''Anguli' {i.e. Anglians), and he remarked, ''Angeli Dei' {i.e. angels of God). He then asked what was the name of the king of their nation. They said, "y4^//z,"and he replied, '' Alleluja, laus enim Dei esse debet illic'' {i.e. Alleluja, the praise of God should be heard there). Lastly, he asked to what tribe they belonged, to which they said, '' Deire^' and he answered, '' De ira Dei confugientes ad fident " (they have fled from the wrath of God to the faith). He thereupon asked Pope Benedict to be allowed to set out hither {hue. showing that the tract was written in England), for it was a sorry matter that the devil should fill such fine vessels. The Pope gave his consent, whereupon there was a tumult at Rome. The crowd divided into three sections, and waylaid the Pope on his way to St. Peter's Church. The three sections cried out respectively, '' Petrum offendisti; Romam detruxisti; Gregoriam dimisisti " (Thou hast off"ended Peter ; thou hast destroyed Rome ; thou hast sent Gregory away). He accord- ingly sent messengers to recall the would-be missionary. Before his return, and when he was 12 SAINT AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY three days' journey from the city, Gregory noticed that a locust settled on his book. This he accepted as an omen meaning that he was to stay where he was {in loco sia), a rather ingenious pun. He ac- cordingly returned again to Rome.^ Our author, it will be seen, puts the incident in the reign of Pope Benedict the First, when Gregory was Prsefect at Rome, and therefore an officer of the Emperor and was not yet subject to the Pope's authority. This raises our doubts about the matter. Such doubts probably occurred to Paul the Deacon, who, in transferring the story to his own biography, attributes it to the reign of Pope Pelagius. If so, it must relate to an event after Gregory's return from Constantinople. It has been said as a reason for disbelieving the saga, that the habit of punning in the way it occurs in the story, is not found in Gregory's writings, although he was very fond of joking. More than one pun, however, may be found in his letters. That the story was older than the Whitby Monk's life seems probable. It is hardly likely that Paul the Deacon would have had access to the latter, and the fact that he attributes the event to the reign of Pelagius and not to that of Benedict, while he adds a fourth phrase to those alleged to have been used by the crowd to the Pope, namely, regnu77i non tarn dimisisti, points to another source. Bede also tells the story in another fashion, and I cannot agree with Ewald and Hartmann that * Op. cit. ed. Gasquet, 13-15. THE STORY OF THE ANGLIAN BOYS 13 he derived it from the Whitby Monk and not from an independent tradition. The view that Bede and Thorn, the Canterbury chronicler, both derived the story from an independent source is also urged by Mason. ^ Bede, in telling this story, speaks of it as a tradition {opinio) about the blessed Gregory which had been handed down from the ancients. This hardly points to his having been inspired by some one who was, like the Whitby Monk, almost a con- temporary. In his hands the tale has considerably grown. The boys have become slaves who were being sold {vidisse . . . pueros venales) in the forum or market-place by certain merchants, and who were seen by Gregory while passing, and it was before making his punning allusions that he first learnt that they came from Britain and were pagans.^ The Canterbury monk. Thorn, reports a tradition that the boys were three in number. In a Saxon homily on St. Gregory^ it is said that the merchants who sold the boys were them- selves Anglians, which can only mean that it was Englishmen who had disposed of them to the slave-dealers of the period. These variations in the reports seem to make it probable that all the narratives we have, came from some common original, possibly some tradition which existed at Canterbury, which was possibly also the source of some of the miracles as told by the Whitby Monk, Bede, and Paul the Deacon. The one fact ^ The Mission of Augustine^ 188. * Op. cit. ii. 1. 3 See Elstob, 11-18. 14 SAINT AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY which remains certain (based as it is on the state- ment of Gregory himself) is that he knew of the traffic in EngHsh slave-boys at this time, and had probably personally encountered some of them. To return to the motive which moved Gregory to send his mission, the most reasonable is the one he gives himself, when he tells us in a letter to Queen Brunichildis, dated in July 596, that there had gone to him some of the Anglian people who wished to become Christians, but the bishops who were in the vicinity (which has been understood as referring to Gaul) had shown no solicitude for them {sed sacerdotes qui in vicino sunt pastoralem erga eos sollicitudine7n non habere)} Gregory goes on to say that, not wishing to be responsible for their eternal damnation, he had sent Augustine and his companions to learn their wishes and to try and convert them. This is quite explicit and clear. One curious feature about these notices, which is true of all the occasions on which Gregory refers to the English race, is that he always refers to them as Anglians, and never as Saxons. This confirms the evidence of the story about the Anglian boys, in which they are made to state that their king was called Aelli and their country Deira, and points to the boys thus sold as slaves in Gaul having come from North Britain, and been probably the victims of some war between Northumbria and Kent. ^ E. and H. vi. 57. Sacerdos is the usual word employed by Gregory for a bishop. THE CAELIAN HILL AND NEIGHBOURHOOD 1 5 When Gregory had made up his mind to send a mission to evangelise the Anglians, he also determined that it should consist not of secular priests but of monks, and further, that they should be chosen from his own children — the inmates of his own foundation, St. Andrew's Monastery, on the Caelian Hill. There are few educated English people who visit Rome who do not pay a visit to the Church of St. Gregorio. On their way thither they for the most part pass under the stately Arch of Constantine, who, in making Christianity the official religion of the State, did so much to encourage its growth and prosperity. Close by the arch stands the Colosseum, with its riven walls, its vast proportions, its massive and grandiose style. There, in the evening, as the wind whistles through the gaps in the walls, we seem to hear echoes of the awful human cries with which dying gladiators and slaughtered martyrs for centuries pierced the skies amidst the plaudits of the cruel, savage, heartless Roman mob that filled the benches. By the same way Gregory when young must have gone well-nigh daily for years as he passed along the Via de San Gregorio, now shaded with trees on either side, until at the farther end he turned up the gentle slope to the left which was known in ancient days as the Clivus Scauri, answering to the modern Via de SS. Giovanni e Paolo, where his home was planted on the slopes of the Caelian Hill. The Caelian Hill was in later Roman times the 1 6 SAINT AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY favourite residence of some of the wealthier Roman families, and among others of Pope Agapetus (535- 537). His father, Gordian, had been the priest of the Church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo on the same slope. Agapetus himself had been an archdeacon before he became Pope ; he was a personage of senatorial rank, and had his palace close by the church just named, and near that of the family of his successor Gregory. He was a man of culture and a friend of Cassiodorus, and with him he tried to found a university at Rome, but the times were not propitious. In his palace Agapetus placed a library, and the dedicatory inscription still exists. This house eventually passed into the possession of Gregory, and from him into that of his monastery.-^ Under the present buildings of the monastery are buried vast constructions, including the remains of the library of Agapetus, which was lighted by large windows. These foundations rest on great walls of the early Republic of the kind known as opus quadratum. As we have seen, when Gregory succeeded to the family house in Rome, he dedicated it, with all its appurtenances, to religious uses, and founded on its site a monastery under the patronage of St. Andrew, after whom it was named. This house where Gregory was born and lived for years, stood right in face of the Palatine Hill, •* that Arx imperii, covered with its thickly clustering palaces and haunted by strange memories of many ^ Grisar, op. cit. pp. 502, 529. THE PALATINE IN SAINT GREGORY'S TIME 1 7 emperors. Viewed from without, the stately buildings of the Palatine were still magnificent. Valentinian the Third had put them in repair, and the havoc of Goths and Vandals had made but slight impression on their solid structures. Within, however, was one vast desolation — a wilderness of empty courts and closed apartments, choked with rubbish and strewn with the fragments of broken ornaments and statuary. It is true that portions of these build- ings were still in use. _Theod or ic stayed in the Imperial Palace in the year 500 ; and, after Rome was restored to the Empire, a few officials had their residence there. But a mere corner of the Palatine must have sufficed to house the handful of Imperial agents, and to provide an official Roman residence for the governor of Ravenna. The rest of the buildings, with their halls, baths, galleries, stairways, and innumerable apartments, were abandoned to decay, and in their fading splendour served but to remind men of the brilliant life that had for ever passed away. . . . " Even now, when on some mild spring morning," continues Mr. Dudden, "we take our stand on the steps of St. Gregorio, and gaze across St. Gregory's Avenue towards the grassy ruins of the Palatine, the spell of antiquity is strong upon us, and the soul is stirred with a wonderful admiration of vanished things. What, then, must have been Gregory's feelings when, in the last years of the classical age, he raised his eyes to the yet abiding mansions of the Caesars, or rambled through the 1 8 SAINT AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY ample spaces of the circus, or watched, from some gallery of the Flavian Amphitheatre, the sunshine playing on the bronze of Nero's colossal statue ? It cannot be doubted that amid these historic places there was engendered in him that ardent patriotism and pride in the Roman race and name for which throughout his later life he was distinguished."^ A good deal of rhetoric has been spent in regard to St. Gregory's Monastery as it stands, and the ties between it and our history. The fact is that few such memorable institutions have had so many vicissitudes. Its dedication was changed not unfittingly from St. Andrew to St. Gregory, and it passed presently out of the hands of its original tenants and became the home for a while of certain Greek monks, and in 1573 it was transferred to the monks of Camaldolese,""an31)ecame the headquarters of their order. The cloistered court, or atrium, which forms the main entrance to the church and looks so old, was really only built in 1633 by the architect Soria, and at the instance of Cardinal Scipio Borghesi, while the church itself was largely rebuilt in 17M, under Francesco Ferrari, so that neither the church nor the convent in their present shape and appearance recall in any way the monastic buildings as they existed in the time of St. Gregory. What there is of the old buildings themselves is, as I have said, chiefly underground. Remains of the church built by Gregory are, ^ Dudden, op. cit. i. ii, 15. s r; /•ji; The Marble Throne of St. Gregory. To /ace p. 18. THE REMAINS OF ST. ANDREW'S CHURCH 19 however, incorporated in the present one, notably its sixteen granite columns, which, like so many others in the churches of Rome, were the spoils of ancient temples or other Roman buildings. Bishop '^ Brown tells us he "found in the steps up to the altar in the north aisle a piece of sculpture which had evidently formed part of one of the sculptured screens of the enclosed choir of the basilica ; a remarkably fine example of the imitation of bronze screens, in marble, and of a rare design, and in the garden on the north side, used as the riser of a step, one of the grooved and sculptured marble posts which held the slabs of the choir screens." "These," he adds, " we cannot well doubt, are relics of Gregory's own church as built by himself, evidences/ of the style in which he built ; decorative structure on which his eye, perhaps his hand, has rested."^ In a small chapel attached to that specially dedicated to St. Gregory, is still a marble throne, or chair (of which I give a figure), alleged with every probability to have been his, and also a recess in which he is said to have slept. The former is described by Bishop Brown. He says of it : " The magnificent white marble throne which is shown in St. Gregory's Church as the chair of Pope Gregory himself, is one of the beautiful thrones of Greek sculpture which were brought to Rome in the time of the Empire, and served as seats for the vestals and other chief personages in the Colosseum and elsewhere, and they have found ^ Augustine and His Companions^ 141, 142. 20 SAINT AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY their way to various parts of Rome, but nowhere is there one so fine, I think, as this. Its beauty of sculptured relief is not seen at all, unless you get it removed from its position so as to see the back. The rubbing which they allowed me to take of it shows a very fine piece of symmetrical decoration of the best type, when laid out flat." ^ ^y In this church, perhaps (no doubt very dear to him in every way), St. Wilfred when in Rome saw on the high altar a beautifully ornamented text of the Gospels which had been presented by the Pope. His biographer tells us it was in the Church of St. Andrew, and he almost certainly meant this Church of St. Andrew. In the atrium of the present church have been inserted a number of tablets also removed from the earlier one, among which are two or three which recall our English troubles of a much later date. One of them may be quoted as an example of quaint pathos. It reads thus : " Here lies Robert Pecham, an English Catholic, who, after the dis- ruption of England and the Church, quitted his country, unable to endure life there without the faith ; and who, coming to Rome, died, unable to endure life here without his country." Another monument commemorates Sir Edward Carne of Glamorganshire, D.C.L. of Oxford, who formed with Cranmer and others the Commission that sought an opinion from the foreign Universities in favour of Henry viii.'s divorce. He was after- ^ Augustine and His Companions, 142. ST. ANDREW'S MONASTERY 21 wards Ambassador to the Emperor Charles the Fifth, by whom he was knighted, and became envoy to the Roman Court, where he died in 1561. To the left of the staircase leading up to the monastery, three small chapels stand apart on a plot of grass, which, although restored in later times by Cardinal Baronius, have a greater claim than the present church to be closely connected with St. Gregory. One is dedicated to Santa Silvia, Gregory's mother. It contains a very fine modern statue of the Saint. This latter is figured in the frontispiece to the previous work on Gregory. A second chapel was dedicated by Gregory himself to St. Andrew ; while the third is dedicated to Santa Barbara, and on the portal is the inscription Triclinium Pauperum. In the centre of this chapel is a marble table, 1 1 feet long and 3 broad, " set on classical supports much resembling in style Pope Gregory's chair." The inscription on it tells us that St, Gregory fed twelve paupers every morning at this table. A pretty legend attaches to the story, namely, that on one occasion Christ Himself in the form of an angel took His seat at the table as the thirteenth guest. For this reason the Pope on Maundy Thursday used to wait on thirteen guests instead of twelve. The inscription on it reads : — *' Bis senos Gregorius hie pascebat egentes Angelus et decimus tertius occubuit."^ * Augustine mid His Companions^ 143, note. The table is also figured in the previous volume. 2 2 SAINT AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY We may be sceptical about the pedigree of some of the things here mentioned which have been associated with Gregory's name, but this will not detract from the fact that wherever we turn in this hallowed corner of the most secluded and silent part of Rome, the great Pope is the genius of the place, nor can we fail to feel a certain glow of sentiment as we mount the stately stairs leading up to the monastery, and remember that it was possibly down these very steps that the monks came as they set out on their English mission. The Monastery of St. Andrew's and its inmates are mentioned in several of Gregory's letters, and notably in one written in February 60 1 to the patrician lady, Rusticiana, at Constantinople, who had sent some alms to the monastery in question. In this, Gregory tells us of such miracles having been performed there, that it might have been the Apostle Peter who was its abbot. He mentions some which he had heard of from the abbot and prior. Thus, two of the brethren, one old and one young, went out one day to buy something for the use of the monastery, when the elder monk, who had been sent as the guardian of the younger, appropriated some of the money given to him for the purchase. When they in returning had reached the threshold of "the oratory," the thief fell down, having been seized by a demon. When charged by the monks with theft, he denied it. He was again seized, and this was repeated eight times, THE MONKS AT ST. ANDREW'S 23 when he confessed, and thereupon the devil came to him no more. On another occasion, on the anniversary of St. Peter, while the brethren were resting at mid- day, one of them became blind, although his eyes were open, uttered loud cries,' and trembled. His companions took him up and carried him to the altar of St. Andrew, where they all prayed, when he recovered. He then told them that an old man came to him and set a black dog at him to tear him, and asked him what had induced him to escape from the monastery, and he confessed that that very day it had been his intention to run away. Another monk also desired to escape. He was very sorely treated by a demon every time he entered the oratory, while he did not molest him when he was outside. He at length confessed to the brethren, who prayed for him for three days, when the demon ceased from molesting him. On another occasion, two other brethren fled from the monastery. They had previously hinted to the others that they were going down the Appian or Latin Way to make for Jerusalem, but, having gone some distance they turned aside, and, finding some retired crypts near the Flaminian Road, they hid there. When they were missed, some of the monks followed them on horseback by the Metrovian Gate. As their horses reached the crypts where the fugitives were hiding, they stood still, though beaten and urged to proceed. Surprised at this, 24 SAINT AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY their riders searched the crypts, and noticed that the entrance was closed by a heap of stones. Having dismounted and removed them, they found the fugitives, who were much frightened. This "miracle" so acted on them that they were greatly impressed, and returned. Thus, says the Pope, it really proved a great advantage to them to have escaped for a short time from the monastery. Gregory adds that he had sent these stories so that the great lady might know more about the " oratory " on which she had bestowed her alms.^ They are interesting to us as a sample of the modes of thinking prevailing on some subjects in the very monastery from which Augustine and his brethren set out, and whence, at this time, there seems, further, to have been an epidemic to try and escape. The incident of a number of monks on horseback pursuing runaways along the Appian Way has a very curious local colour. The monks in question, as we have seen, almost certainly lived under a slightly modified Rule of St. Benedict. Their first abbot, according to John the Deacon, was Hilarion.^ He is nowhere men- tioned in the works of Gregory. Hilarion, however, is named in the inscription at the monastery record- ing the famous men who were once monks there, which is a very late record. The Pope, in one of his Dialogues^ refers to a certain Valentio, other- wise unknown, of whom he speaks as "■ mihi sicut nostiy nieo que mmasterio praefuity He may have ^ E. and H, xi. 26 ; Barmby, xi. 44. ' Op. cit. i. 6, 7. ' iv. 21. ii CJ u SAINT AUGUSTINE, PRIOR OF ST. ANDREWS 25 been the same person. According to the same writer, Hilarion was succeeded by Maximian, who held office till 591, i.e. the year after Gregory became Pope, when he became Archbishop of Syracuse. He was succeeded, according to one of Gregory's letters, by Candidus, who is styled "the Abbot of the Monastery of St. Andrew the Apostle, situated in this Roman city on the slope of Scaurus {in clivum Scaur i)." This letter was written in February 598.^ He was still abbot in February 601.^ Candidus before he was abbot had been a " bearer of presents," ^ and in writing to John, Bishop of Syracuse, to whom he took some presents, the Pope speaks of him as homo vester, pointing to his having been a Sicilian.* He also styles him Defensor.^ While Candidus was Abbot of St. Andrew's, the prior [praeposittis]^ was named Augustine. It was perhaps not his real name, but one he took when he became a monk, and was doubtless adopted from a much greater Augustine, the famous Bishop of Hippo. He was the person selected by Gregory to lead his Anglian mission. In a letter addressed by the Pope to Syagrius, ^ E. and H. viii. 12. ^ lb. xi. 20. He must be distinguished from another Candidus, who, as we have seen, was the protector of the papal patrimony in Gaul. ^ Lator praesentium, i.e. answering to a modern king's messenger. lb. vii. 9 ; xi. 20. * lb. vii. 9. " lb. iv. 28. * The word was often vir\{{&r\ propositus, whence our word provost. Plummer's Bede, Intr. xxviii, note 5. 26 SAINT AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY Bishop of Autun, in July 599, he specially speaks of Augustine as " ioxva&rXy praepo situs of my monas- tery, now our brother and co-bishop," ^ while in writing a fatherly letter to the missionary monks he was sending to Britain, he tells them that he puts them under the care of Augustine, their own praepositus, who he proceeds to nominate as their abbot. ^ The role of prior or praepositus in a monastery was one upon which Pope Gregory set great store, and in one of his letters he says that an abbot's negligence must be remedied by means of a vigilant praepositus. He was the abbot's deputy [secundus ab abbate praepositi jureY The position was filled at this time at St. Andrew's, as I have just said, by Augustine. According to a doubtful letter of St. Gregory's, he had been a pupil {alumnus^ of Felix, Bishop of Messina. In it he styles him "consodalis" {i.e. mate or companion).* This, if it is to be trusted, points to his having been, like his abbot, a Sicilian by race, and it was in Sicily that Gregory, as we have seen, had had great estates.^ According to another doubtful letter from Pope Vitalian to Archbishop Theodore, he had been syncellus, or companion, ^ E. and H. ix. 222 ; Barmby, ix. 108. ' E. and H. vi. 50^. 3 Archbishop Ecgberth's Dialogues ; Haddan and Stubbs, 406 ; see Plummer, Bede, Intr. xxix, note. * See Bright, 45, note 6. * He also had a brother living in Sicily whose name is unknown, but to whom he had commissioned his agent Peter to pay some money, which he had neglected to do {E. and H. i. 42 ; Barmby, i. 44). In another letter he refers to a certain Peter, a baker or miller in the employment of " our brother " {germani nostri) {E. and H. ix. 200). DEPARTURE OF SAINT AUGUSTINE'S MISSION 27 in the cell or private room, to Gregory.^ The same statement is made in a letter from Pope Leo the Third to the Mercian King Kenulf, which is reported by William of Malmesbury.^ It was a new experiment which the Pope was making. This was the first missionary enterprise on a concerted plan, sent out by the head of the Western Church to evangelise a nation. Perhaps it was natural that he should trust its carrying out to the class of men whom he treated as the real deposi- tories of the Christian ideal, namely, his monks. It is, nevertheless, strange that one so endowed with worldly wisdom should not have realised that the life of monks, secluded from the world and worldly affairs, was hardly the preparation and the training to make them the best capable of dealing with the difficult problems which he entrusted to them, and it is especially notable that he should have put over them a leader who, from what we know of his after career, was little more than a cloistered monk, with little tact and with scant abilities, and that he who was so eminently practical should not have put at the head of his mission some business-like person whose life had been more passed in the open, and who knew the ways of men. It has also been much remarked upon that, in sending his missionary monks to found a new branch of the Church, Gregory should have neglected to send a bishop with them to perform the necessary duties which bishops were alone deemed capable of ^ Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 116. * G.R. i. par. 89. 28 SAINT AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY performing, or that he did not, in fact, himself con- secrate Augustine as a missionary -bishop before sending him on such a distant errand, and thus give him a special prestige. It may be that the generally prudent Pope, who could hardly have foreseen the success that came to him, contemplated a possible failure and treated the venture as more experimental than has been thought. It is more curious that he should not in the first instance have given Augustine and his monks letters of introduction and commendation to the Prankish priests and bishops, nor given them any written instructions. The travellers set out in the spring of 596.^ It is pretty certain that they went by sea, setting out from Ostia and making for Lerins, for the land route was long and rough and perilous. It was natural that a body of monks on their unaccustomed journey should have called at the Mecca of Western monasticism, and probably also at this time the most learned centre of theological learning and training anywhere. The island of Lerins is now known as St. Honorat, from the founder of its famous monastery. At Lerins the missionaries were well pleased with their visit, for we find the Pope afterwards writing to Stephen the Abbot, congratulating him on the report which he had received from Augustine about the regularity and unanimity which prevailed there.^ ^ Anno xiiii. ejusdem principis {i.e. of Maurice, that is, during the year from August 595 to August 596) ; Bede, i. 23. ^ E. and H. vi. 54 ; Barmby, vi. 56. MESSAGE OF THE POPE TO MISSIONARIES 29 From Lerins the monks probably went on to Mar- seilles, and thence to Aix, whose bishop, Protasius, was also well reported upon by Augustine. The latter also spoke favourably of the Patrician Arigius and his treatment of the travellers.^ At this time, as we have seen, there were two officials with the style of " Patrician " in the kingdom of Burgundy, one with his seat at Aries. The other was Arigius, just named, who lived at Marseilles. At Aix the missionaries were disconcerted by the reports they heard — " the offspring of the tongues of evil-speak- ing men " — about the dangers of the way and the roughness and cruelty of the people among whom they were going, whose manners and language they did not understand, and who were pictured to them as bloodthirsty savages. Their hearts, in fact, failed them. As Bede plainly puts it, " Struck by a sluggish fear {timore inerti), they thouofht it better to return home than to face the dangers we have named, and, having taken counsel together, they determined to send back Augustine to the Pope with a humble prayer that he would relieve them from so dangerous, laborious, and un- certain a journey." They were clearly not formed of the stuff of which missionary martyrs are made, and they doubtless longed to be back in their delightful seclusion at St. Andrew's Monastery. Augustine accordingly returned to Rome. The Pope was made of much more masculine materials. He would not hear of their giving up ^ E. and H. vi. 56 ; Barmby, vi. 57. 30 SAINT AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY their enterprise, and wrote them a soothing letter, which was sent back by Augustine. A copy is preserved by Bede, and is addressed "to the servants of our Lord " {servzs Do77iini nostri). It afterwards disappeared from the papal registers. It reminded them of the adage that it is better not to begin a work at all rather than to give it up in this fashion. They should not be deterred by the toil of the journey, nor the evil speech of men, but march on with all fervour to fulfil their high calling. God was with them, and the greater their labour, the greater their reward. He, then, constituted their former prior, Augustine, as their abbot (thus giving him greater prestige), bidding them obey him in all things. The Pope concludes with a phrase Mr. Bright describes as really quite Pauline, and in which he expresses the hope that "in the Eternal country he might see the fruit of their labours and share in their reward, as he had wished to share their work, and commends them to the special care of the Almighty." This letter was dated 23rd July 596.^ It was apparently efficacious, and we do not hear of any more talk of returning. On the same day^ Augustine again set out, and this time was fortified with letters of introduction to the Prankish princes and bishops. In rejoining his friends in Provence, Augustine returned by way of Lerins, and was the bearer of a letter to its abbot, Stephen, in which the Pope congratulated him on the order and unity prevailing ' E. and H. vi. 50^. ^ Bede, i. 23. LETTERS TO THE BISHOPS OF AIX & ARLES 3 1 in his monastery, and which was full of kindly and paternal phrases. It concludes by thanking him for some spoons and plates (cocieares et circulos) which Stephen had sent him, and for the things he had also sent for the poor of Rome.^ These had doubtless been taken by Augustine. Among the letters of commendation given to Augustine, was one headed " Gregorius Pelagio cie Turnis et Sereno de Alassilia, episcopis Gallis a paribus!' Ewald suggests that a third name once appeared in the heading, namely, that of yEtherius, the Bishop of Lyons,^ who would be hardly likely to be left out, and to whom Bede, in fact, says that a letter was sent. Bede, however, makes a mistake in calling him Vergilius. His real name was yEtherius. Turni has generally been identified as Tours. Pelagius was, in fact, the successor of the famous historian, Martin, who had died only a year before, as Bishop of Tours. Tours, on the Loire, was, however, far from Augustine's route, and it seems difficult tounderstand howhe should have been commended to his care. It is perhaps a proof of the Pope's slight knowledge of the topography of France.^ The letter says that although among bishops {sacerdotes) endowed with that charity that pleases God, religious men require no man's intro- duction, yet he takes advantage of a favourable opportunity to commend Augustine, whom he had ^ E. and H. vi. 54 ; Barmby, vi. 56. ^ He was bishop c. 586-602 ; Plummer, Bede, vol. ii. p. 39, note. E. and H. vi. 50. ^ But see infra, p. 35. 32 SAINT AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY sent with other servants of God for the good of souls and with God's help. In order that they might be the more ready to help him, he had coun- selled Augustine to explain the nature of his mission. He also recommended to them the presbyter, Candidus, whom he had sent to administer the estates of the poor in the Church in Gaul.^ From Lerins Augustine went on to Marseilles. It is not impossible from the number of letters of commendation given to Augustine on his second journey, some of which were far from his direct route, that he was commissioned by the Pope to visit the various dioceses of Gaul on his way through, and to report to him on their condition, etc. etc., and this he seems to have done. From Marseilles Augustine went on to Aix, where he rejoined his companions, to whom he no doubt read the Pope's letter above named. He took a letter of commendation addressed to its bishop, Protasius, of whom Augustine had reported favour- ably. In it the Pope asks him to tell Vergilius, his Metropolitan, whom the Pope styles brother and co-bishop [frater et coepiscopiis), to remit to Rome through him the proceeds of the papal patrimony in Gaul which belonged to the poor and had been detained by the predecessor of Vergilius {i.e. by Bishop Licerius), who had looked after the papal patrimony at Aries. This he asks him to do because he, Protasius, had been vicedominus, i.e. vicar- general, at that time, and knew how matters stood, ^ E. and H. vi. 50 ; Barmby, vi. 52. ST. GREGORY'S LETTERS OF COMMENDATION 3 3 and he further heartily commended Candidus, "their common son," to him/ From Aix the missionaries went on to Aries, the capital of Provence, and the stateliest city in Gaul — Gallula Roma, it was styled. It was one of the seats of government of the Burgundian kingdom. In his letter to Vergilius, the Archbishop of Aries, who had recently completed the cathedral there and who was Metropolitan of Gaul, the Pope asked for his succour and help for the missionaries and for Candidus, the rector of the "little patrimony of St. Peter." He complains to him that his pre- decessor, i.e. Licerius, had for many years held the patrimony, and had kept the proceeds in his own hands, instead of remitting them, and begs Vergilius to hand them over to Candidus. He concludes with the caustic sentence : " It is detestable that what has been assured by the kings of the nations should be reported to be diverted by the bishops" {''Nam valde est execrabile, ut quod a regibus gentium servatum est, ah Episcopis dicattir ablatuni ").^ The Pope also wrote a letter to Arigius the Patrician, whose reputation he says, Augustine had mentioned to him, asking him to help and succour the travellers, and to do the same for Candidus.^ Leaving Aries, the missionaries proceeded along the Rhone valley, strewn with so many remains of Roman greatness, which were then, no doubt, largely intact, and with so many ancient and prosperous ^ E. and H. vi. 53 ; Barmby, vi. 55. 2 E. and H. vi. 51 ; Barmby, vi. 53. ^ E, and H. vi. 56 ; Barmby, vi. 57. 3 34 SAINT AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY settlements. They went on to Vienna (the real Vienna as Freeman calls it), the modern Vienne, to whose bishop, Desiderius, the Pope wrote a letter of commendation jointly with Syagrius, the Bishop of Autun.^ They then went on to Lyons. They seem, on leaving Lyons, to have gone to Autun, and then to Orleans, to visit Queen Bruni- childis and her grandson Theodebert. Gregory had written letters to her, and to her two grandsons. The former letter has been blamed for its obsequi- ous civilities to a merciless woman, but it is very unlikely that Gregory in writing it knew much about the actual internal affairs of her kingdom, which was a long way off, and there had only been a very loose tie between Rome and " the Gauls." Her truculence also only developed in later years when the Pope was dead, and she was now widely known for her political genius, her culture, and, above all, for her devotion to the Empire and to the Church. Her only grave offence at this time was one hardly treated as such by the Franks, namely, her second marriage with her first husband's nephew. In his letter the Pope begins by referring to reports which had reached him of her "Christianity" {vestrae Ckrisiia7titas), and says he does not doubt of her goodness, and speaks of her devotion and zeal for the faith. He goes on to say that there had gone to him some of the Anglian people who wished to become Christians, but the bishops (the word used is sacerdotes) who were in the vicinity (by ^ E. and H. vi. 52 j Bannby, vi. 54. SAINT AUGUSTINE'S VISIT TO TOURS 35 which no doubt Gaul is meant) had not shown any pastoral solicitude for them [sacej'dotes qui in vicino sunt pastoralem erga eos sollicitudinem non habere). Not wanting to be responsible for their eternal damnation, he had sent Augustine and his com- panions to learn the wishes of the Anglians, and with her help to try and convert them. He had in- structed them that in order to carry out this view they ought to take with them some priests {presby- teros ducere) from the neighbourhood (. 172. ST. ANDREW'S CATHEDRAL, ROCHESTER 173 quoins and wide mortar joints, the mortar being hard, made of sand with a few shells and a litde charcoal, with traces of herring-bone work. The thickness of the walls is 2 feet 4 inches, with a foundation course of tufa and ragstone on concrete full of small pebbles, and blocks of rag- stone. The apse, like that of St. Pancras, was semi-elliptical in oudine, and was, like that in St. Martin's, direcdy in contact with the east of the nave, and separated from it in all probability by a triple arcade, as in the former of the two churches just mentioned. The western part of the nave is now covered by the west front of Rochester Cathedral, and could not be explored. The nave measured 42 feet by 28 feet 6 inches. We are nowhere told how Augustine constituted the cathedral administrative staff of the two sees of London and Rochester, any more than we are in regard to his own cathedral at Christ Church, Canterbury, but it is pretty certain that it was formed on a monastic basis. One of Augustine's alleged proteges, whom he is reported to have baptized, was Saint Livinus, known as the Apostle of Brabant, who was murdered 12th November, a.d. 656.^ Auo-ustine was now nearing the term of his life. His last recorded act was a most uncanonical one. He had ordained two bishops, either of whom might well expect to succeed him as Metropolitan. For some reason or other he had other views, and 1 Hardy, Catalogue, \, 255, 174 SAINT AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY was determined that his successor should be one whom he had not yet raised to the episcopate, namely, one of the companions whom he had originally brought with him, and who is referred to in Gregory's letters as Laurence the priest. Whether he was a monk as well, we do not know. A Laurence who was a "deacon of the Holy See " [qui prmius fuerat in or dine diaconii sedis apostolicae), and was superseded by Honoratus in September 591, is mentioned in one of Gregory's letters.^ Another, or perhaps the same Laurence, is called a most illustrious man {vir clarissimus\ and acted as a papal messenger.^ When the first missionaries set out with Augustine they took with them as priest, Laurence, whom we are now con- sidering, and it was he who was sent to Rome to report Augustine's success to the Pope and to bring back recruits for the mission. In Gregory's letters he is named before Mellitus. It was this Laurence whom Augustine had selected as his successor. He was, however, ap- parently afraid that his wish might not be carried out, and so, in spite of the Canon Law, he deter- mined to ordain him to his own see and as his successor during his own lifetime, "fearing," in the words of Bede, "lest the Church should be left without a chief pastor amidst difficult and rude surroundings." This did not show much con- fidence in his two fellow-bishops. Bede, who, no doubt, knew well that the proceeding was irregular, ^ E. and H. ii. i, ^ Jbid. ix. 63 and 130. BISHOPS AND THEIR SUCCESSORS 175 quotes as a precedent the case of St. Peter himself, who, he says, similarly consecrated St. Clement,^ a statement which is most doubtful.^ A better pre- cedent would have been that of St. Athanasius, who consecrated his friend and successor, Peter, five days before his own death. ^ A Roman synod in 465 forbade bishops to nominate their suc- cessors [ne successores s2tos designent\^ The law of the Church was, also, plain on the subject. Although it was quite regular for a bishop to have assistant bishops {chorepiscopi, as they were called), the ancient canons, and notably canon 8 of the Council of Nicaea, seemed to forbid the consecration of a bishop as coadjutor and future successor by the actual occupant of a see. A similar prohibition was embodied in a canon of the Council of Antioch in 341. Gregory of Tours mentions how Felix, Bishop of Nantes, who was grievously ill, summoned the neighbouring bishops, and implored them to confirm the appointment of his nephew, whom he had selected as his successor, which they did. The young man was still a layman, and went to Gregory to ask him first to oive him the tonsure and then to . i8 DISCOVERY OF REMAINS 187 On the 27th of April 1221, the monks de- termined to discover where their predecessor had secretly buried the Saint. They had a hole broken into the north wall close to the altar of St. Augustine, and there found his stone monument, beautifully decorated with iron and lead (^ferro et pliujibo peroptime sigillata), and inscribed — " Inclitus Anglorum Praesul pius et decus altum Hie Augustinus requiescit corpora Sanctus." The Abbot, Hugh, was at the time absent in France. On his return the tomb was opened in the presence of many other abbots and magnates, when inside it, besides the Saint's remains, there was also found a leaden tablet inscribed with an account of what Wido had done with the remains as above described. We further read that close beside St. Augustine's remains when replaced there were also put some relics in the silver shrine, including hair of the Virgin Mary, a piece of the seamless coat of the Saviour, of the column at which He was flagellated, etc. etc. Abbot Hugh enriched the shrine with gold, silver, and precious stones, "as now seen," adds Thorn. It is interesting to read that in 1526, at the very verge of the Reformation, and before Augustine's monastery and tomb were destroyed, Henry, Car- dinal of York (i.e. Wolsey), presented King John the Third of Portugal with some relics of St. Augustine, namely, the chin bone, three teeth, and the OS notabilis, in exchange for some remains of other saints. We are further told that in 1628 1 88 SAINT AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY these relics were taken by the Portuguese Bishop Luzane to Belgium, and placed in a silver shrine in the Church of St. Salvator at Antwerp, belong- ing to the Cistercians/ Gocelin enumerates a great many miracles which were reputed to have been the handiwork of Augustine's intervention or of his remains. Most of them are of the usual very homely kind, but some are interesting for the local colour they afford, and may be appropriately reported here. He tells us that, inter alia, in the reign of William the First some English merchants sent fifteen ships (which are described as having one mast and one sail) to Caen to bring stone for the building of the King's palace at Westminster. The person employed in the business (apparently the owner of the ships), called Vitalis, a friend of Abbot Scotland, was per- suaded to present a shipload of the stones for the building of the new church of the abbey. A great storm having come on, fourteen of the ships foundered, with their crews and their burdens. The only one which escaped was the one destined for the Abbey of St. Augustine. The stones were used for bases, columns, capitals, and architraves (epistylia). This ship, after great dangers, and, as Gocelin says, by the solicitude of the Saint, reached a safe anchorage at Brembre {i,e, Bramber, in Sussex). In another narrative, we have a miracle reported about a senior monk of the Abbey of St. Augustine 1 Act. Sanct.^ lib. cit. pp. 897 and 898, MIRACLES 189 who was sent to " the town of Mark [ad Marchiam villavi), near Boulogne in Flandres," which we are told was rich in stone {in lapides foecunda). With him were sent a number of workmen, who secured a large quantity of stone for the monastery. In another story we read of three men from Kent, whose names Gocelin gives, who were metal workers, or what we should call tinkers, and were in the habit of travelling about the country buying from gold and silversmiths, moneyers, and other metal workers {inetallorum fusores) the scoriae, ashes, scourings, and other waste products of their craft, which they melted together into large lumps, and then pounded and washed, and thus recovered the remains of the precious metals they contained. Happening to be at Bath (which Gocelin describes as being "all built of stone, it being so abundant there "), and requiring a big stone to do this pounding, they removed one from the King's high- way, for which they were prosecuted. Two of them, who were old, were allowed to pay a ransom of twenty solidi of silver, but the younger one, who was strong, was tortured. They bound his legs in the stocks, and put irons on his legs and arms. When, however, he made an appeal to St. Augustine, his own Kentish Saint, his bonds fell off and he was released. In another story we read of certain English nobles who at the Norman Conquest went to Constantinople, where one of them secured the command of an army. He married and built a I90 SAINT AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY church dedicated to St. Augustine and St. Nicholas, which was frequented by the EngHsh exiles. Again, Egelwi, Abbot of Athelney (Ethelinge), having gone to Rome, was prevented returning for six weeks by violent storms, and, having eaten up his food and spent his money and sold his horses and clothes, was reduced to great want. He there- upon made a vow to St. Augustine that if he ever again viewed with safety the tower of his church at home, he would build one in his own monastery in honour of the Saint, which he eventually did. It will now be well to try and measure some- what the work actually done by Augustine. It has been both exalted and minimised by writers writing with a polemical purpose, and who have not tried to weigh his opportunities and his difficulties. When he died he had succeeded, by the help of Queen Bertha, in converting the King of Kent and overlord of the greater part of Britain to the Christian faith. He had also secured a considerable number of people of note who could be influenced by the King, and perhaps of others who began to have longings for a closer tie with the communities of Western Europe. This could only be secured by joining the common faith, which made them in a sense one commonwealth. On the other hand, we cannot doubt that a large number of y^thelberht's own people clung to their own faith and to the o"ods which their fathers had worshipped. Some of them would do so furtively, and some of them would move away to more RESULTS OF ST. AUGUSTINE'S LABOURS 191 congenial lands like that south of the Weald, especially to Sussex, which remained pagan for a considerable time later. What recruits were secured for the faith were much too quickly converted to realise fully what they were about, and retained no doubt a large portion of their old supersti- tions, and especially their belief in magic, which under another name was shared by the Church. The missionaries made it easy to conform to the change, by adopting old festivals and retaining old rites and customs, but the Christianity of the new converts was largely nominal. The God's name was changed and certain forms of ritual were introduced, but otherwise the essentials were for a long time after this much the same as before. In addition to this, Augustine had consecrated two bishops to two sees other than his own, and had appointed his own successor. The bishop of one of these sees (namely Rochester) was largely a suffragan of his own. The other was planted in London, the great emporium of English trade, a place where, as after events showed, Christianity made very little way for some time, and the bishop of which, Mellitus, although nominally bishop of the country north of the Thames and east of the Chilterns, called Essex, had probably little influence outside the Court circle of King Saberct (Sigeberht), ^Ethelberht's nephew and protegd. Besides these human foundations of his Church, Augustine had built or partly built five churches, all of which lived on, and four of them have continued 192 SAINT AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY to exist on the same spots where he founded them, certainly with numerous alterations and rebuildings, but with a continuous life for thirteen hundred years. He or one of his immediate successors doubtless founded the first English school in his realms, as well as the singing school at Canterbury, which both became famous in later days. The Rev. H. A. Wilson has discussed with learning and ingenuity the liturgical questions which arise out of the mission of Augustine. At this time there was a considerable difference between the Roman rite and that of Gaul. As he says, the most marked difference was that " the Roman canon of the Mass, with the exception of a few minor clauses, which vary on certain days, was fixed and unchanging. In the Galilean rite, on the other hand, only a few sections of the corresponding portion of the Mass were fixed : the prayers which were grouped about these fixed portions, and with them made up the whole of the consecration prayer, varied from day to day."^ Augustine had received the Pope's permission to make such selections from the different rites as he should think most appro- priate to the local circumstances. We can hardly doubt that he would be tempted to continue as far as he could the traditions of the little Church introduced by Liudhard and his companions, which were practised in the Queen's Chapel, and were doubtless entirely Galilean, since any material change would cause suspicion among those already ^ Mason's Mission of Augustine, Appendix IV, p. 242, note. RITUAL INTRODUCED BY ST. AUGUSTINE 193 converted. "These doubts would not be lessened if, as seems likely, the Franks who had come with the missionaries to England as interpreters were accustomed to the Gallican rite. St. Aueustine would have to face the question whether it was desirable to allow a diversity which might lead to division and disunion within the royal household, and among the growing body of English Christians."^ It is most likely that the basis of his service books was that of the Roman usage which Augustine had been accustomed to at St. Andrew's. We read in the 13th Canon of the Council of Clovesho that the English Church had adopted the model of the Roman Canon of the Mass which it had received from the Roman Church, and probably with Gregory's not very important alterations. In the principal functions, such as the observance of the hours of prayer, in the order of the Mass, in the ceremonial with which Augustine administered the rite of baptism to his first converts, he would naturally follow the usage of his own time. That the Roman style of Church music was maintained at Canterbury appears from Bede,^ where it is recorded of James the Deacon that he "instructed many persons in chanting" (juxta morem Romanorum sive Cantuariorum).^ On the other hand, it is plain that in some things Augustine adopted the Gallican rite : thus in the use of certain litanies on the three days before Ascension Day known as ^ Mason's Mission of Augustine , Appendix IV. pp. 241 and 242. ' Hist. Eccl. ii. 20. 3 /^. 238. 13 194 SAINT AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY Rogation Days. These were not known at Rome until the time of Leo the Third (795-816), Mean- while they had long been known in Gaul. They are said to have had their beginning at Vienne about the year 470, and their general adoption was ordered by the Council of Orleans in 511, while in 567 a Council at Lyons provided that similar litanies should also be used in the week preceding the first Sunday in November. It is very probable that Augustine and his companions had heard and taken part in them during their long delay in Gaul, and had adopted them in part or whole. The anthem which Bede tells us the monks sang as they marched to Canterbury, occurs in one of the Roofation Litanies in use long- after at Vienne and probably in other churches in France, and it may well be that the Gallican custom of Rogation processions which were established in England as an ancient usage at a time when it was still un- recognised at Rome was first brought into England by the Roman mission.^ The Council of Clovesho in 747 orders the observance of the Rogation pro- cessions according to the method of " our prede- cessors " {secundiun morem priorum 7zostrorum)} It would seem further, as Bishop Brown says, that in the early days of its history the Church of the Anglians had a certain number of rites which it probably derived from the British Church. Whether they were adopted by Augustine or at some ^ Wilson, op. cit. 236 and 237. 2 See Haddan and Stubbs, Councils^ etc., iii. 368. THE RESULTS OB' ST. AUGUSTINE'S MISSION 195 later time we do not quite know. Among these he enumerates a rite which Gildas says was peculiar to the British Church, namely, that of anointing the hands at ordination. The lessons, too, used at ordi- nation were different both from the Galilean and from the Roman use. In the early Anglo-Saxon Church this anointing the hands of deacons, priests, and bishops was retained ; hence it seems probable that other rites at ordination in the early Anglo- Saxon Church, which we cannot trace to any other source, were British. Such were the prayer at giving the stole to deacons, the delivering of the Gospel to deacons, and the investing of the priests with the stole.^ Leaving these matters of routine and of simple accommodation which Augustine probably faced with prudence and discretion, and turning to things of greater moment which were better tests of his real capacity and power, we meet at once with the infirmities attending the lack of experience of men and things due to his conventual training, his want of mental grasp, and smallness of vision. This was notably the case in his treatment of the British Church and in some of his questions to Gregory on matters of difficulty. In regard to these matters I may quote a measured judgment of him by an English scholar of considerable perspicuity. " If any man," says the late Haddan, " ever had greatness thrust upon him with which, Malvolio-like, he did not quite know ^ The Church in these Islands before Augustine^ 149 and 150. 196 SAINT AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY how to deal, that man was Augustine of Canterbury. The Pope and his missionary remind us of nothing more forcibly than of some Arnold or Moberly, trying, by mingled rebukes, advice, and warnings, to get a timid, awkward boy to act his part pro- perly in the semi-independent sphere of prefect or monitor. Scarcely able to tear himself from the side of the truly great man on whom he leaned, shrinking back from exaggerated difficulties the moment he found himself alone, delaying on the threshold of his enterprise an unreasonable time ; strangely ignorant, at the end of this delay, of the true position of the Celtic Churches already in the land to which he was sent, and still needing interpreters to enable him to preach to his future flock ; asking, with solemnity, the simplest of questions, such as a novice might have settled without troubling the Pope, a thousand miles off, about the matter ; catching too readily at immediate and worldly aids to success, and when success came unduly elated ; ignoring altogether the pioneers whom he found at work before him, and sensitively proud and unconciliatory towards supposed rivals — Augustine has one claim to our respect, that of a blameless and self-denying Christian life."^ It is certainly a notable thing, and measures his reputation among his contemporaries, that nothing remains of what he wrote save the questions he sent to Gregory, which so well define the real stature of the man. Not a letter or a homily or any other docu- ^ Remains t 303. THE RESULTS OF ST. AUGUSTINE^S MISSION 197 ment from his hand was preserved either at Rome or Canterbury. The Pope's replies to his letters were kept in both places, but of the first Bishop of the English race we have nothing. What a contrast to another Missionary Bishop who learnt his work in England and went a few years later to evangelise Germany — Boniface ! The best that can be said of Augustine is that he was a commonplace man, with good motives and high standards, set to do a work much beyond his capacity, and for which he had had a very in- different training. The Church he planted was a plant with a feeble constitution from the first, and it needed a more vigorous personage, who was also a greater scholar and a bigger man, to set it going again on a more promising journey. He presently came, and his name was Theodore. CHAPTER IV THE END OF ST AUGUSTINE'S MISSION Saint Laurence As we have seen, St. Gregory and St. Augustine probably died in the same year. Before we com- plete the picture of Augustine's mission, it will be well to survey the political events elsewhere during the next few years, and also the lives and characters of Gregory's immediate successors. We have seen how the half-savage, cruel, dissipated, and incapable Phocas obtained the throne of the Eastern Empire. His reign brought gloom to the great city on the Bosphorus, and disgrace and disaster to the Empire. Continually pursued by secret fears of plots and assassination, and of the resuscitation of the family of Maurice, he laid a heavy hand on all he suspected of favouring it. He especially pursued the widow and daughters of his predecessor. In Gibbon's sonorous phrases, " A matron who com- manded the respect and pity of mankind, the daughter, wife, and mother of Emperors, was tortured like the vilest malefactor, to force a confession of her designs and associates ; and the THE STATE OF THE EMPIRE 199 Empress Constantina, with her three innocent daughters, was beheaded at Chalcedon on the same ground which had been stained with the blood of her husband and her five sons."^ Meanwhile, every kind of ingenious torture and cruelty was applied to endless victims elsewhere, and, again quoting Gibbon, "the Hippodrome was polluted with heads and limbs and mangled bodies." Phocas made the wives of the great citizens the victims of his lust. He displaced the really able commanders in the army whom he suspected of similar treasons to that he himself had dealt out to Maurice. He replaced them by relatives and flatterers. Among his victims was the finest soldier of the time, who was alone fitted to cope with the powerful Persians, Narses, who, having been deprived of his command and resented it by rebellion, was burnt to death at Constantinople. While this was the condition of things at home, the affairs of the Empire, especially in the far East, again became greatly troubled. The Persian ruler Chosroes professed to be horrified at the murder of Maurice and his family. Phocas, according to Theophylactus,^ had sent him as trophies the heads of the murdered Emperor and his sons. Chosroes invaded the Empire. In order to increase the armies in the further East an expensive peace was pur- chased from the Avars, but the Roman generals Germanus and Leontius were both badly defeated. The Persians, incited by their Magi, captured the ^ Op. cit, ed. Bury, v. 65. * Lib. viii, ch. 15. 200 THE END OF SAINT AUGUSTINE^S MISSION fortresses of Mardin, Daras, Amida, and Edessa, and carried off vast plunder and innumerable prisoners to Persia. "In 608 the danger was brought nearer to the careless inhabitants of the capital ; for, having occupied Armenia and Cappadocia, Paphlagonia and Galatia, the army of the fire worshippers advanced to the Bosphorus, showing mercy in the march to neither age nor sex, and encamped at Chalcedon, opposite to Constantinople, and thus," says the historian, " there was tyranny both inside and outside the city. . . . In Syria there was always a spirit of disaffection towards the orthodox Byzantine government, for Syria was full of Jews as well as of heretics of various kinds. . . . Phocas conceived the ill-timed idea of constraining all the Jews to become Chris- tians. The consequence was a great revolt of the Hebrews in Antioch ; Christians were massacred, and a cruel and indecent punishment was inflicted on the Patriarch Anastasius. Bonosus, Count of the East, now cast out all the Jews in the city."^ In Egypt and the Province of Africa, the granaries of the Empire, riots and outbreaks took place, and for two years Heraclius, the Exarch of the latter province, " refused all tribute and obedience to the Centurion who disgraced the throne of Constantinople."^ Meanwhile these dis- turbances interfered with the grain supplies at the capital, where a famine ensued. ^ Bury, Hist. Later Roman Empire.^ ii. 199 and 200. - Gibbon, v, 66. DEATH OF PHOCAS 201 In Italy alone, things were more cheerful and Phocas more popular. A peace was made with the Lombards, which lasted some years, while at Rome the Exarch of Ravenna erected in 608 in the Forum a white Corinthian pillar, with his statue on the top of it, to the honour of the Tyrant, on the site of the famous equestrian figure of Domitian apostrophised by Statius.^ Readers of Byron will remember his reference to the "name- less column with the buried base."^ The base of this column was actually uncovered in 18 13, and on it was found an inscription in which the monument is declared to have been erected to the Emperor ^' pro innumerabilibus pietatis ejus benejiciis et pro quiete libertatey^ Towards the Popes Phocas was very complacent, no doubt to emphasise his dislike of the Patriarch Cyriacus, who had protected the family of Maurice. The unpopularity of Phocas presently brought its Nemesis. On the invitation of some of the grandees at Constantinople, the Exarch of Africa, Heraclius, a person of high character, sent his son with a flotilla to the capital. A naval engagement was fought there on the 4th of October 16 10. Phocas was defeated, pursued, and executed, to- gether with his chief supporters, their bodies were burnt, and on the next day the younger "Hera- clius was proclaimed Augustus by the Senate and the people, and crowned by the Patriarch Sergius."* ^ Silv. I. V. 66 ; Gregorovius /. 319 and 330, note 12. A picture of it is given in my previous volume on St. Gregory. ^ Childe Harold, Canto IV. ex. * See Corp. Inscr. Lat. vi. 251. * Bury, op. at. 206. 202 THE END OF SAINT AUGUSTINE'S MISSION Let us now turn from the Emperor to the Pope. St. Gregory was immediately succeeded by Sabinianus, a native of Volterra in Tuscany, whose father was called Bonus. He is mentioned in several of Gregory's letters, in which he speaks of him as his dearest son [dilectissimus filius), as his deacon, as a bearer of presents i^lator prae- sentiu7n), etc., and as acting the Pope's agent in various capacities. Presently we find him filling the most responsible position of all, namely, that of Nuncio at Constantinople, which Gregory had himself occupied. Lastly, it would appear that he was appointed Bishop of Jadera in Dalmatia.'^ It would seem that on the death of Gregory he became his successor, having doubtless ingratiated himself while resident at Constantinople with the all-powerful Phocas, as he probably had ingratiated himself also with the Exarch of Ravenna. It would fit in with his having been Bishop of Jadera that he was not elected Pope until five months after Gregory's death, namely, on the 13th of September 604. At the time of his election there seems to have been a grievous famine in Italy,^ and the new Pope, finding it difficult to meet the situation, seems to have blamed the unmeasured alms which Gregory had dispensed and his often inconsiderate charity, and he aroused the anger of the crowd against Gregory's memory, as I have already related in my Life of Pope ' For more details about Sabinianus, see Appendix III. * Paul, Diac. iv. ch. g. THE SUCCESSORS OF POPE GREGORY 203 Grej;ory. According to the Liber Pontificalis^ he insisted on selHng the corn to the people at what they deemed an exorbitant rate instead of giving it to them, and the fickle crowd turned once more with loving thoughts to the memory of their late Pope, while the latter's successor, who only reigned for a short time, and died on 22nd February 606, had to be taken to his burial furtively, in order to escape the angry crowd. This is generally the fate of the suc- cessors of spendthrift rulers. Onuphrius Panvinus attributes to him the introduction of the practice of ringing bells at the Canonical Hours, and at the celebration of the Eucharist.^ There is considerable difficulty about the chronology and the lives of the two immediate successors of Pope Sabinianus, and I am constrained to think that two Popes have in fact been created out of one person. In the first place, it is strange that both should have been called Boniface, which was an uncommon name. It must be remembered that the practice had not yet begun of Popes adopting titular names on their accession, and at this time they were styled by their real names. Secondly, while it is curious that out of so many hundreds of available ''clerks'* two of the same name should have been distinguished enough to be successively designated as Pope, it is still more odd that both of them should have had a father called John. Again, what we read of the first of ^ Vit. Sabiniani. * Barmby, Did. Chi\ Biography., iv. 574. 204 THE END OF SAINT AUGUSTINE'S MISSION the two, who is generally known as Boniface the Third, is very slight, and it comes virtually from one source only, and that a not too satisfactory one, namely, \ki^ Liber Pontificalis. Thus, although he is said in that document to have been a Roman, he is given the name of John Cataudioces, which, as Gregorovius says, points to his having been of Eastern origin and not a Roman. ^ Again, he is said to have held a Synod in St. Peter's attended by seventy-two bishops and thirty- three Roman presbyters and deacons. The number of bishops here given, points to its having been a council of importance, and a good deal more than a mere synod of his metropolitan province. This being so, it is very strange that no record exists of it anywhere else, and that none of its acts are extant. The only thing recorded of this synod by the author of the Liber Pontificalis is a prohibi- tion under anathema of the appointment of any bishop to a see until at least three days after the death of his predecessor. This reads very curiously, considering that Augustine had just before ap- pointed Laurence as his successor during his own lifetime, and it has the look of a much later date. Again, Boniface the Third, although he only reigned eight months and twenty-two days, is said to have consecrated twenty-one bishops, which seems an excessive number when we compare it with what was done by other Popes who reigned much longer. It seems to me that, in every w^ay we ^ op. cit. It. ed. i. 420. THE SUCCESSORS OF POPE GREGORY 205 look at it, grave doubts arise as to such a person as Boniface the Third having existed, and that his name has been interpolated, as others have, into the long list of Popes. A reason for this interpola- tion may be found, I think, in the only other act of his reign recorded in the work just cited, and which has a very suspicious look. This entry has been seriously doubted, and, if spurious, needed to be attributed to some Pope otherwise not well known and whose acts were not otherwise recorded. We are, in fact, told that Phocas the Emperor conferred on him the right to use the style of (Ecumenical or Universal Bishop, This is a most improbable and in fact incredible statement, considering how bitterly and persistently Pope Gregory, who only died two years before, repudiated any such title as utterly reprehensible. If it had had any basis we should assuredly have had the fact mentioned by some other more or less contemporary writer, and it would at once have been adopted by other Popes, while, as Gieseler says, the first occasion on which it is recorded as having been used by a Pope was much later, namely, about 682-85, when it occurs in the Liber Diurnus} I venture therefore, with some confidence, to urge that Boniface the Third was a myth, and that there was only one Pope Boniface at this time, namely, the one usually called Boniface the Fourth, who, in my view, immediately succeeded Sabinianus, and who had previously been a * See Gieseler, Eng. tr. i. p. 344, note. 206 THE END OF SAINT AUGUSTINE^S MISSION considerable personage and a prot6g6 of Pope Gregory. A Boniface occurs several times in Gregory's letters/ On the death of Sabinianus, Boniface was appointed his successor as Pope, doubtless by the influence of Phocas, who must have known him well, for, like his predecessors, he had filled the office of Papal Nuncio at the Imperial Court. Boniface was a Marsian from Valeria, and the son of a doctor named John.^ His name is closely connected with the history of the famous ancient Temple of all the Gods, known as the Pantheon, which was first mentioned under the name Pan- theum in a document of the reign of Nero.^ At the time we are dealing with it had doubtless been vacant and shut up for a good many years. Few people who have visited that marvellous triumph of the architect's skill realise that it is not merely the only building of anything like the same aee which has remained intact, but that it has (save for a limited interval) been continuously occupied for nineteen hundred years. It was built by Agrippa, the cherished companion of the Emperor Augustus, who afterwards erected its splendid vestibule and covered both the cupola and the roof of the temple with shining bronze, which was carried away in part by the Emperor Constans ii. when he visited Rome in 668, while the rest was melted by Pope Urban the Eighth, 1 See Appendix III. ^ /^^-^^^ /3^„^, y^^, Boniface IV. ' Gregorovius I. 435, note. THE SUCCESSORS OF POPE GREGORY 207 whose name of Barberini tempted a wit to make, perhaps, the most famous of all pasquinades on the subject of the vandalism, " Quod non fecerunt Bai'bari, fecerttnt Barber iniy It is first mentioned, as I said, under its present name (Pantheum) in a document of the year 59 a.d., of the time of Nero, and is also referred to by Pliny and Dion Cassius. The latter tells us how among the other gods whose statues were worshipped there was the deified Julius Csesar — the one mortal who had secured a place in the gathering of the great deities, and notably of Jupiter Ultor, and Cybele, the mother of the gods, of Mars and Venus/ On the conversion of the Emperors to the Christian faith the old temples were shut up and the statues of the gods were probably removed, while for two hundred years the buildings were mostly closed, and among them no doubt the Pantheon. We read in the Liber Pontificalis that Pope Boniface asked the Emperor Phocas to give him the Pantheon, and having secured it he deter- mined to rededicate it to the Virgin and Martyrs {Maria ad Maj^tyres)} A ring of altars took the ^ Gree^orovius I. 422. * Paul, Diac. iv. ch. 37. Dr. Bright, referring to similar instances of rededication, says : " It had already been carried out as to a temple at Novara in the early part of the sixth century (see Ennodius, Dictio 2, and Carm. ii. 11) — ' Perdidii antiquum guts religione sacellum^ Numinibus pulsis quod bene numen habet ? ' So also in the case of the circular temple of Romulus, son of Maxentius (on the northern side of the Roman Forum), dedicated in 527 by Felix the Third or Fourth to SS. Cosmas and Damian " {op. cit, p. 79, note 2). 208 THE END OF SAINT AUGUSTINE'S MISSION place of the pedestals where the gods had stood. At the new dedication, the Pope summoned the clergy, and they walked in solemn procession bearing the cross, sang psalms and litanies, and in the vivid imagination of the Romans, the demons and devils who previously possessed the building, and were represented by the dispossessed gods, fled away discomfited, as the choir sang Gloria in excelsis, while the Pope aspersed the building with holy water.^ It is said that twenty- eight cart-loads of relics, doubtless brought from the Catacombs, were conveyed to the church at its dedication, while the magnificent services which then took place were the origin of the famous festival of All Souls.^ We will now return again to England and its Archbishop, Laurence. We have seen how he was consecrated as his successor by Augustine. He was in priest's orders, and was the latter's confidential friend, and had been selected by him to convey to the Pope the account of his doings in Britain. Bede tells us that he vigorously strength- ened the foundations of the Church he had seen so firmly laid, by his exhortations and his pious activity, and this not only with the English, but also the British and the Scottish tribes inhabiting Ireland, among whom, as among the Britons, "were many things unchurchlike, especially in regard to the celebration of Easter." In con- junction with his fellow-bishops he sent the Scots ^ Gregorovius I. 422. * Smith, Diet, of Christ. Biog. i. 329. ST. LAURExNCE'S LETTER TO THE SCOTS 209 a hortatory letter, bidding them keep the unity of peace and of Catholic observance with the Church of Christ in other parts of the world. The letter is headed : — " To our dear brethren, the Lords Bishops and Abbots throughout the land of the Scots" [that is, of course, the Irish Scots]. " Laurence, Mellitus, and Justus, Bishops, servants of God's servants : " Having been sent by the Apostolic See to preach to the heathen tribes in these Western regions, according to the usage of that See all over the world, we have been permitted to make an entrance into this island of Britain. Before we knew these parts, we, supposing that they walked according to the custom of the Universal Church, held in great reverence for their sanctity both the Britons and the Scots ; but when we came to know the Britons, we thought that the Scots must be better than they. Through Bishop Dagan, however, who came to this island, and through the Abbot Columban, who came to Gaul, we have learnt that the Scots are not at all different in their ways from the Britons. For when Bishop Dagan came to us, he not only refused to eat with us, but refused to eat at all in the same lodging where we ate."^ This Dagan has been identified, says Plummer, with Bishop Dagan of Inbher Daeile (now Enner- eilly. County Wicklow), whose death is given by the Four Masters and the Chron. Scot, in the year 639, and who is commemorated on September 13, in the ' Bede, ii. 4. 14 2 to THE END OP SAINT AUGUSTINE'S MISSION Fdlire and Martyrology of Donegal, and also on 1 2th March, which Colgan thought was the day of his translation/ Bishop Brown reminds us that in the Stowe Missal is a very ancient list of saints to be commemorated, and in it Dagan's name occurs next but one to those of Laurentius, Mellitus, and Justus. He further remarks that the work was a Scotic {i.e. an Irish) work, and the list a Scotic list, which shows an unexpected friendliness to the English prelates. It is noteworthy, however, that the name of Augustine is omitted from the altar list.^ Laurence and his fellow-bishops also sent a joint letter to the British bishops suitable to their degree [sico gradui condignas) to confirm them in the Catholic unity, but, as Bede says, "how much good these proceedings did, present circum- stances show."^ Gocelin also tells us that an Irish archbishop, by name Terenanus, was attracted to England by the fame of Laurentius, and was by him converted to the true computation of Easter. Terenanus was identified by Ware with an Archbishop of Armagh named MacLaisre.* About the year 6io, Bishop Mellitus is said to have gone to Rome to confer with Pope Boniface about the affairs of the English Church, and Bede says he took part in a synod held at Rome for better regulating the monastic life. Bede turns ^ Plummer's Bede, vol. ii. p. 83, note. * Augustine and His Companions, p. 155. 2 Op. cit. ii. 4. ■• Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 62. THE SUPPOSED ROMAN SYNOD OF 6io 21 1 aside to remind us how, as we have seen, it was this Pope Boniface who obtained a grant of the Pantheon at Rome from the Emperor Phocas, and dedicated it as a Christian church to the Virgin and all Martyrs.^ The synod in question, according to him, was held on 27th February 610, and he adds that the English bishop was present at it, "in order to add the weight of the subscription of Mellitus to what- ever was canonically decreed," and to bring the decrees back to Britain to be delivered to the English Churches for their observance, together with letters addressed by the aforesaid Pontiff to Laurence the Archbishop, beloved of God and the clergy in general, and also to King ^thelberht and the English people.^ There are some serious difficulties about this statement of Bede. It is a very extraordinary fact that no such Council is mentioned anywhere else, and Labb6 relies for his account of it on Bede's statement alone. Not a word about it is said in the Liber Pontijicalis, which, as we have seen, mentions a synod alleged to have been held by Boniface the Third, who was probably a myth, and who is said to have died in 607. I cannot avoid the conclusion that Bede's statements on the subject of this Council, and on the visit of Mellitus to Rome, are not to be relied upon, and were perhaps interpolations. It will be noted as ominous of this fact that the letter Bede refers to as having been written by the Pope to Laurentius is not given by him and is 1 Bede, ii. 4. ^ lb. 212 THE END OF SAINT AUGUSTINE^S MISSION no longer extant, while that said to have been written to ^thelberht is also lost, and has been replaced by a forged one in the series of forgeries preserved by William of Malmesbury and meant to sustain the claims of Canterbury against those of York.^ A second letter from the same Pope to ^thelberht, dated 27th February 611, and pre- served by Thomas of Elmham, is also forged.^ Both the letter to ^thelberht given by Malmesbury and the alleged acts of the Synod of Rome in 610, which last occur in two recensions, are described by Haddan and Stubbs as spurious.^ In addition, may I add, that if Mellitus had visited Rome at this time, when he was a bishop with a young and difficult see to manage, it must have been on some very critical business, and it is strange that he did not return with a pall for Laurence, so as firmly to establish the latter's metropolitan rank. It was in the same year that the tyrant Phocas died, and was succeeded as Emperor by Heraclius. As we have seen, the Abbey Church of St. Peter and Paul at Canterbury was not completed at the death of Augustine, and was consecrated by Arch- bishop Laurence.^ Thomas of Elmham says it was dedicated in 613.^ We have no means of knowing what this church was like, for it was apparently destroyed in the rebuilding of the eleventh century, as graphically described by Gocelin in his account of the translation of St. Augustine's remains as ^ Plummer's Bede, ii. p. 84. * Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 67. 3 iii. 62-65. ■* Bede, ii. 3. * Op. cit. p. 131. DEATH OF KING .ETHELBERHT 213 above given. ^ It was doubtless a simple basilica. ^thelberht, King of Kent, died on the 24th February 616.^ Bede says that y^thelberht's death took place in the twenty-first year after the sending of Augustine, which, Mr, Mason says, can only be made correct by counting from the first setting out of the missionaries,^ He was buried in iht. portims or transeptal chapel of St. Martin, in the Church of the Monastery of St. Peter and St, Paul, afterwards known as St, Augustine's, where his wife Queen Bertha and her chaplain Liudhard were also buried.* Thomas of Elmham thus reports his epitaph : — " Rex ^thelbertus hie clauditur in poliandro. Fana pians certus Christo meat absque meandro." In later times he was held to be a saint, and in the plan of St. Augustine's Monastery previously mentioned there is represented a shrine above the high altar inscribed Scs Ethelbertus. In 1325 his name was added to those of SS. Peter and Paul and St. Augustine in the dedication of the high altar.^ Among the other benefits, says Bede, which yEthelberht's thoughtfulness conferred on his people, he drew up for them, in concert with his Witenagemot, or Great Council of the Wise, a code of judicial decisions after the manner of the Romans i^decreta judiciorimi juxta exempla Romanoruni), which are still extant in the English language. The code commences with the penalties to be inflicted on those who did injury to Church ^ Ante^ p. 179, etc. ^ Bede, ii. 5. ^ Op. cit. 109, n- ^ Bede, ii. 7. 16 242 THE END OF SAINT AUGUSTINE^S MISSION PauP {vide supra, p. 234). Bede tells us Mellitus died on the 24th of April 624. He speaks of him as naturally of noble birth, but nobler by the lofti- ness of his soul. Gocelin in his life of him describes certain miracles as performed at his tomb which are specially connected with the cure of the gout from which he suffered so much. When the relics in the old church were translated in 1087, the bones of St. Mellitus were placed on the right of those of St. Augustine in the apse of the new church. It does not appear that Mellitus ever received the pall, which was apparently also the case with Laurentius, and it is equally remarkable that neither of them ordained any bishops, which that fact may explain. When Mellitus died, only one Roman bishop in fact remained in Britain, namely, Justus. The epitaph of Mellitus is given by Thomas of Elmham as follows : — " Summus pontificum, flos tertius, et mel apricum Hac titulis clara redoles, Mellite, sub ara, Laudibus aeternis te praedicat urbs Dorobernis Cui semel ardenti restas virtute potenti." St. Justus On the death of Mellitus, Justus succeeded him as archbishop. This was some time after April 624. Bede tells us he received a letter from Pope Boniface authorising him to consecrate bishops, which is addressed Dilectissinio fratri Jtisto^ As Mr. Plummer has suggested, Bede's 1 Bede, ii. 6. "^ Ib.\\. 8. LETTER OF POPE BONIFACE TO JUSTUS 243 transcript of the letter is mixed up with that of another one, above recited. The latter part of the document, as he gives it, alone relates to Justus as archbishop. He writes to say that the bearer of the presents also took with him a pall which he authorised him to use at the celebration of the Holy Mysteries, and then only, and also giving him authority to ordain bishops when need required, so that Christ's Gospel, having many preachers, might be spread abroad among all the nations which were as yet unconverted ; and he bade him keep with uncorrupt sincerity of mind what the Holy See had conferred on him, and to remember what was symbolised by what he wore on his shoulders [tain praecipMum indumentum humeris tuis baiu- landmn susceperis)} An edition of this letter given by William oi Malmesbury is a sophistication, and forms one of a series of forgeries reported by him which were con- cocted to sustain the claims of the See of Canterbury in its famous controversy with that of York.^ Having received this letter, Justus proceeded to consecrate (alone, be it noted) a new bishop to the See of Rochester which he had himself vacated.^ This was Romanus, doubtless one of the contingent 1 Bede, ii. 8. 2 See Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 73-75 ; Plummer, Bcde^ vol. ii. 91 and 92. ^ Dr. Bright points out the close dependence of the See of Rochester on Canterbury, the successors of Justus being especially expected to do work for the successors of Augustine {pp. cit. 102). Until the year 1148 the bishops of Rochester were appointed by the Archbishop. The Bishop of Rochester is the cross-bearer of the Province {pp. cit. 102 and note i). 244 THE END OF SAINT AUGUSTINE'S MISSION of recruits to the mission, who had accompanied him from Rome. He was afterwards sent by Justus on a mission to Pope Honorius/ The latter had suc- ceeded Boniface the Fifth at the end of the year 625.^ We do not know what the object of this mission was. Bede tells us Romanus was drowned while on the way, "in the Italian Sea," showing that he must have travelled by water across the Gulf of Genoa. Let us now turn to another part of England. " East Anglia at this time included the modern counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, together with at least that part of Cambridgeshire which lies to the east of the Great Dyke (the Devil's Dyke) at New- market. The parishes in this corner of Cambridge- shire were in the East Anglian diocese till fifty or sixty years ago, when the Archdeaconry of Sudbury was transferred to the See of Ely. . . . The fen country up to Peterborough, although probably reckoned with East Anglia at some period of time, formed a principality of Fen-men (Gyrvas), which would count with Mercia or with East Anglia according to the political circumstances of the time."^ Bede says that Ely was in East Anglia,* and, as Dr. Brown says, inasmuch as Medehamstead (now Peterborough) was in the land of the Gyrvii,^ it is very probable that Grantachester or Cambridge was so also. It was in this secluded district, which was * Bede, ii. 20. * Ltd. Pont., sub nom. " Honorius " ; Gregorovius I. 426. ^ Bishop Browne, Conv. of the Heptarchy, 68-69. * iv. 17. « lb. iv. 6. REDWALD OF EAST ANGLIA 245 almost an island (for the marshes separated it from the rest of England), that a special swarm of Anglian invaders had settled. They were known to their neighbours as East Anglians, in contrast with those of the race who lived west of the Marshes. Thomas of Elmham describes them as the most strenuous of the German race, and says they were named Stout-heris {i.e. bold lords) by their neighbours. He says that "according to a saying they were wont to put their children of tender age on the roofs of their houses so as to test the quality of their nerve and agility."^ They had a native race of kings whose family stock was known as that of the Uffings, with a reputed ancestor called Uffa, who is called Wuffa by Nennius. The latter calls him the son of Guecha or Vecta, " who was the first who reigned in Britain over the East Angles." He makes him the father of Tidil, and Tidil the father of Eeni.'^ Bede says that Vuffa was the ancestor of the Vuffings, whose son was Tytil, whose son was Redwald.^ Redwald is not men- tioned by Nennius. Florence of Worcester, in his genealogy of the East Anglian kings, conflates the two stories, and says that Eeni and Redwald were brothers. Bede makes Redwald the fourth Bretwalda, and adds that he began to secure the hegemony for his people even during the reign of ^thelberht [Reduald qui etiani vivente /^dilbei'cto eidem suae genti ducatum praebebat, obtinuit).'^ Flor- » Op. cit. 140. 2 M.H.B. p. 74. * Lib. ii. ch. xv. * lb. ii. 5. 246 THE END OF SAINT AUGUSTINE'S MISSION ence of Worcester states (doubtless it was an infer- ence) that he became master of all the Anglians and Saxons south of the Humbert His capital has been located in more than one place. Bishop Browne suggests that it was probably at Rendlesham in Suffolk, a little to the south-east of Woodbridge. Exning, near Newmarket, is also mentioned some- what later as a royal seat, while Framlingham is named as an East Anglian royal vill. Bede tells us that, having paid a visit to Kent in the time of yEthelberht, Redwald was initiated into the Christian sacraments {sacramentis Christianae fidei inbnhis est), but in vain, since on his return home he was seduced from the faith by his wife and certain perverse "doctors" {^perversis doctoribus), thus becoming worse than before — for, after the manner of the ancient Samaritans, he combined the worship of Christ with that of the gods whom he previously worshipped, and in the same shrine and altar {in eodem fano et altare) at which he offered the sacrifice of Christ he had a small altar (aruld) where he offered victims to the demons. Bede says that Aldwulf, who reigned over the pro- vince in his time, asserted that this shrine was still existing in his youth, and that he had seen it.^ There seems reason to believe that Paulinus may have orone to East Ang^Ha when Redwald returned there after his visit to ^thelberht, and that he may have done some missionary work there.^ This would explain Bede's silence about the doings of a 1 M.H.B, 636. 2 ^e^g^ ii 15, 8 Yi^ infya. EARLY LIFE OF .EDWLN OF NORTHUMBRIA 247 man so famous to the Northumbrians, in the days before he undertook his northern mission. Paulinus may have met King ^dwin about this time. The latter, as we shall see presently, had been driven out of his kingdom of Deira by his brother-in-law, ^thelfrid, the King of Bernicia, and had taken shelter with Redwald. Moved by the gifts and threats of T^thelfrid, Redwald determined to assassinate his guest, but was turned away from that purpose by his Queen, who urged upon him that nothing would be baser than to sell his plighted promise to his young guest for money. He consequently not only sent back ^thelfrid's messengers, but collected his own forces and marched against the latter, and fought a great fight against him on the borders of the Mercians on the eastern bank of the river Idle {amnis qui vacatur Idlae). This was probably at Idleton, near Retford.^ In the fight y^thelfrid was defeated and killed. "As we infer," says Bright, "from a calculation of Bede, this was before the I ith April 617." ^ In this battle we are told by the latter that Redwald's son Raegenhere was killed. This is the last mention we have of Redwald. It was perhaps the great victory on the Idle which secured for East Anglia the hegemony of England. In regard to Redwald's double cult of the new Christian faith and that of his old gods, Bright quotes some other apt examples from other places, e.g. the ruler of Pomerania, who set up a pagan altar within a church ; Hakon, son of Harold ^ Pearson, Hist. Eng. i. 127. - See Bede, ii. 12 ; Bright, 123. 248 THE ExND OF SAINT AUGUSTINE'S MISSION Fairhair of Norway, who, while signing the cross over his cup, told his people that it meant the hammer of Thor, etc/ On the death of Redwald, the date of which we do not know, he was suc- ceeded by his son Eorpwald. Let us now turn to the Angles of Northumbria. It would seem that at the beginning of their history the whole maritime district from the Humber to the Lammermuirs was occupied by one race, speaking the same dialect and having the same religion and customs. This race was sharply divided by its strongly marked dialect and vowel sounds from that occupying Mercia further south, which had probably been affected by contact with the Romans and Britons. At a later day it was itself divided in twain by a dialectic difference whose origin and cause it is not difficult to trace. Yorkshire was overrun and largely settled and occupied by the Scandinavians. At the time when Domesday Book was compiled, almost all its gentry and landowners were Danes. On the other hand, Durham, North- umberland, and the Lothians were apparently quite free from Danish settlements, and there can be little doubt that what is known as the Yorkshire dialect was the primitive dialect of all Northumbria sophisti- cated and altered by the Danish speech. Before the Danish conquest the people of all Northumbria apparently spoke one language, which is preserved in its greatest purity in Northumberland. ^ Op. cit. 1 20 and notes. THE ORIGIN OF NORTHUMBRIA 249 How this race came there, is a great puzzle. We are nowhere definitely told, and it would seem probable that it had been there some time when the Northumbrian history introduces us to any very definite knowledge about the district. In our earliest notices, Northumbria was divided into two sections, separated by the river Tees or perhaps the Tyne, and respectively called Baernicia and Deira by the Anglians, and perhaps correspond- ing to earlier Celtic divisions called Brenneich^ and Deivr. The former stretched from the Tees or Tyne to the Lammermuir Hills, and the latter (roughly corresponding to Yorkshire) lay between the Tees and the H umber. Bede puts the foundation of Bernicia in 547 ^ and followino- Nennius he makes Ida, who is gfiven a fabulous pedigree by the latter, its founder. He was the traditional builder of Bamborough Castle, which became the capital of the kingdom, and was succeeded by several sons one after the other. One of these latter, called y^thelric, had a son called yEthelfrid, who became the ruler of Bernicia in 592. Bede describes him as "a Saul in harassing his enemies," and adds that "no English leader conquered more British land either driving out the Britons or reducing them to slavery."^ In the genealogies attached to Nennius he is called JEUret or Edlferd Flesaur, or the ravager.* ^ According to Rhys's Ce/h'c Britain, p. 1 13, a form of Brigantia. 2 Op. cit. V. 24. 3 ji, i_ 3^_ 4 M.H.B. 74. 2 50 THE END OF SAINT AUGUSTINE'S MISSION In the year 603 he was attacked by Aidan, King of the Scots of Argyll, whom he defeated at Dagestan, now called Dawston, at the head of Liddesdale.^ Meanwhile v^lla, or ^lle, son of Uffa, or Yffi, had been reig'nincr over Deira. Bede in the short chronicle annexed to his history says that ^lle and y^thelfrith were Kings of Northumbria during Augustine's mission in Kent.^ As we have seen, it was probably some of the captives made in a war between ^lle and ^thelberht of Kent who gave rise to the tale about Gregory and the Anglian boys above reported. It was about a year after the battle of Dagestan, i.e. in 604, the year in which Gregory and Augustine died, that ^lla. King of Deira, also died. His daughter Acha had been married to yEthelfrid. This did not prevent the latter from immediately attacking y^dwin, the son and successor of yElla, and appropriating his kingdom. This is expressly said in Nennius to have been twelve years after his own accession to the throne of Bernicia, i.e. in 604. As ^dwin was only forty -eight years old when he was killed in 633, he must have been born in 585, and been about nineteen years old when he was driven from the throne. According to Bede, his brother-in-law pursued him with re- lentless and bitter animosity from one place to ^ See Skene, Four Ancient Books of IVa/es, i. 177. 2 AI.N.B. 96. ^DWIN OF NORTHUMBRIA 251 another, through many kingdoms and countries and for many years.^ At length he sought shelter among the Britons, apparently at Chester. The life of St. Oswald says he was brought up by Cadvan the Welsh King, with his son Cadwallon, and it was probably because of the shelter and kindness shown to him by the monks of the great monastery of Bangor y Yscoed close by, that y^thelfrid in 613^ utterly destroyed that founda- tion and killed all its monks. yEdwin escaped, and seems to have made his way to East Anglia, whose King, Redwald, was perhaps related to him, both having an Uffa for an ancestor, who may have been the same man. Redwald gave him shelter, ^thelfrid was not long in pursu- ing him thither, and sent Redwald much money to try and bribe him to assassinate his guest, but he would not consent. He sent a second and a third time, offering still larger bribes, and threaten- ing war if he did not comply. At length, either tempted by the money or frightened by the menaces, or still more by the news he had no doubt heard of ^thelfrid's terrible campaign at Chester and his defeat of the Scottish King, he promised either to kill him or to hand him over to the envoys. A friend, says Bede, who had heard of Redwald's determination, went into Edwin's chamber in the first hour of the ni^ht and offered to conduct him where neither Redwald nor ^ Bedc^ ii. 12. - Ann. Camb., ad an. ; Annals of Uhte7% ad an. ; Lloyd, History of Wales, i. 179, note 68. 252 THE END OF SAINT AUGUSTINE'S MISSION ^thelfrid could do him any harm. While thanking him for his kind offices, i^dwin said he could not do this, since he had a pact with the King by which the latter had undertaken to defend him, and if he was to die he would rather do it by Redwald's own hand than by that of a meaner man. Besides, whither was one to fly to, who had for so many years been a vagabond trying to escape with his life? On the departure of his friend, yEdwin sat on a stone in front of the palace, cogitating what he was to do, whereupon, according to Bede, he had a vision in which he saw a man in a strange dress and of a weird appearance, who asked him what reward he would give him if he found him an escape from his present position, and if he secured his becoming a mighty king greater than all his forefathers. He further asked him if by chance he came to his father's throne in this way, and if a man came to him promising him a new life and a new law better than any he or his fathers had known, he would believe and obey him ? /Edwin promised that he would. The apparition then gave him a sign by which the occasion should be remembered, namely, by putting his hand on his head in some peculiar way (perhaps making the sign of the cross is meant), and dis- appeared. The apparition was afterwards, accord- ing to the legend, recognised by ^dwin as that of Paulinus.^ Soon after, the same friend came to him and said the King had changed his mind, and had been ' Vide infra, p. 258. .EDWIN OF NORTHUMBRIA 253 persuaded by the Queen that it would be a shock- ing thing to betray his guest for gold, and had made up his mind rather to fight ^thelfrid. He there- fore collected an army and marched against the latter. He did not give him time to collect his forces, but, as we have seen, attacked him on the eastern bank of the river Idle, a tributary of the Trent in Nottinghamshire,^ and defeated and killed him, but he lost his own son Raegenhere in the strucrorle,^ The battle was fouo^ht about the year 617. The result of this fight was very important. yEthelfrid had been a mighty king and conqueror, and y^dwin was now put on the throne, and secured not only his paternal dominions of Deira, but also Bernicia, and drove out vEthelfrid's sons, with a large following of nobles {iiobilimii)? They took shelter among the Scots or Picts [Scottos sive Pictos\ and there they were taught the faith and were baptized {ad doctrmani Scottoruui cathecizati et baptisviatis sunt gratia recreati). .Edwin's further career of conquest began early ; apparently in the very first year of his reign, he attacked a British principality called Elmet, which still existed in the West Riding of Yorkshire and possibly dominated over Lancashire and its borders. Of this principality Leeds (Loidis) was the principal town. By this conquest ^dwin extended the kingdom of Deira to the English Pennines, and enclosed ^ Vide ante. * Bede^ ii. 12. * lb. iii. 1. 2 54 THE END OF SAINT AUGUSTINE S MISSION the West Riding within his dominions. It is not improbable that at the same time he also became master of Lancashire, and thus ruled northern England from sea to sea. He seems now to have turned his attention to his northern neighbours, among whom the sons of yEthelfrid had taken refuge, and proceeded to conquer the district between the Firth of Forth and the Lammermuirs, which we call the Lothians. There he planted a settlement under the great rock so closely associated with the name of Arthur. This fortified post, to which he gave its name of .r^dwinsburgh, became in later days the capital of Scotland. Having thus punished his northern neighbours, and perhaps compelled them to give up the shelter which they had offered to the sons of .^thelfrid, he seems to have begun a long and a terrible warfare against the Britons of Wales. Of this we have no details in the English chron- icles, but the Welsh poems preserve some grim memories of it. The war was apparently carried on against Cadvan, the King of North Wales, and his son Cadwallon. yEdwin pushed his conquests out into the west, and even as far as the two islands of Menavia, i.e. the Isle of Man and Anglesea. Nennius expressly says he conquered the Menavias (in the plural). Bede tells us that the southern Menavia, i.e. Anglesea, was more fruitful and richer than the more northern one, and was .EDWIN OF NORTHUMBRIA 255 occupied by 960 families, while the northern one, i.e. the Isle of Man, only contained 300/ In the Cambrian Annals we have a short pregnant entry under the year 629, where we read that Cadwallon was besieged in the island of Glannauc {i.e. Priestholm, near Anglesea). This shows the stress to which he was then driven. yEdwin had now become the most powerful ruler whom the Anglians had produced, and his im- perial authority probably extended from the Forth to the Thames, or rather to the English Channel, for he was apparently acknowledged as overlord by all England except perhaps Kent. Such was his fame and his firm grip of authority that Bede tells us it had become proverbial that a woman with a newborn babe could safely traverse the land from sea to sea without molestation. As a proof of his benevolence it is told of him that in many places where there were springs of water near the highways he put up stakes, to which he fastened brazen cups, that travellers might refresh themselves and that no one dared remove them. Bede tells us further that he was wont to have a standard carried before him, not only in war-time, but also when he rode with his officers through the towns and villages, which was called by the Romans tufa, and by the English thimf} The ttcfa is mentioned by Vegetius among the military standards,^ and was formed of a tuft of feathers — " une Tuffe de plumes," as it 1 Op. cit. ii. 9. 2 Bede, ii. 16. ^ Op. cit. iii. cap. 5. 256 THE END OF SAINT AUGUSTINE'S MISSION is called in a charter of Gervase of Clifton to Robert de Bevercotes in the time of Richard 11/ While ^dwin was a fugitive he married Ouenburo-a, the daughter of Cearl, whom Bede calls a King of Mercia. Of this Cearl we have no independent mention, and it would in fact seem that there was no kingdom of Mercia at this time, and that that kingdom was first founded by Penda. It is more probable that he was a king or chief of Wessex, which would account for the conduct of the Wessex King, Cwichelm, to be presently mentioned. By Ouenburga i^dwin had two sons, namely, Osfrid and Eadfrid.^ Now that he had become a mighty potentate, yEdwin was anxious to ally himself with the blood of ^thelberht, which had been, as we have seen, strengthened by a graft from the famous royal line of the Prankish Kings. It is possible that his former wife was still living, we do not know, but we now find him making advances to Eadbald, the son of ^^thelberht, for the hand of his sister ^thelberga. Eadbald replied that it was not lawful to give a Christian maiden in marriage to a man who o knew not the true God. Upon which yEdwin said that she and those she brought with her should be free to worship in any fashion they pleased, and that he himself would become a Christian if he found on due examination that that religion was worthier than his own. 1 M.H.B. 168, note c. 2 Bede, ii. 14. ^DWIN^S CONVERSION 257 Thereupon, the Princess was duly sent, with her attendants. With them went PauHnus, who was consecrated a bishop on 21st July 625, by Justus, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Christianity, as we have seen, was at this moment limited among the Anglo-Saxons to the Kentish subjects of Eadbald, and to such a sophisticated form of that faith as was partially followed in East Anglia. In setting out on his journey Paulinus was like Augustine, a veritable missionary bishop. We are told that Cwichelm, the King of Wessex, now sent one of his men called Eomer with a poisoned dagger to assassinate yEdwin. The King was spending the Easter feast of 626 at his royal villa on the river Derwent. This has been identified as Aldby.^ The messenger had an interview with the King, durinor which he struck at ^dwin with his dao-o-er, but Lilla, the King's thane (not having his shield with him), intervened his own body, and the blow was so determined that the blade went right through him and wounded ^dwin. The men who were standing round thereupon slew Eomer.^ The same night yEthelberga bore her husband a daughter, who was named Eanfleda. The King duly thanked his gods in the presence of Paulinus, and the latter offered his to Christ, and assured y^dwin that the child had been born in answer to his own prayers. He was greatly pleased at this, and promised that if he returned successfully from his war against the West Saxons he would become 258 THE END OF SAINT AUGUSTINE^S MISSION a Christian, and in token of his sincerity he per- mitted him to baptize the child, who thus became the first-fruits of his mission among the Northum- brians. At the same time eleven other families were also baptized. This was on the 8th June 626.^ y^dwin, having recovered from his wound, marched against the West Saxons and destroyed or received the submission of all who had conspired against him.^ The statement in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (which in this portion, in so far as it is of any value, was apparently entirely dependent upon Bede) that he slew five of their kings, seems absolutely without foundation. On his return home, y^dwin was indisposed to carry out his promise to Paulinus to become a Christian, without further consideration {inconsulte), although he gave up his idols. He conferred much with the bishop, and also with those among his chieftains whom he considered to be most wise, and asked them what they thought should be done. He no doubt feared (and as it proved had good reason to fear) that the revenge of the pagan party, which had been powerful enough to deprive ^thelberht of Kent of his great supremacy, and to transfer it for a while to Redwald of East Anglia, might undo him also. One day, according to Bede's story, Paulinus entered his room and, putting his hand on his head (which was the sign which the apparition had 1 Bede, ii. 9. » A EDWIN'S CONVERSION 259 given him in his distress when at Redwald's court), reminded him of the promise which he had then made to him. ^dwin, says Bede, "hke a man of great natural sagacity often sat alone for a long time together in silence, holding many a conversation with himself in the depth of his heart, considering what he ought to do and what religion he should observe."^ At this point, and before he reports ^Edwin's conversion, Bede inserts two letters from the Pope to ^dwin and his wife respectively, which he attributes to Pope Boniface the Fifth. I have discussed these letters in the Introduction, where I have argued that they are very suspicious. ^dwin having discussed his position with Paulinus, determined, before finally committing himself, again to debate the matter with the princes, his friends, and his counsellors [mnicis et consiliariis szcis), so that if their view coincided with his own they might all be baptized together. Paulinus approved of this, and a Witenagemote, or great council of his kingdom, was accordingly summoned. At this the King asked every one individually what he thought of this new teaching. The first to speak was Coifi (a name which Kemble says was equivalent to Coefig or Cefig, i.e. the bold or active one), the head priest {Primus pontifiamt) of the old pagan religion, who had apparently been previously approached. He bade the King decide for himself, for as far as he was I Bede, ii. 9. 2 6o THE END OF SAINT AUGUSTINE^S MISSION concerned he had come to the conclusion that the faith he had hitherto professed had neither virtue nor profit in it. " None of your people," he said — or as the Anglo-Saxon version has it, " None of your thanes" [thegna) — "has been more faithful to the old gods than myself, yet there are many among them who have received greater gifts and dignities than I have, and have also had greater luck in their plans and their gains. If the old gods had any real power, they would have favoured me, their most devoted worshipper." "If you there- fore, on a due examination, find the new things now preached are better and stronger, let us all adopt them without delay." The speech of Coifi was followed by that of one of the King's ealdormen {alius optimatum regis), who spoke in a more serious and elevated mood. He said that "man's life here, in comparison with the time beyond, of which we know nothing, is as if we were sitting in the winter-time at supper with your ealdormen and thanes {ctmi ducibus ac ministris htis) at a fire in the middle of the hall by which it is warmed, while outside were storms of wintry rain and snow, and a sparrow were to enter and fly quickly through the house, in at one door and out at the other. While it was inside it would be untouched by the wintry storm, but when that moment of calm had run out, it would pass again from winter into winter, and you would lose sight of it. So this life is a short interlude ; of what follows it, and of what went before, we know ^DVVIN^S BAPTISM 261 nothing. I f this new teaching, therefore, has brought any sure knowledge to us, we would do well to follow it." This beautiful simile shows that the great council meeting took place in winter. The rest of the King's hereditary chieftains {ceteri majores natu) and his counsellors now followed (and by God's instigation) in the same strain. Coifi again intervening, now suggested that they would like to hear Paulinus. When they had done so, Coifi said : "I have long felt that what we have worshipped has been nothing at all [nihil esse, quod colebajims), and the more I have sought for the truth in it, the less I have found it. I now acknowledfje that in the new teach- ing shines the truth, which can give us the gifts of life and health and everlasting happiness. I propose, therefore, that we ban and burn the temples and altars which we have consecrated to no profit." Thereupon the King gave permission to Paulinus openly to preach the Gospel, and himself renounced idolatry. When he asked Coifi who should first profane the altars and shrines with their enclosures {cum septis, i.e. the frith-geard or heath-tun of the Angles), he answered : " I in my folly cherished them, and who but myself when enlightened by God's wisdom should undo them." So he girded himself with a sword, and mounting the King's charger [et ascendens emissarium regis) proceeded to the idols. The multitude thought him mad. When he drew near the temple he cast his lance 262 THE END OF SAINT AUGUSTINE'S MISSION at it, and thus desecrated it, and bade his companions destroy and fire the fane and all its sacred hedges [fanuin cum omnibus septis suis). Dr. G. F. Maclear remarks that this action must have looked like that of a madman to his people, for as a priest he could not bear arms, or ride, except on a mare/ The place which was afterwards shown as the site of the idol temple, says Bede, was not far from York, towards the east and beyond the Derwent, and "is called Godmunddingaham " ^ (now Godmanham, i.e. the enclosure of the gods, near Market Weighton).^ Smith says it was situated near the Roman Delgovitia, which Camden derives from the British Delgwe, meaning statues of the gods. In regard to the whole incident, Bede adds, quoting Vergil, that the chief priest "destroyed the altars which he had himself consecrated " {destruxit eas quas ipse saa^averat, aras). We are next told that the King with all his nobles {cum cunciis gentis suae nobilibus), and a great crowd of people were baptized on Easter Day, 1 2th April 627. This ceremony took place at York, in the wooden church dedicated to the Apostle Peter, which y^dwin had built hastily when he was a catechumen under instruction for baptism (cum cathecizaretur). This (no doubt) very rude structure was the first-recorded church on the site of York Minster. Bede tells us that a ^ The English^ p. 52. - Bede^ ii. 13. ' Bishop Browne, op. cit. 181, and note i. Ground Plan of the Church of Paulinus at York. To face p. 262. EDWIN'S BAPTISM 263 certain Abbot of Peartaneu (Parteney, near Spilsby, in Lincolnshire ; it was a cell of Bardney and after- wards absorbed by the latter) reported that a man of great veracity, called Deda, told him that he had talked with an aged man who was baptized by Paulinus in the river Trent in the presence of King -^dwin. It is a curious fact, for which we have no adequate explanation, that Nennius and the Cambrian Annals say that ^dwin was converted by Run map Urbgen, i.e. Run, the son of Urien, who continued to baptize his people, the Ambrones, for forty days. By Ambrones the people on the river Umber {i.e. the Northumbrians) are perhaps meant. How the name Run came to be substituted for Paulinus I do not know. It is not difficult, however, to convert Paulinus into Paul i hen, and thus make a Welshman of him, as was in fact done. ./Edwin made plans under the direction of Paulinus for the building of a stone church, "a larger and more august basilica of stone " {curavit docente eodem Paulino, majorem ipso in loco et augustiorem de lapide fabricare basilicam), upon the same spot, in the midst of which he enclosed his earlier chapel. The foundations having been laid, he began to build a four-sided [per quadrunt) basilica, but before they had reached their full height, the King, says Bede, "was wickedly slain, and left the work to be finished by his successor Oswald." It was subsequently burnt in 1069. 2 64 THE END OF SAINT AUGUSTINE'S MISSION Mr. Micklethwaite tells us that "the works at York Minster, which followed on the burning of the quire in 1829, brought to light evidence of the earlier buildings on the site. In the western part of the quire, below everything else, there was found a remarkable foundation of concrete and timber. It did not belong to the present building, nor to the Norman one that preceded it, but to something older ; and when the plan of it is laid down by itself, it appears plainly to show the foundation of a basilican church with a transept like that at Peterborough. The foundation of the presbytery is wanting, and was probably removed in the course of the building of the present quire, and I suspect something is also wanting at the west, where the central tower of the church is now, and that the building went on further, far enough to make the nave equal the transept in length. The width of the transept was about 30 feet, and that between the aisle walls about 68 feet. If the ancient walling which remains visible at the sides of the site of the nave be the substructure of the arcades of the first church, the middle span was about 30 feet, but, if they be later, it may have been a little more. The continuation of the foundation all across, in line with the western wall of the transept, seems to point fo the substitution of an arcade for the 'triumpnal' arch in that place." ^ Bishop Browne quotes Canon Raine as writing of the present crypt : " In another peculiar place is the actual ^ Arch. Journ. 1896, pp. 305-306. DISTINGUISHED NORTHUMBRIAN CONVERTS 265 site, if I mistake not, of the font in which ^dwin became a Christian."^ Paulinus continued for six years after the King's baptism to preach the Word in the pro- vince with the consent and goodwill of ^dwin and without a break — that is to say, till the end of yEdwin's reign. Amonof those who, according to Bede, at this time "believed and were baptized, being pre- ordained to eternal life," were Osfrid and Eadfrid, Edwin's sons whom he had had by Ouenburga, the daughter of King Cearl. Subsequently the children he had by i^thelberga, namely, ^^dilhun and y^dilthryd, and another son named Wuscfrea, were also baptized. Of these latter the two former died when young {albati adhiic rapti sunt) and were buried at York.^ So great was the fervour for the faith, that on one occasion when Paulinus went with the King and Queen to the royal vill {in villain regiam), which was called Adgefrin, i.e. Ad Gefrin, now called Yeverin, in Glendale,^ he spent six -and -thirty days from morning till night in catechising and in baptizing in the river Glen [in fluvio Gleni). This is now called the Beaumont water, a tributary of the Till.* The vill just named was, according to Bede, laid waste in later times and replaced by another at Maelmin.^ ^ Ahuifi of York, p. 81, by Bishop Browne. ^ Bede, ii. 14. ^ Plummer, ii. pp. 104 and 105. * Plummer, Bede, ii. p. 105. * Smith, in a note to Bede, and following Camden, col. 1097, ed. 1753, identifies this with Millfield, near Wooler. Mindrum, higher 266 THE END OF SAINT AUGUSTINE'S MISSION In Deira (roughly Yorkshire) Paulinus also had a marked success. We are told he used to baptize in the river Swale, which flows past the village of Cataractam [i.e. Catterick, called Cetrehtan in the Anglo-Saxon version), for, as Bede says, the Church was then only in its infancy and they had not been able to build oratories (i.e. chapels) or baptisteries {pratoria vel baptisteria). At Campodonum,^ where there was a royal vill, he built a basilica which was probably made of wood " and was afterwards burnt, as was the whole place, by the heathens who slew King ^dwin. Its altar, however, which was of stone, escaped the fire, and, when Bede wrote, was still preserved in the monastery of the abbot and priest Thrydwulf, in Elmet Wood.^ Bishop Browne tells us that Paulinus " left his mark on Northumbria. ' Pallinsburn/ in the north of Northumberland, still commemorates him. It used to be said that an inscription on a cross at Dewsbury recorded his preaching there.* up the Glen, on the borders of Northumberland and Roxburgh, has also been suggested, while Mr. C. J. Bates suggests Kirk Newton, where there is a church dedicated to St. Gregory. See Plummer, Bede^ ii. 105. ^ It is called Donafeld in the Anglo-Saxon version, a name pos- sibly still surviving in Doncaster ; perhaps Slack, near Huddersfield (Plummer, ii. 105). It has also been identified with Tanfield, near Ripon (see Smith's Bede). ^ In the Anglo-Saxon version of Bede the word here used for " built " is gettnibran., showing how general was the use of wooden buildings at this time. " Beds, ii. 14. * Bright, 138, note i. Camden mentions this cross, and says it was inscribed '"'' Hie Paulinus p7-aedicavW {Briit. col. 709). A suc- cessor to it, according to Whitaker, was accidentally destroyed in 1812 (Loidis and Elmete, 299). te 1 ^T*** J pW^^S^W^'^^^^^' The Two Sides of the Cross in the Churchyard at Whalley. To face p. 266. THE PREACHING OF PAULINUS 267 In the time of Edward the Second the boundary of some land near Easingwold is described as ex- tending 'usque ad cruces PaulinV {i.e. as far as the crosses of Paulinus), while Brafferton, near Easing- wold, is, by local tradition, made a baptizing and preaching place of Paulinus/ A cross of Paulinus again, is still shown at Whalley, in Lancashire, one of three remarkable Anglian shafts remaining in that most interesting churchyard, and the one of all the early shafts still preserved among us which most suits by its style that very early ascription."^ " Paulinus," says Bede, "also preached the Word in the province of Lindissi, which was situated south of the Humber, and reached to the sea"^(/.^. the later Lincolnshire ; it then probably formed a part of Northumbria). He further tells us that Blaecca, whom he calls the prsefect of the city {civitatis) of Lindocolina {i.e. Lincoln), with his family were converted. Florence of Worcester professes to give his pedigree up to Woden, and says that his ancestor was oriven Thong- Castle, with all Lincoln- shire, by Hengist. In that city he built a stone church of beautiful workmanship {operis egregii de lapide), the roof of which, he says, has been brought down {dejectd) either by long neglect or by the hands of enemies, but the walls are still stand- ing, and every year some miracles of healing are displayed on the spot for the benefit of those who seek the faith. It was in this church, according to ^ Murray's Yorkshire, 230. ^ Browne, Augustme and his Companions, 183. ^ Bede. ii. 16. 268 THE END OF SAINT AUGUSTINE'S MISSION Bede, that on the death of Justus, ch^. 630, Honorius was consecrated archbishop in his stead. ^ Mr. Mason says in a note that it now goes by the name of St. Paul's, which is short for St. Paulinus. Bede says, in regard to the conversion of the province, that he was told a story by a very truth- ful {veracissimus) presbyter, a man called Deda. He was abbot of the Monastery of Parteney. He reported that he had been informed by an elderly man [qiiendam sefiiorevi) that he had been baptized in the middle of the day by Bishop Paulinus (in the presence of King y^dwin, and with him a multitude of people) in the river Trent (Treenta), near a city {jzcxta civitateni) which was called, in the language of the Angles, Tiouul- fingacaestir} In the Anglo-Saxon version it is called Teolfinga ceastre. I agree with Mr. Plummer that the name has nothing to do with that of Torksey, with which it has been equated, and which is called Turcesig in the Ajtglo-Saxon Chronicle in 873. There is good reason to believe it was at or near Farndon, where the old ford across the Trent was placed. Dr. Bright tells us that Southwell in Nottingham- shire has always claimed Paulinus as its founder.^ The old man mentioned by Deda, who had been baptized by Paulinus and therefore knew him well, described him as of tall stature, somewhat bent, with ^ Bede, ii. i6. 2 /^ jj jg ^ P. 141, note. He argues that the tradition arose from the fact that, from Saxon times, St. Mary's of Southwell was subject to St. Peter's of York. THE LATER REIGN OF HERACLIUS 269 black hair, spare face, and a very thin hooked nose ; lookinor at the same time venerable and fierce {venerabilis siinul et terribilis aspecht). He had with him as his assistant James, a deacon, and a man both indefatigable and noble {industrmvt ac nobileni) in Christ and in the Church. Bede says that Archbishop Justus died on the loth November.^ He does not state the year, which was probably 630.^ Before we deal with the next archbishop and his career, it will be convenient to make a survey of the progress of events in other parts of the Christian world at this time. I brought down the reign of Heraclius to the point where by his vigour and genius he had trampled on the power of the Persians and restored the Eastern limits of the Empire to their farthest stretch as in the days of Justinian, and I have also referred to his temporary success in allaying the great feuds which then rent the Church, or at least the Eastern portion of it. I must now turn to a very different story, namely, that of his disastrous later life. No more tragical contrast exists in history, nor one more inexplicable. That one who had shown such skill, resource, and energy should have almost suddenly lost his initiative and power 1 Bede, ii. 18. 2 The Anglo-Saxon Chr., MS. E, a twelfth century Peterborough document and a poor authority, puts it in 627, but this date does not occur in the Canterbury copies of the Chronicle, MSS. A and F. Smith, in his edition of Bede, argues that it was about 630, which is probably right. 2 70 THE END OF SAINT AUGUSTINE'S MISSION of will and allowed his mind to become entangled in the metaphysical struggles of priests and monks to the exclusion of all care and solicitude for his country and people, and permitted a new and a very long-lived enemy of the Empire to overwhelm one-half of it so effectually that it passed completely out of his control, is indeed a puzzle. The enemy in question came from Arabia and its borders, and were known very widely as Saracens, and in race, physique, and temperament greatly resembled the Jews/ A great prophet arose among this race, who seized (as prophets sometimes do) the imagination and the peculiar instincts of the Arabs, and produced not only a new departure, but a new religion in which a great deal was directly adopted from the Jews : not merely the patriarchal story and various legends which were mingled with others from the desert, but the great cardinal feature which united Jews and themselves, namely, the worship of one God who divided his authority with no other being and would tolerate no rivals under any form or name. Muhammed modified considerably but not entirely, and then incorporated, the ethical teaching of the later Jews. Having bound his followers together in * The name Saracen, of doubtful etymology, was, so far as we know, first applied among the classical writers by Ammianus Marcellinus, who, writing in the second half of the fourth century, applies it to certain tribes of plundering Arabs on the Roman frontier. It was afterwards used as a generic name for the pred^' tory Arabs. THE RISE OF MUHAMMEDANISM 271 a very powerful leash, as the children and servants of Allah (their form of Jehovah), he bade them fight the battle of their one and only God with merciless persistence against all idolaters, and against the Christians, whose belief in a Triune deity could not, in Muhammedan eyes, be dis- entangled from a worship of three gods. In the name of Allah he promised them great rewards not only in this world, but in the next, where those who died or suffered for their faith would live such Sybaritic lives in heaven as the desert children had never dreamed of. This was not all. It seems plain to me that Muhammed not only derived a large part of his sacred book from the Bible of the Jews, but that the large number of Jews, many of them fugitives, who then lived in Arabia and its borders, and who had been very harshly treated by the Emperor and the officials of the Church, did a great deal to incite the Arab race, already on fire with the eloquent appeal made to their hearts and their passions by their prophet. They also helped in a great many ways to keep alive the undying and unquenchable heroism and furore of the descendants of Ishmael. The latter were further incited and inspirited by their priests, whose role may be compared with that of the children of St. Dominic in the terrible cam- paigns against the Albigenses. It is, further, pretty certain that both the Jews and their own Fakirs and Kadhis would present in most attractive shape the prize that was within their reach if they behaved 272 THE END OF SAINT AUGUSTINE'S MISSION like men. They urged them, no doubt, to hit the weary giant whose heart was at Constantinople some heavy blows, where his limbs were most paralysed by the internecine religious feuds of the orthodox and the heterodox among the Christians. They further, doubtless, offered as a bait a rich booty of gold and silver, silks and spices, with which the provinces of old Rome still teemed, which must have been very inviting to warriors whose lives had been so hard and whose fare had been so scant. This is all clear, but it would hardly have availed against the disciplined forces which sent the great Chosroes to his grave, if it had not been for the mental and moral paralysis which overtook Heraclius in his later days. Muhammed, having secured the adhesion of a large number of his countrymen in Arabia, wrote in 628 to the Emperor, to the King of Persia, and to the King of Abyssinia urging them to adopt the Faith, The King of Abyssinia accepted the invita- tion in an enthusiastic and humble letter. Chosroes, transported with fury, characteristically ordered the Governor of Yemen to send him the insolent Arab in chains. Heraclius said neither yes nor no, but sent presents to Muhammed in acknowledgment of his communication,^ In 632 Muhammed died, and was succeeded as khalif {i.e. successor) by Abubekr, who at once planned with Omar an attack on Persia and on "New" Rome. Khalid ("the sword of God ") was sent into Irak against the former, and four * Bury, Hisi. 0/ the Laier Roman Empire, ii. ?6i-2, THE ARAB CONQUEST OF SYRIA 273 other generals were sent into Syria, who quickly captured Bostra and Gaza ; and presently a Roman army was defeated on the banks of the Yermuk, which falls into the sea of Tiberias. This battle decided the fate of Damascus, which fell in 635. Emessa or Hims and Heliopolis or Baalbek were taken a year later, whereupon Heraclius, who was either at Edessa or Antioch, abandoned Syria and fled to Chalcedon. Abubekr had died soon after the fight at Yermuk, and had been succeeded as khalif by Omar. Tiberias, Chalcis, Beroea, Epiphania, and Larissa successively fell, while Edessa agreed to pay tribute. Antioch, the seat of one of the five patriarchs, was next taken. As Mr. Bury says, there can be no doubt that the rapid conquest of Syria was facilitated by the apostasy of Christians as well as the treachery of Jews. In 62,7 Jerusalem, the seat of a second patriarchate, also fell after a siege of two years. Omar was conducted round the city by the obsequious patriarch Sophronius, and a mosque was built on the site of Solomon's temple. A desperate but futile attempt was made to recover Syria, but the Roman army was utterly beaten, and for some centuries it remained in the hands of the Muhammedans. The conquest of Syria was speedily followed by that of Mesopotamia. Edessa, Constantina, and Daras were captured in 639. A year earlier, the Persian Empire had been laid in the dust by the defeat of its armies at Cadesia after a four days' fight. 18 2 74 THE END OF SAINT AUGUSTINE'S MISSION Shortly after, its capital Ctesiphon was taken and sacked. Presently "the battle of Nehavend, 'the victory of victories,' stamped out for ever the dynasty of the Sassanids, which had lasted some- what more than four hundred years, 226-641."^ Egypt was the next to fall. If, says Mr. Bury, a foreign invader was welcome to some in Syria, still more was he welcome in Egypt. The native Copts, who were Jacobites, hated the Greeks, who were Melkites, and this element was made use of by Amru, the Arab general, to effect his conquest, which was rapidly carried through ; its capital, the mighty and famous city of Alexandria, falling on December 641, and being replaced as the seat of government by Fostat, afterwards called Cairo. Heraclius himself died on the iith of February of the same year. The political and economical effect of these conquests, by which some of the richest provinces in the Empire passed into other hands, must have been appalling. Not less appalling must they have been in their effect upon the whole public con- science and sense of pride and of self-respect of the Christian world. It was doubtless due to three causes — the paralysis in the character and will of the Emperor ; the animosities of the various Christian sects against each other, and of all of them against the Jews, which were vigorously returned ; and lastly, the fact that the men from the desert were strong men with a strong faith in themselves ^ Bury, op. cit. 269. EFFECTS OF THE ARAB CONQUEST 275 and their religion, while the subjects of the Empire were as weak in morals as they were physically. Mr. Bury has quoted a graphic sentence in which the Imperial governor of Egypt who surrendered his trust, Mukankas, justified his act to the Emperor. "It is true," he said, "that the enemy are not nearly so numerous as we, but one Mussulman is equivalent to a hundred of our men. Of the enjoyments of the earth they desire only simple clothing and simple food, and yearn for the death of martyrs because it leads them to paradise, while we cling to life and its joys, and fear death." ^ In addition to the results here named, the con- quests of the Arabs had a far-reaching if not quite immediate effect upon the Papacy. Up to this time the Pope, if generally acknowledged as the senior administrative-officer of the Church, was so rather in regard to precedence than dominance. He shared his position as Patriarch with four others, three of whom had titles as old as his own, and each of whom had a jurisdiction within his province as independent as his own. One of them, who presided at Alexandria, governed a Church which had been famous for its learning and for the number of theologians it had produced. It was in these respects far more famous than Rome. The relative positions of the three Patriarchs just named were now to be entirely altered. They became more or less insignificant personages, with great titles, but with very scant ^ op. cit. 270. 2 76 THE END OF SAINT AUGUSTINE'S MISSION power and influence. Their people and they themselves became the subjects of Muhammedan rulers instead of being under the a^gis of the ortho- dox Emperors. They became poor and more or less illiterate ; their schools decayed, their theological influence shrank and disappeared. The result of all this was the great enhancement of the prestige of the two Patriarchs who remained, the Pope and the Patriarch of Constantinople, and especially of the Pope who, living in the Old Rome and far away from New Rome, was not so much dominated by the Emperor and his courtiers as his brother- Patriarch of Constantinople, while the adherence of the Lombard and Spanish Arians to orthodoxy and the initiation of a new missionary church in Britain added greatly to the extent of the territory which acknowledged him as its head. This en- hancement in his position, however, was not immediately forthcoming, but came presently.^ ^ If we try to realise the desolation and misery caused, and the terrible sufferings and bloodshed which resulted in later years in half the Eastern Empire by its conquest by the Muhammedans, we shall indeed wonder that a Christian priest, the latest historian of the Popes, should write the following blasphemous comment on it : " The Catholic historian may well be excused in seeing the hand of God in the fact of three out of the four Patriarchs becoming at this period subject to the Saracen. With an ambitious patriarch of Constantinople, a mere puppet in the hands of emperors often worth- less and tyrannical, and with the other three patriarchs of Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem also subject to their sway, one cannot help feeling that, short of this calamitous subjugation of Christian bishops to Moslem Caliphs, nothing could have checked the growing pretensions of the Byzantine emperors and patriarchs in the ecclesiastical and spiritual orders, or have prevented the bishop of Constantinople from becoming Universal Patriarch in fact as well as in name. ... In a word, as a direct result of the Moslem con- quests, which can only be described as an 'act of God,' the power and THE SUCCESSORS OF HERACLIUS 277 The Emperor Heraclius died in February 641, leaving the Empire in sore straits. He left two sons, the elder of whom had been his colleague, and a younger one, Heraclonas, by a second wife, Martina, whose influence and counsel possibly explain the changed character of the old Emperor. She at once began an intrigue in favour of her son, and was supported by Pyrrhus the Patriarch and by the Monothelites. Constantine, the eldest son of Heraclius, was, according to a doubtful statement of Zonaras (a very late authority), an opponent of that view. The latter was successful in the struororle and mounted the throne, but died after a reign of only three months and a half, and it was suspected he had been poisoned by Martina. The issue now lay between Heraclonas and Heraclius the son of Constantine, but after a few months the party of the latter prevailed, and he mounted the throne in September 642, at the age of eleven, importance of the Oriental patriarchs has gone on decreasing from age to age since that period, till now their names are scarcely known" (Mann, //z'sf. of the Popes, i. 302). What would St. Gregory have had to say to one of his priests who should write thus of his own co-patriarchs, whom he treated as equals and wrote to so deferentially and kindly. The notion of attributing the fearful consequences to Christ's flock in half the Christian world which ensued from the Moslem conquest, to the act of God, is in itself a shameless statement. It takes us back to the views of another kind of God than ours (a kind of Avatar of Shiva) who was supposed to delight in the savagery perpetrated by the agents of Innocent the Third against the Albigenses, by the authors of the massacre of St. Bartholomew, or still more keenly by the blood-bath filled by the Latin Crusaders at Constantinople when the latter were on their way to rescue Jerusalem from the Saracens. To excuse the Almighty's action as having had in view merely the pre- vention of one of the Church's Patriarchs rather than another be- coming dominant in the Church is the ne plus ultra of bigoted wickedness, and makes us blush for our century. 278 THE END OF SAINT AUGUSTINE'S MISSION and took the name of Constans, or more probably Constantine. He is generally referred to as Constans the Second. His stepmother and her son, Heracionas, were banished ; the former had her tongue cut out, and the latter his nose slit, which shows that they were suspected of foul play towards Constantine. Their supporter, the patriarch Pyrrhus, fled. Let us now turn from the Empire to the Papacy. We have brought down its story to the death of Boniface the Fifth on the 25th October 625. A few days later his successor was duly nominated. This short interval has been explained by the his- torians of the Church as probably due to the fact that Isaac the Exarch was present at Rome at the time to give the necessary sanction to the election on behalf of the Empire. The new Pope was called Honorius, and belonged to a noble stock — his father, Petronius, having been styled consul, which at this time would seem to have been used as a title of honour. The Romans, in electing a person of this quality, probably thought they were reverting to the great days of Pope Gregory. He was clearly a person of very different quality to the Popes who intervened between Pope Gregory and himself, and deserves a larger notice. He is described by a con- temporary (Jonas, in his life of St. Bertulf of Bobbio) who had met him at Rome, as sagax animo, vigens consilio, doctrina clarens, dulcedine et humilitate pollens} The more official record ^ Migne, P.L. vol. Ixxxvii. p. 1063. POPE HONORIQS 279 of his reign in the Liber Pontificalis says he did many good things {iniilta bona fecit), inter alia, that he instructed his clergy (erudivit cleros). These phrases are again reflected in his epitaph, which shows the reputation he had among his contemporaries/ His principal intervention in poHtics was on behalf of the late Lombard King Adelwald, who had been deposed and superseded by Ariald, and he reproved certain bishops beyond the Po for taking the part of the usurper. In other letters he is found trying to settle a schism which had arisen at Aquileia, appointing a new Patriarch there instead of Fortunatus, who was apparently a supporter of the Three Chapters, and protesting against the interference of the President of Sardinia with clerical discipline in that island ; nominating a notary and a general to Naples and making business-Hke arrangements for the adminis- tering of the papal lands, etc. ; among other things he forbade the use of the pallium in the streets or in processions.^ ^ This epitaph is worth recording, for he was a much-slandered man : — " Sed bonus antistes dux plebis Honorius almus Reddidit ecclesiis membra revulsa piis Doctrinis monitisque suis de faccibus hostis Abstulit exactis jam peritura modis At tuus argento praesul construxit opimo Ornavitque fores, Petre beate tibi. Tu modo coelorum qua propter, janitor almae Fac tranquillam tui tempora cuncta greges." Rossi, Inscript. Christ, ii. la, p. 78. 2 Labbe, ed. 1885, vol. i. pp. 224-226. 2 30 THE END OF SAINT AUGUSTINFS MISSION In January 638 there was held the sixth council of Toledo, attended by all the bishops subject to the Visigoths and presided over by the four Metro- politans of Spain. At this council a cruel edict was passed supplementing a recent law which had been passed, expelling all Jews from Spain. By this new edict it was provided that every king on mounting the throne was to take an oath suppressing all Jews and putting in force against them all current ordinances on pain of anathema and maranatha before God. At the same council a letter was read from Pope Honorius exhorting the bishops to be more zealous for the faith and in putting down the wicked.^ This letter of the Pope was replied to by Braulio, Bishop of Saragossa, and there runs through the latter's phrases a sarcastic vein which is remarkable, and perhaps marks some resentment at the intervention of Honorius. It begins by saying that the Pope would be fulfilling the obligations of " the chair given him by God " in the very best way, when, with holy solicitude for all the Churches, and with shining light of doctrine, "he provided protection for the Church and punished those who divided the Lord's tunic with the sword of the word." It then goes on to say that the bishops of Spain, at the in- stigation of "their King" Chintila, the Pope's most clement son, were about to assemble together when the Pope's exhortation that they should do so reached them. Thev thought the lano;"uaa"e used 1 Jafife, 2038. SPANISH CHURCH IN THE SIXTH CENTURY 281 in the papal " decree" was rather hard upon them, as they had indeed not been altogether inactive in the cause of their duty. They therefore thought it right to let the Pope see what they had accom- plished, by sending him the decrees of their synods, so that " his eminent apostleship " {Apostolatus vestri apex) might judge for himself. This they did with the veneration which they owed to the Apostolic See. They knew that no deceit of the serpent could make any impression on the Rock of Peter, resting, as it did, on " the stability of Jesus Christ," and hence they were sure that that could not be true which false and silly rumours had set going, namely, that " by the decrees " {oraculis) of the venerable Roman Prince {Romani Principis) it had been permitted to baptized Jews to return to the superstitions of their religion/ By the bearers of this letter Chintila the King forwarded a covering [pallium) for the altar of St. Peter, on which was worked an inscription in the terms following : — " Discipulis cunctis Domini praelatus amore, Dignus apostolico primus honore coli Sancte, tuis, Petre mentis haec munera supplex Chintila rex offert, Pande salutis opem.^ ^ This letter is a very remarkable proof of the attitude adopted by the Spanish Church towards the Pope in the early seventh century, which was so entirely contrary to what has been argued by some aggressive champions of its claims in recent years. An attitude less consistent with a belief in either the supremacy of the Pope or his infallibility, at least as regards Spain, can hardly be conceived. We shall see presently how it was matched by the Church in France. ^ Mann, op. cit. i. 327, 329 ; Florez, Espana Sagrada, xxx. p. 348 ; De Rossi, Inscript, ii. 254 ; Grisar, Analecta, i. 87. 282 THE END OF SAINT AUGUSTINE'S MISSION A more far-reaching- result was attained by a letter written by Honorius in the year 630 to the Scois {genti Scottortmi), described as "a small com- munity living at the ends of the earth," urging that they should not think themselves wiser than the ancient and modern churches of Christ throughout the world, and maintain a computation of Easter contrary to that sanctioned by the pontifical synods of the whole world [neve contra paschales co7nptdos, et deer eta synodalmrn totitis orbis pontifictmi)} In consequence of this letter a Synod was summoned at Magh Lene, near Rahan, in the King's County, at which it was decided that the Fathers there assembled " should go as children to learn the wish of their parent," i.e. Rome. Thither they sent deputies accordingly, who, on their return, pointed out how the Roman practice in regard to Easter was followed everywhere.^ Whereupon the Scots of the south of Ireland, on the admonition of the Bishop (antistitis) of the Apostolic See, adopted the canonical method of keeping Easter.^ The most dramatic event in the reign of Pope Honorius which has made his name so famous ever since, was the part he took in the Monothelite controversy which has caused so much difficulty and trouble to the champions of infallibility. The question is too intricate to be discussed here, and I have remitted it to the Appendix. ^ Bede, ii. 19. ^ Migne, P.L. vol. Ixxxvii. p. 969. ^ Bede, iii. 3. POPE HONORIUS AS A BUILDER 283 Meanwhile I will devote a few paragraphs to another side of the Pope's career, in which he was very active and did much for the restoration of the churches in Rome, and the undoing of the terribly ruinous condition of the city, thus emulating the policy and doings of Popes Damasus and Symmachus. The Liber Pontificalis contains a long list of his munificent acts in this regard which must have made a considerable drain on the re- sources of the Papal Exchequer. These I propose to enumerate. He restored the church furniture at St. Peter's and covered the confessio or tomb of the Apostle there with fine silver weighing 187 lbs. He covered with plates of silver, weighing 975 lbs., the great central door of St. Peter's known as the janua regia major or mediana, and in later times argenlea. This was doubtless worked in relief, and must have been a precious object. The dedicatory poem, which is extant, speaks of the figures of St. Peter and St. Paul as occupying the centre, and says they were surrounded with plates of gold decorated with gems, while a purple veil hung in front which, when drawn aside, disclosed the mosaics inside. It was destroyed and appropriated by the Saracens in 846. An inscription in which it is referred to, styles the Pope Dux plcbis, and tells us he put an end to the Istrian schism in reg-ard to the Three Chapters.^ Honorius also presented two great candelabra {cereostati), each weighing 272 lbs., to ^ Gregorovius, i. 428, etc. ; De Rossi, Ins. Chr. ii. la, p. 78. 2 84 THE END OF SAINT AUGUSTINE'S MISSION the same shrine. He further covered the roof of St. Peter's with gilt bronze plates. These were re- moved from Hadrian's temple of Venus and Rome, which was that Emperor's finest building and the greatest temple in ancient Rome. These were pre- sented to the Pope by the Emperor Heraclius. At the same time sixteen great beams were also placed in St. Peter's. He further decorated with silver plates the confessio in the shrine or chapel of St. Andrew, which had been built by- Pope Symmachus near St. Peter's, and he similarly adorned the church of St. Apollinaris near the Porticus Palmata of the basilica of St. Peter. St. Apollinaris of Antioch, the alleged disciple of St. Peter, filled the place at Ravenna which St. Peter did at Rome, and was the patron saint of the city. The addition of the saint to the Roman calendar by the Pope in this latter instance was doubtless meant to conciliate the Exarch and the Archbishop of Ravenna, to whose see Apollinaris, it was said, had been appointed by St. Peter. Honorius further decided that every Sunday a laetania or proces- sion should proceed from this church to that of St. Peter. In the Forum, at or near the Tria Fata, Honorius built the basilica of St. Hadrian, dedicated to a martyr of Nicomedia, who died in 302. Lanciani considers that it was once the ''aula" of the Roman Senate (the Curia), transformed into a Christian basilica.^ This ^ Giegorovius, p. 437, note 28. POPE HONORIUS AS A BUILDER 285 was the second church built in the Forum, the first one having been that of SS. Cosmas and Damian. Gregorovius has a graphic passage in regard to this church. He says : "A fire had destroyed the Curia in the time of Carinus ; the palace had, how- ever, been rebuilt by Diocletian, and to it belonged the Secritarium Secretus, restored in 412 by Epiphanius, the City Prefect. This imposing pile of buildings still endured in its main outlines, and every Rom.an was familiar with their history and significance. The ancient Hall of Council was known in the mouths of the people as the Curia or Senatus. Here round the Altar of Victory had been fought the latest struggle between the old and new religions, and here, under the Gothic rule, the remnant of the most revered institution of the Empire had assembled in parliament. The historic halls had, however, remained empty and forsaken for more than fifty years, and successive plunderings had robbed them of their costly decora- tions." Hadrian's basilica "arose in one of the chambers of the Curia, and the sole fragment of the ancient palace exists in the church dedicated to the Eastern saint." ^ Honorius further restored the church of the Four Crowned Saints on the Caslian, which had existed as a titular church in the time of Gregory the Great. "The building of Honorius has un- fortunately disappeared in successive alterations. ^ Gregorovius, op, cit. i. ch. iv. 3. 286 THE END OF SAINT AUGUSTINE'S MISSION The mediaeval fortress-like walls, however, still remain, and in conjunction with the ruins of the Aqua Claudia and the massive circular church of St. Stephen, impart a striking character to the Cselian hill."^ Honorius also rebuilt the church of St. Severinus, whose ruins were discovered in 1883, a mile and a half from Tivoli, and restored the cemetery of SS. Marcellinus and Peter in the Via Laricana. St. Lucia in Silice, on the Carinae, says the same author, was so called from a street paved with polygonal blocks of basalt. It derived its name of in Silice from the fact that it was made on the site of the ancient Clivus Suburranus, where was situ- ated the temple of Juno Lucina. It was also called Orphea, from the old fountain " Lacus Orphei " mentioned by Martial^ close by. It was rebuilt by Honorius. He also built the church of St. Cyriacus the martyr, seven miles from Rome, on the Ostian Way, where the saint with his companions, Largus, Smaragdus, etc., were burnt. Fragments of it alone remain. Honorius also rebuilt from its foundations the famous basilica of St. Agnes, the child martyr, whose story is so naive and beautiful. This church was built on the family estate of the Saint outside the Porta Nomentana, three miles from Rome, and, Gregorovius says, it still remains essentially a work of this Pope, and the finest memorial of his reign. It is situated far below the level of the ^ Gregorovius, op. cit. i. p. 431. - i. 431 and 432, note 33. POPE HONORIUS AS A BUILDER 287 ground, and a descent of forty-seven steps leads to the entrance. "The basihca though small is of graceful proportions, and does honour to the architecture of the period. It possesses two rows of columns with Roman arches, one over the other, the higher forming an upper church. The beautiful workmanship and the material of Phrygian marble prove the columns to be the remains of some ancient building." According to the Liber Ponti- ficalis, the Pope decorated the tomb of the saint with silver weighing 252 lbs., and over it he placed a ciborium or tabernacle of gilt bronze of great size, and added three dishes [gavatas) of gold, each weighing a pound. This tabernacle has disappeared, but the mosaics in the tribune still exist, and are figured by De Rossi in his great work. They form a memorial to the Pope and a witness to the decline of art. "The figures re- presented are but three, and notwithstanding the absence of individuality and life possess a certain naive grace. In the middle stands St. Agnes crowned with the nimbus, an attenuated fieure of Byzantine character, her face devoid of light and shade, and her limbs draped in a richly embroidered Oriental mantle. The hand of God the Father stretches forth to place the crown on her head ; at her feet lies the sword of the executioner ; flames are represented at each side. On the right, Honorius presents her with a model of the basilica ; on the left stands another bishop, either Symmachus or Sylvester, holding a book. Each Pope wears a 288 THE END OF SAINT AUGUSTINE'S MISSION chestnut-brown planeta or chasuble and a white palHum, while their shaven heads are uncrowned by any halo. The heads of the two Popes are modern." Below the mosaics are some ancient verses, "among the best of their period," says Gregorovius, and more artistic than the picture which they extol. Some of my readers may like to have a specimen of not ungraceful seventh- century Latin. It runs thus : — " Aurea concisis surgit pictura metallis, Et complexa simul clauditur ipsa dies. Fontibus e niveis credas aurora subire Correptas nubes, roribus arva rigans. Vel qualem inter sidera lucem proferet Irim. Purpureusque pavo ipse colore nitens. Qui potuit noctis, vel lucis reddere finem Martyrum e bustis hinc reppulit ille chaos. Sursum versa nutu, quod cunctis cernitur uno. Praesul Honorius haec vota dicata dedit, Vestibus et factis signantur illius era, Lucet et aspectu lucida corde gerens." ^ The Liber Pontificalis attributes to Honorius the restoration of the church of St. Pancras, the boy martyr who was a contemporary of St. Agnes and who became so popular. One of the gates of Rome, the Aurelian or Janiculan gate, was renamed after him, and it was the fashion among the Romans to pledge their most solemn oaths at the grave of St. Pancras. I have mentioned how one of the earliest churches erected by St. Augustine in Enofland was dedicated to him. " Honorius found the old basilica of St. Pancras at Rome in a state of ^ Gregorovius, i. 432. POPE HONORIUS 289 decay, and restored it in 638. An inscription at the foot of the mosaic sets forth the particulars of its erection. The mosaic, however, has been destroyed, and in the later transformation of the church the outlines of the earlier building have irretrievably perished."^ The Liber Pontificalis tells us the Pope decorated the tomb of the saint with silver weighing 120 lbs., and also gave the church a silver ciborium weighing 187 lbs., with 5 silver arches {arci), each weighing 15 lbs., and three golden candlesticks, each weighing a pound, etc. etc. Honorius also founded a monastery in his own house near the Lateran, in honour of the Apostles Andrew and Bartholomew, which bore his name, and which he endowed with lands and other gifts.^ In the same work we are told that he built some mills near the city walls close to the aqueduct of Trajan, which carried water from the Sabbatine lake to the city. Gregorovius adds that this confirms the supposition that Belisarius had restored the aqueduct of Trajan, While this lordly list of buildings in and near Rome prove how active Honorius was in adorning the ruined city, he was also busy elsewhere ; thus the Liber Pontificalis tells us he ordained 13 priests, II deacons, and 81 bishops. He died on the 12th October 638, and was buried at St. Peter's. On the death of Pope Honorius he was sue- 1 Gregorovius, loc. cit. 2 _^/^^^ Pontificalis, Ixxii. 19 290 THE END OF SAINT AUGUSTINE^S MISSION ceeded after a considerable interval by Severinus, a Roman, the son of Labienus or Abienus. Severinus, according to Jaffe, was consecrated on 28th May 640. It has been argued that the lapse of a year and a half which occurred between the death of Honorius and the consecration of his successor was due to the latter's hesitation in accepting the Ectkesis which had been put together and adopted by the Eastern Church as an eirenicon with the Monophysites and others. Of this I can find no direct evidence. The very short career of Severinus was an exceedingly troubled one. During the vacancy of the see, Maurice, commander of the troops at Rome, who had no money with which to pay his clamorous and turbulent soldiery, determined to plunder the vestiarium of the Lateran Palace, containing the various treasures presented by the faithful, the funds put aside for rescuing prisoners and relieving the poor, and, as was believed, large hoards accumulated by Honorius, whose profuse expenditure on buildings lent colour to the story. Maurice made furious appeals to the soldiers and the mob to seize and divide these treasures. The papal officials and servants de- fended their charge for three days, when Maurice by the advice of the magistrates put the Imperial seal on the treasures and invited the Exarch Isaac to go and take possession of them. Isaac went, drove the principal clergy {primates ecclesiae) out of the city, and then proceeded for eight days to plunder POPE JOHN THE FOURTH 291 the famous palace. Of the proceeds he kept a part for himself, sent a third to the Emperor, and gave the rest to the troops. He professed to have gone to Rome to sanction the appointment of Severinus, who was at once consecrated, but died two months and six days later. The Liber Pontificalis, from which these facts are gleaned, tells us that that Pope restored the mosaics on the apse of St. Peter's which had decayed. He favoured the clergy and increased their stipends. He was pious, gentle, and a lover of the poor. The Liber Diurnus, without giving any details, merely names him among the opponents of the Monothelites ; while the Libellus Synodicus, which has been quoted in the same behalf, was not written till the end of the ninth century. A much greater authority, the Liber Pontificalis, says nothing about it. He was buried at St. Peter's. Severinus was succeeded as Pope by John, a native of Dalmatia, whose father was called Venantius, styled Scholasticus. Bede quotes a letter of John written after his election but before his consecration {ciun adJuic esset elechts in ponti- Jicatunt) to the Scots in regard to the time of keeping Easter, and to Pelagianism, and in which he is styled Johannes diaconus et in Dei nomine electus} The future Pope, who was still a deacon, writes conjointly with Hilary the Archipresbyter, John the Primicerius, and John the Consiliarius, the holders of which offices acted as viceregents during ^ Bede, ii. 19. 292 THE END OF SAINT AUGUSTINE'S MISSION the interregnum between one Pope and another. John was ordained 25th December 640. We are told he sent large sums by Martin the Abbot to distribute among the people of Dalmatia and I stria who had suffered in the recent attacks of the Slavs. He added a fourth oratory (dedicated to the martyrs Venantius, Anastasius, Maurus, etc.) to the Lateran Baptistery, for which relics were sent for from Dalmatia and I stria. Venantius had been a bishop and was the national saint of Dalmatia. " The still existing mosaics of the time of John the Fourth," says Gregorovius, " in the coarseness of their style betray how far painting had fallen from the traditions of antiquity. ... In this oratory the apocalyptic representations of the four Evan- gelists are enclosed in square frames on the triumphal arch ; at each side stand four saints ; in the tribune is a rough half-length portrait of Christ, between two angels and surrounded by clouds. His right hand raised. Below is a series of nine figures. The Virgin, in dark blue draperies, in the middle, with her arms uplifted in prayer, after the manner of the paintings in the Catacombs. Peter and Paul stand one on each side, the latter holding a book instead of the sword with which later art has endowed him ; Peter bears not only the two keys, but also the pilgrim staff with the cross, like the aged Baptist beside him. The bishops Venantius and Domnios follow ; on the left, the builder of the oratory carries the model of a church. On the right, another figure, probably POPE THEODORE 293 Pope Theodore, who finished the building, com- pletes the series. Three couplets are written in one line underneath."^ Pope John presented his oratory with two arches {arci), each weighing- 15 lbs. ; and many silver dishes, etc. It will be noted that in the Liber Pontijicalis not a word is said about his having taken any steps in regard to the Ecthesis issued by the Emperor, or in summoning a synod to denounce it, as was afterwards reported. No Acts of such a synod exist, and the statement depends on Theophanes (758-817) who wrote more than a century later, and whose account of the events at this time are described as inaccurate by Father Mann himself, who quotes him in regard to the synod. The date itself is eight years wrong. The fact that it is not mentioned in the Liber Pontijicalis, which is careful in referring to such meetings, seems to prove that no such synod was ever held. The letters that John is alleged to have written on the subject to Heraclius and Constantine are not extant, and their existence depends on the most suspicious authority of Maximus, whose career, as we shall see, was a very sinister one, notwithstanding that he is numbered among the saints, and who is hardly likely to have had access to them even if they existed, for he was 2i persona ingratissima at Constantinople. John the Fourth was buried at St. Peter's on the 14th October 642. Theodore, who succeeded him, was a Greek, and the son of Theodore, a bishop of Jerusalem. ^ Gregorovius, i. 442 and 446, note 6. 294 THE END OF SAINT AUGUSTINE'S MISSION The appointment of a Greek, and the son of a Greek bishop, as Pope at this time is very curious. It is no less curious that he should have been accepted for the post by the Emperor, since he was strongly opposed to the Imperial Edict known as the Ectkesis, and was a close friend of Sophronius and Maximus, the two aggressive opponents of Monothelism. Perhaps his views had hitherto been discreetly concealed. He was a lover of the poor, says the Liber Poiitificalis, kindly towards everybody and very charitable. In his time Maurice, who had commanded the troops at Rome, and had incited them to sack the city, as we have seen, rebelled against the patrician Isaac, who was then Exarch of Ravenna, collected troops from all sides and made them swear that none of them would in future obey Isaac. The latter sent Donus, the Magister militum, and his sacellarius or treasurer, to Rome with an army, whereupon all the judges and the soldiers who had sworn allegi- ance to Maurice deserted him and joined Donus, Maurice fled, but was seized and sent to Ravenna, and there decapitated, and his head was exhibited on a stake. Isaac soon after died, and Theodore the patrician was appointed Exarch in his place. The Patriarch of Constantinople, Pyrrhus, had apparently been implicated in the murder of Con- stantine,^ and had in consequence been expelled from the city. Although he had not been de- posed canonically, Paul, a strong Monothelite ^ Theophanes, ad an. 62 1 . EMPEROR CONSTANS II. AND THE TYPUS 295 and supporter of the Edhesis, was appointed in his place. Meanwhile Pyrrhus, doubtless with the object of getting assistance in order to re- cover his Patriarchate from the Latin Church, which under the teaching of Maximus opposed Monothelism, abandoned his former attitude and became "orthodox" in the sense in which Pope Theodore interpreted orthodoxy. Pyrrhus went to Rome, where he was effusively welcomed and given a seat at the services near the altar by the Pope, who had previously denounced him and had even pressed the Emperor to take canonical proceedings against him. Thence he went to Ravenna, where this "Vicar of Bray" found it convenient to abjure his recent alleged conversion which had brought him the patronage of the Pope and once more affirmed his belief in " a single will." According to Theophanes (a very orthodox person who suffered greatly for the faith, but who lived a hundred and fifty years after these events), the fierce Pope excommunicated his recent friend in a way which was practised in the East and was therefore familiar to Theodore. Standing by St. Peter's tomb, he dropped a portion of "Christ's blood" from the chalice into the ink, with which he wrote a sentence of excommunication and deposition against Pyrrhus and his associates. This shock- ing adjunct to the pronouncement of anathema was known to Theodore's countrymen the Greeks. Pyrrhus returned to Constantinople, and even- 296 THE END OF SAINT AUGUSTINE S MISSION tually on the death of Paul was restored to his Patriarchate. Meanwhile the figrht about the single will continued, and the Christian world was divided into two sections — the Greeks (who were skilled as con- troversialists), for the most part under the leadership of Paul, Patriarch of Constantinople, and Sergius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, supported the single will ; while the Latins both in Africa and Italy took the other side, which was vigorously championed by the Pope, who had probably been a disciple of Sophronius, the former Patriarch of Jerusalem, for he came from there. His policy we can hardly doubt was emphasised by the growing jealousies between the bishops of Old Rome and New Rome. To the appeal of Theodore, Paul replied, affirming his complete adherence to the notion of a single will, adding (what was doubtless very distasteful to the Pope) a reminder not only of the views of the Fathers, but more especially of those of his prede- cessor Honorius, and Theodore went to the length of excommunicatinc;' his brother Patriarch in regard to an issue upon which there never had been an authoritative decision, and on which his own predecessor Honorius agreed with Paul. Meanwhile the Emperor Constans made a fresh effort to pacify the Christian world, which was being torn in twain by an abstract issue which very fev/ people could even understand. Apparently at the instance of Paul, the Ecthesis, which was still hung on the public buildings at Constantinople, THE rUBLIC WORKS OF POPE HONORIUS 297 was withdrawn, and in its place a fresh pronounce- ment was issued known as the Type, probably composed by Paul, in which a perfectly neutral attitude was taken. In this document it was ordered that no one should speak either of one will or of two, or of one energy or of two. The whole matter was remitted to oblivion, and the condition of things which existed before the feud was to be maintained as it would have been if no dispute had arisen.^ In case of a bishop or clerk, disobedience to the Edict was to be punished by deposition, of a monk by ex- communication, of a public officer in civil or military service by loss of office, in that of a private person of obscure position by corporal punishment and banishment for life.^ As Professor Bury tersely says : " The Type deemed the one doctrine at least as o-ood as the other, while the bigoted orthodox adherents deemed the Laodicean injunction of neutrality no less to be reprobated than a heretical injunction of Monothelism," Amonor his works at Rome Theodore built the Church of St. Valentinus on the Via Flaminia, near the Milvian bridge, to which he gave many gifts. It is now destroyed. He also built the oratory of St. Sebastian in the Lateran Palace, and that of St. Euplus the Martyr, outside the Ostian Gate, near the pyramid of Cestius, probably afterwards transformed into the church of St. Salvatore. He further removed the bodies of the ^ Bury, Hisf. of the Later Roman Efiipire, ii. 293. ^ Mansi, x. 1029 and 1031. 298 THE END OF SAINT AUGUSTINE^S MISSION martyrs Primus and Felicianus, who had been buried in the Via Numentana, and placed them in the church of Stephen the Proto- Martyr. To this he also made presents — inter alia, three ^o\A gavatas or dishes, a silver panel or table to be placed before the "confessio," and two silver arches {arci). He died on the 31st of May 649, and was buried at St. Peter's. Theodore was succeeded as Pope by Martin from Todi (Tudertina), in Umbria, a very strong opponent of Monothelism, who has become famous from the heroic tenacity with which he maintained his views. It is as difficult to understand how Martin came to have his appointment confirmed as it is to explain the same thing in the case of Theodore, unless the authorities were indifferent to their religious views so long as they obeyed the laws of the state. Muratori's explanation is a dangerous one, namely, that Martin was, in fact, consecrated on Sunday, 5th July 649, without the Imperial confirmation. This is supported by the accusations of the Greeks that he secured the Episcopate irregularite^'' et sine lege episcopatum snb fids set. There can be no doubt whatever that at this time the Emperor's consent and confirmation were necessary to the validity and legality of a Pope's election. This very important fact has been forgotten by the champions of Martin. There was another reason why the Imperial authorities should resent the doings of the Pope and his chief adviser POPE MARTIN THE FIRST 299 Maximus, generally styled St, Maximus, I will describe it in the words of a quite recent Roman Catholic historian of the Church in Africa, Dom H. Leclercq, who, speaking of Maximus, quotes M. Diehl as follows : " Parmi les paroles en effet que pronon- cait le moine, quelques-unes etaient singulierement graves : non seulement il declarait nettement aux familiers du prince qui gouvernait a Byzance, que proteger ou meme tolerer I'heresie etait un scandale veritable et une offense a Dieu ; mais il lui arrivait de dire que, tant que regneraient Heraclius et sa race, le seigneur demeurerait hostile a I'empire romain,^ et on I'accusait d'user de son influence pour detourner de leur devoir d'obeissance les fonctionnaires publics. En tout cas, il entretenait en Afrique le mecon- tentement qu'avait cree le conflit religieuse, et il exasperait les tendances deja trop manifestes a resister au despotisme imperial."^ In plain words, Maximus preached and taught treason against the Empire. This was emphasised by the wording of the addresses sent to the Emperor by the provincial synods of Africa, of whose terms Dom Leclercq says : " Assurement rien n etait plus legitime, mais rien aussi n'^tait plus imprudent." The result was that in 646 the Exarch of Africa, the Patrician Gregory, under the inspiration of these theologians, raised the standard of rebellion. "On sait," remarks the same writer, "que Gregoire ^tait intimement \i6 a I'abbe Maxime, fort populaire a ce titre dans les Eglises ' See Migne, F.G. xc. col. iii. - Op. cit. ii. 303 and 304. 300 THE END OF SAINT AUGUSTINE'S MISSION Africaines et dans le peuple a ce titre dans les Eglises Africaines et dans le peuple et assez bien vu par le pape/ qui aurait, a't on dit, fait mander a I'exarque qu'il pouvait en surete de conscience se soulever contre le basileus ; Dieu lui meme approuvant la re- voke et lui assurant le succes. L'Abbe Maxime, qui dut etre pressenti sur cette grave decision, fit un reve d'une clarte qui ne laissait rien a desirer. II vit des choeurs d'anges planant dans le ciel du cote de rOrient et du Cote de I'Occident ; les premiers criaient ' Victoire a Constantin Auguste,' les autres repondaient ' Victoire a Gregoire Auguste,' mais les premiers se fatiguerent et bientot on n'entendit plus que les voix qui acclamaient le patrice." ^ Can it be wondered that these two "saints," one an irregularly elected Pope who had no legal status, and the other a fanatical monk, who had no authority whatever to define dogmas, who had openly and daringly preached and encouraged treason, should, like the leaders of the Pilgrimage of Grace, or the rebels and traitors who tried to pose as martyrs and saints in Queen Elizabeth's reign, have been visited with dire punishment by the civil authorities. The Pope, without waiting for an indispensable legal sanction (which was needed if he was to act de jure), and apparently under the advice of Maximus, who was then at Rome, called a synod of 105 bishops at the Lateran, over all the five regular sittings of which he presided. The first sitting was * Migne, P.G. xc. col. in. ^ Op. cit. p. 207. POPE MARTIN THE FIRST 301 held on 5th October 649, This synod was a purely local Latin synod, and attended by only Italian bishops, and by those from the islands, with a few from Africa. There were also present many pres- byters and other clergy. At this synod five prelates were condemned by name as Monothelites, namely, Theodore of Pharan, Cyrus of Alexandria, Sergius, Pyrrhus, and Paul of Constantinople, three of whom were dead, one of whom, Paul, the Patriarch of Con- stantinople, had written to Pope Theodore to say he followed the doctrine of Honorius, and yet Honorius was not apparently mentioned at this Roman synod, where the silence imposed by the Type was so much denounced. Why was not Martin's pre- decessor named, and why were the rest alone ana- thematised.-* Not only were the Monothelite prelates anathematised, but the two pronouncements of the Emperors, the Ecthesis and the Typus, were styled impious and declared inoperative, notwithstanding that the latter contained no decision on doctrine, but only insisted that the burning question on which there had been no authoritative pronouncement should not be publicly discussed. The Popein signing the Acts of the synod, which was afterwards known as the First Lateran, claimed no dominating voice, and styled himself, " I, Martin, by the grace of God, Bishop of the Holy and Apostolic Church of Rome." After the Council, however, he went on to nominate Bishop John of Philadelphia as his vicar in the East, and to supervise the Patriarchates of Jerusalem and Antioch, where he had no conceivable right to inter- 302 THE END OF SAINT AUGUSTINE'S MISSION vene, for no General Council had deposed their legal heads. What would Pope Gregory the Great have said to such a piece of audacity ? At the Council, and in subsequent letters sent to various churches, it was urged (doubtless in order to conciliate the Emperor), that he had been deceived and cajoled by the Exarch Paul. This statement Constans speedily corrected. When he heard what had happened, and that a Pope whose appointment had not received the Imperial sanction had summoned a synod without his knowledge and approval, at which an Imperial Edict had been spoken of in oppro- brious terms and denounced, he at once acted. He sent the Chamberlain Olympius to replace the dead Exarch at Ravenna, with orders to cause all the clergy and "proprietors" to sign the Type and to seize the Pope. We do not know what really happened in consequence, but Olympius failed to carry out the Imperial orders, and was afterwards charged with makin^ himself a treasonable accom- plice of the Pope. He took his army away to Sicily to oppose the Saracens there, and was killed. His place as Exarch was taken by another type of man, namely, Theodore, styled Calliopas, who entered Rome with Theodore the Chamberlain and an army on 15th June 653. He informed the clergy who gathered round the Pope, that the latter had been illegally appointed, that he was not fit to be Pope, and that another would be appointed in his place. After some resistance Martin agreed to leave Rome, and asked that some of his clergy POPE MARTIN THE FIRST 303 might accompany him. A few days later he was hurried away in a boat to Portus, and thence to Misenum. Eventually, after a tedious voyage, he reached Constantinople on the 17th September 654, and after three months' imprisonment he was brouofht before the Prsefect Troilus to be tried. Here, again, it was not his views on religion that were charged against him, but his political intrigues. He wished to protest against the " Type " being sent to Rome, but was reminded by the judge that it was not religion, but treason, for which he was being tried. "We, too," he added, "are Romans and Christians, and orthodox." The proceedings were conducted by the sacel/arms, or Count of the sacred patrimony. The Emperor was sitting in an adjoining room whence the latter came out and said, "Thou hast fought against the Emperor, what hast thou to hope ? Thou hast abandoned God, and He has abandoned thee." ^ It is said that his life was spared at the instance of his old opponent Paul, the Patriarch of Constantinople, and on the 26th March 655 he was exiled to Cherson in the Crimea, and there he died on 6th September 655, and was buried in the Church of the Viro-in at Blacharnae, near Cherson, now called Eupatoria. He was afterwards deemed a saint and martyr, his name-day being the 12th November. His relics are said to have been deposited in the Church of SS. Sylvester and Martin of Tours. Two monks named Theodosius and Theodorus, ^ Bury, Hist. Later Rom. Emp. ii. 295. 304 THE END OF SAINT AUGUSTINKS MISSION writincr about 668, describe havinor seen the tomb of St. Martin at Blacharnct, and having been told by one of his companions of the many miracles performed there. They were given some reHcs of him among them, — one of the campagi or papal slippers which I described in the previous volume on St. Gregory.^ In a letter of Pope Gregory the Second (Labbe, vi.), mention is made of the miracles of healing performed at his tomb." It has served the purpose of later partisans to try and divert the issue to another conclusion, but the facts are quite plain. As to the story told about his cruel treatment by Calliopas and his soldiers, it rests almost entirely on the letters of the Pope himself, which in such a case are not safe evidence, and of Anastasius, who wrote a long time after. It will be well to confront them with a much more neutral document. This is how the Liber Pontificalis, which is otherwise very full about St. Martin, describes his latter days : Deinde directus est ab imperatore Theodortis exarchus, qui cognomento CaHopas, ami Theodoi'imi iniperiale ctibiculariwn, qui et PelbtriJts dicebatur, cum jussiones. Et tollejites smtctissimuni Martinum Papam de Ecclesia Salvatoris, qui et Constan- tiniana appellatur, perduxerunt Constantinopolim ; et nee sic eis adquievit. Deinde directtis est sepius dictus sanctissinms vir in exilio {in loco), qui dicitzii' Cersona, et ibidem, ttt dec placuit {vitam finivit) in pace ChiHsti Confessor {et sepultus in basilica Sanctae ^ op. cit. p. 58. ^ Mann, History of the Popes, i. 403. POPE MARTIN THE FIRST 305 Mariae semper virginis.) Qui ct niulta 77iirabilia operatur tisqite in hodiernuiii diem} A few supplementary words are necessary about another matter which has been largely overlooked. In all this story one thing is perfectly plain, and in regard to it the contemporary documents are clear. The Pope was tried and deposed, not for his religious views, but for usurping the Papacy without getting the confirmation of the Emperor, and on the charge, true or false, of having intrigued against the Crown. In one of his letters Martin complains of the treatment he had received from the Roman clergy after his condemnation, which makes it very pro- bable that they had complied with the order of Calliopas, and had actually deposed the Pope on the ground of his irregular appointment. Martin dilates in his letter on the want of thought and compassion among his old friends, who seemed not to care whether he was dead or alive, and wonders most of all at the conduct of the clergy of "the Most Holy Church of St. Peter" for their utter neglect of him. He then proceeds to invoke the intercession of St. Peter to strengthen the faith, and especially, he adds, the pastor who is said now to preside over them. This was no doubt Eugenius the Fourth, who occurs after him in the list of Popes. Martin had some time previously entered a protest against another being put in his place, which, he says, "had never yet been done, and I ^ Op. cit.^ sub -voce " Martinus I." 20 3o6 THE END OF SAINT AUGUSTINE'S MISSION hope will never be done, since in the absence of the Pontiff, the archdeacon, the arch-presbyter, and the primicerius represent him." There can be no doubt whatever that the quite irregularly elected Martin (styled saint and martyr) was superseded as Pope in his own lifetime by Eugenius, who must have been duly elected by the clergy and people of Rome and confirmed by the Emperor. Would this have happened if he had been an innocent saint and martyr ? It thus came about that for more than a year there were two Popes living, one of them who had been deposed by the Emperor, largely on account of his irregular election, and the other who had been nominated by the same Emperor in his place. Both of them were elected, and both consecrated, and both are treated not only as legitimate Popes, but also as saints. This is assuredly a very awk- ward condition of things. If Martin was not legally and canonically deposed by the joint action of the Emperor and the Roman clergy, then his successor was not canonically or legally elected, and was no Pope at all. If he was legally and canoni- cally deposed, because he had never been a true Pope, then all the acts of his papacy, including the decrees of his Roman synod, are invalid and void. The fact of Martin's death occurring after Eugenius had sat on the papal throne for some time would not cure the irregularity of the latter's original election, and of his having been up to that time an illegitimate Pope. The MARTIN'S LETTER TO AMANDUS 307 question has become a serious and important one, since all the real Popes have been pronounced to be infallible. Were either of the two Popes, Martin and his successor, legitimate and real Popes ? When the synod was ended, Martin wrote letters to various bishops in the Western world informing them of its decisions. Among the letters the only ones which immediately interest us are those written to the Prankish bishops. In his letter to Amandus, Bishop of Maestrich, in Austrasia, known as St. Amandus, the Pope calls his own synod concilium generate , which was an entire misnomer, since it was only a local provincial synod. It also failed in an essential factor of a true council at that time in that it had not been summoned by the Emperor. The bishop had written to Martin complaining of the difficulties of his position and the vices of his clergy, and asking to be allowed to retire ; he also asked for some relics from Rome and some books from the Pope's library. The Pope in his reply encouraged him to remain where he was, and to continue his efforts to maintain discipline, and he also sent him the Acts, etc., of the Roman synod; bade him summon a synod of his own for the acceptance of its decrees, and asked him to persuade the Austrasian King "to nominate bishops who might first go to Rome, and thence pass on as a legation from the Pope to the Emperor, carrying with them the assent of their Church to the Lateran decrees." Martin sent him some relics, but in re- gard to the books he wanted, he said the library at 308 THE END OF SAINT AUGUSTINE'S MISSION Rome was already exhausted and there was no time to make copies/ We are also told by St. Audoenus (St. Ouen) of Rouen in his life of St. Eligius of Noyon that the Acts of Martin's Roman Council had also been sent to Chlovis the Second, King of Neustria and Burgundy. We must now say a few words about the state of Gaul at this time. We have seen how in 613 Chlothaire the Second reunited the Prankish realm. He was then thirty years of age, and was master of the whole of Gaul from the Pyrenees to the Rhine, while the land beyond as far as the Elbe was tributary. On the loth October 614, a Council attended by seventy-nine bishops met at Paris, where certain important Acts were passed, which were approved by the King with some notable alterations. It had been proposed to enact that the freedom of the election of bishops from either durance or bribery as a condition of their legitimacy should be affirmed, but this clause was struck out, and in substitution it was declared that if a person selected for a bishopric was worthy he was to be consecrated by order of the King, while if any of the courtiers were selected it must be because of his personal merits or his learning.^ The authority of the ecclesiastical courts was extended. The King undertook not to protect any clerk against his bishop, and to respect the wills of private persons in favour of the Church. After this Synod, things in Gaul ^ Ep.'\\., D. of C. B.m.Zi^l. 2 Hist, de France^ Lavisse, ii. 155 and 221. DIVISIONS OF KINGDOM OF CHLOTHAIRE 309 improved somewhat. It will be noted that in the Acts of this Paris Council there is not the slightest reference to Rome. The King was everywhere. Meanwhile, the external political unity of the State really disguised differences incapable of lasting solidarity. There were three great communities united under Chlothaire — Austrasia, Burgundy, and "Neuster," as it was then called (it was presently known as Neustria). Over each of these Chlothaire placed a great officer of State called a Mayor of the Palace or Major Domo. Landri superintended Neustria, Radon Austrasia, and Warnachar Burgundy. Meanwhile, Aquitaine was a common prey of the rest, and was ready to revolt.^ Of the three orgeat divisions Austrasia was the most restive and difficult to govern. It had had a sovereign of its own since 561. In 623 Chlothaire sent his young son, Dagobert, to rule the country from the Ardennes to " the Faucilles," but neither the prince nor his people were satisfied with this truncated territory, and in 626 Chlothaire was obliged to reconstitute the ancient Austrasia in all its former extent, including Champagne. In the name of Dagobert two remarkable men exercised jurisdiction — one of them, Pepin, who succeeded Radon ; and secondly, Arnulf, the Bishop of Metz. While still a layman the latter married, and his son Chlodoald succeeded him in his bishopric. It was in 612 that Arnulf, being then a layman, went through all the gamut of the ecclesiastical orders 1 lb. ii. 156. 3IO THE END OF SAINT AUGUSTINE'S MISSION in one day, and thus slipped into the See of Metz. It was Pepin and Arnulf who, as we saw, com- bined together and destroyed Queen Brunichildis. In 627 Arnulf retired into a monastery. He died in 641 and was styled a Saint. His place was taken as joint-councillor of Dagobert by Cunibert, Bishop of Cologne. Arnulfs second son, Ansegisl (who later (when the legend of Troy was revived) was styled Anchises), married a daughter of Pepin. She was called in later times Begga, and from them sprang the Carlovingian royal house of France. In Burgundy, after some disturbances, Chlothaire granted the not very tractable people an assembly distinct from the Neustrians and Austrasians. In 627 Warnachar, the Mayor of the Palace, died. His son Godin tried to usurp the position and to treat it as hereditary, but the King had him put to death ; whereupon the Burgundians declared that they needed no more Mayors of the Palace, but preferred to be ruled directly by the King. Chlothaire died on the i8th October 629, and was succeeded by his son Dagobert the First, to whom we shall revert presently.^ The state of the Church in Gaul was getting worse daily. There was no external control and no discipline, and when the great Church appoint- ments were not sold by the kings they were without scruple used as prizes to reward the counts and other grandees, who made use of them as sources of power and of income and little else. The popular ^ Hist, de France, ii. 157, 158. THE CHURCH IN GAUL IN 7TH CENTURY 3 1 1 election, instead of curing matters, only gave greater influence to the power of the purse. Thus in 629 the people of Cahors elected a powerful courtier named Didier as their bishop. He was the brother of the late bishop, who had been assassinated. He himself had been Governor of Marseilles and Treasurer of the Palace. Dagobert excused himself for making this appointment on the ground that it was necessary to get such a powerful person away from the Court. He nevertheless continued his intrigues. Arnulf, the Mayor of the Palace (as we have seen), became Bishop of Metz. Bonitus, Bishop of Clermont, had been an official of a Count of Marseilles; Bodegisl, Bishopof Mans, was formerly a Mayor of the Palace. It will be seen that in this fashion the Episcopate had become very largely laicised, and its members had not the qualifications of training, character, or learning suitable for such an office, while there was no general control, discipline, or superintendence such as Pope Gregory had tried to introduce.^ It is perfectly plain that the Church in France had become disintegrated and secularised, and had sunk to a terribly low level, both morally and mentally. The Pope was a mere distant figure- head, having no appreciable influence there, except perhaps at Aries, to whose bishops, the ancient Vicars of the Papacy in Gaul, we still read of occasional and sporadic missions, while it is pretty certain that the Patrimony of St. Peter, which was limited to the valley of the Rhone, still remained intact. ^ lb. ii. 221. 3 1 2 THE END OF SAINT AUGUSTINE'S MISSION In Spain things were drifting in another direction. There was no lack of zeal. In fact, zeal was red-hot and fiery there, and the Bishops had become very largely the arbiters of the country's fortunes. Meanwhile, the persecution of the Jews was pursued with characteristic cruelty, and the crushino- of men's minds into one level type of orthodoxy based upon dogmas outside the teaching of the Bible and beyond human power to decide, apart from the inspired Book, became the rule. Thus early did Spain assume the role which it has pursued throughout its history, and which in much later times produced the Dominicans and the Jesuits, with their aims and methods, and which made schism in the eyes of the Church the one unpardonable crime. We carried the story of the Visigothic Kings down to the death of Sisebut in 621.^ He was the first Visio-othic sovereio-n who was also a man of letters, and it proved an almost unique accomplish- ment among his class. His correspondence with Csesarius, the governor of the Byzantine posses- sions in the peninsula, is extant. On both sides it is marked by exaggerated subtleties and a florid style. He also wrote a life of St. Desiderius, Bishop of Vienne, compiled two laws, a letter written to the King and Queen of the Lombards containing a refutation of Arianism, a letter written to Eusebius, Bishop of Tarragona, condemning certain disorders, a second to Cecilius, Bishop ^ Ante^ p. 227. SPAIN AND ITS CHURCH IN 7TH CENTURY 313 of Mentesa, who had retired to a monastery, and who was ordered by the King to resume his episcopal functions, and lastly a letter to the Monk Theudila. He is credited with having been humane, and he even conceded to the Jews one year's respite during which they must accept the faith or depart. By some he was said to have died by poison, and by others as the result of the ignorance of his doctors. He was succeeded momentarily by his infant son, who died in a few months, when the line of hereditary rulers again ceased for a while, and the pernicious system (in practice) of an elective monarchy was again introduced. Suinthila, a relation of Sisebut's, alleged to have been the son of Reccared the First, now occupied the throne. He began by putting down a revolt of the Cantabrians and Basques, destroyed the last slight foothold of the Emperors in Algarve, and was the first Visigoth who ruled over the whole of Spain. He tried in 625 once more to re-establish the hereditary principle by associating his young son Ricimer, a boy of seven, as ruler with himself. He was much thwarted by his brother Geila, who in 631 joined the disloyal governor of Septimania, Sisenand, who with a number of other nobles and a body of Prankish troops had risen in rebellion and seized Saragossa. Thereupon Suinthila (who thus proved his weak character) retired into private life, and Sisenand succeeded him. In payment of the P^rankish contingent sent him by King Dagobert, 314 THE END OF SAINT AUGUSTINE'S MISSION he presented the latter with a wonderful golden cup weighing 500 pounds, which had been given by the Roman general y^tius to Thorismond. The rare object was viewed as a talisman. The bearers of it were pursued by the Goths, who resented parting with the precious object, and the cup was recovered, and a ransom of 200,000 golden solidi, equivalent to ;^7 2,000, was paid for it/ In order better to secure his position, Sisenand allied himself closely with the clergy. Thus he summoned a so-called Universal, but really a National, Council at Toledo in 633, attended by sixty-two bishops and presided over by St. Isidore, which has already occupied us. To the bishops there, Sisenand was most complacent. He pros- trated himself before them, and begged them in tears to crave God's pity for him. Thereupon a process was instituted against Suinthila, accusing him of rapine and other unnamed crimes. He was deprived of his crown and all his property save that given him by the condescension of Sisenand. His real crime was having placed his own infant son on the throne, and thus turned away from the old Visigothic rule of electing their ruler. Suinthila and his property were not the only sacrifices offered by the obsequious prelates to their patron. At the Council they proceeded to declare that whoever should break his oath of allegiance to Sisenand (a usurper ! !), or should do him any ^ It will be remembered that the crown of Suinthila was one of the precious objects found at Guarazar, and is now preserved at Madrid. SPAIN AND ITS CHURCH IN 7TH CENTURY 3 1 5 harm or despoil him of his power, should be deemed anathema before God and the angels, and be driven from the Church. They then addressed him in what was more seemly language, and conjured him and his successors to rule with justice and piety, and prayed that in capital cases he should not pass sentence until after the voice of the people had been given and the judges had passed judgment. They further declared those rulers who were cruel and tyrannical to be anathema. They lastly enacted that not only Suinthila but all his relatives should in future be excluded from the throne. The Council then proceeded to promulgate a symbol of the faith, to provide for a uniform "Use" in chanting the Psalms, in the Mass, and in the services of Matins and Vespers for all Spain and for the Spanish outpost of Gallia Narbonensis ; and decreed that every individual priest, deacon, clerk, or laic who had grievances should bring them before the annual synod of the province where he lived, which was to meet on the i8th May of each year, at one hour before sunset, under the Metropolitan. After the opening of such a synod the Metropolitan Archdeacon was to read out the names of the complainants in order. To their grievances the Fathers were to listen and then pass judgment, whereupon the royal delegate {executor regis) was to see it carried out. These were very salutary regulations, and show a good sense which we could hardly have expected at that time. At the same Council a considerable number of 3i6 THE END OF SAINT AUGUSTINE'S MISSION canons were passed. Among these were laws en- joining on priests the duty of chastity, on bishops that of keeping watch over the civil tribunals so as to prevent injustice, and regulating the form of the tonsure, and the punishment of clerics who violated and robbed tombs. All free clerics were to be relieved from the payment of dues and charges. A provision was introduced to protect monks (who, it was said, were worked like slaves by the bishops), and to hinder the latter from pre- venting priests from entering monasteries if they were so disposed ; while recreant monks who escaped and got married were to be sought out and made to respect their vows. In future no Jew was to be forced to become a Christian. Those, however, who had been constrained to chang-e their faith and had received the sacra- ments were to remain Christians, while those who had lapsed after becoming Christians and persuaded others to be circumcised were to be forcibly restored. If the newly circumcised were the children of such recreants they were to be separated from their parents, and if they were slaves they were to be set at liberty. This was only a more general applica- tion of the general and cruel law which took away the children of Jews and had them brought up in monasteries. The property of recreant Jews was taken away from them and made over to their children. All Jews were excluded from the public service ; they were forbidden to hold Christian slaves, and if by chance a Jew had married a SPAIN AND ITS CHURCH IN 7TH CENTURY 3 1 7 Christian he was not permitted to convert her or to separate from her/ Sisenand died directly after the meeting of the Council, on the 30th June 636.- He was succeeded by his brother Chintila. One of his first acts was to summon a fresh Council. This met in 640. The provinces of Seville and Braga were not represented there. It was chiefly occupied in providing safeguards for the throne and establishing the royal authority — a process thus commented on by the learned author of an admirable recent account of Christian Spain, M. Leclercq, to whom I have been much indebted in my summary of the doings in that country. He says: "Voici done un type acheve de Concile politique. II est impossible d'associer plus ^troite- ment I'Eglise a I'Etat ; nous verrons dans trois quarts de siecle les fruits de cette politique lorsque devant Tinvasion arabe I'Eglise partagera les destinies de I'Etat."^ We have referred in an earlier page to a later Council held under the auspices of Chintila, and to the remarkable corre- spondence which passed between its leaders and Pope Honorius as a proof of the very slight place the authority of Rome had in Spain at this time.* ^ Leclercq, op. cit. 298-308. 2 /^_ ^lo. ^ lb. 312. * Ante^ pp. 280-281. CHAPTER VI St. Honorius Let us now return to England. Archbishop Justus was succeeded by Honorius about the year 630- 631/ He is described by Bede as a man of lofty erudition in things of the Church. One of the most imposing functions performed by Paulinus, who was now the only Roman bishop left in England, was the consecration of Honorius as successor to Justus, early in a.d. 631. This ceremony was performed at Lincoln,^ where Paulinus had built a church of stone which had become unroofed in Bede's time. Its beams were then exposed, but, according to Bede, miracles were continually occurring there. It was in this church that the consecration took place. Meanwhile, it will be well to note what was going on in East Anglia. On the death of King Redwald he was succeeded by his son Eorpwald, who was persuaded by yEdwin of Northumbria to leave off idolatrous supersti- tions {relictis idoloi'um super stitionibus) and to adopt the faith and sacraments of Christ. This 1 Vide a?tte, p. 269. ^ Bede, ii. 18. 318 SIGEBERHT, KING OF EAST ANGLIA 319 must have been after 627, when yEdwin was himself baptized. Eorpwald soon after received the faith. According to the very doubtful authority of the English Chronicle and Florence of Wor- cester he was baptized in 632.^ He was killed by a heathen named Ricberct, and for three years the province remained under error {in er^^ore versata est) until Sigeberht, his half brother, succeeded him.^ Sigeberht, says Bede, was a man in every way most Christian and most learned, who during his brother's life had received the faith and the sacraments while an exile in Gaul, and who from the outset of his reign took steps to impart them to his whole province. This was probably in the earlier part of the reign of Dagobert the First, when that ruler spent a considerable time in Burgundy reforming the administration and making easier the lot of the poorer classes.^ It was probably in Burgundy that Sigeberht had been living. Perhaps he was tempted to go there by the fact that it was the centre of activity of the famous Irishman, St. Columban. The episcopal cities of France had at this time famous schools. We have noticed how the zeal of Desiderius of Vienne in teaching: the classical authors was rebuked by St. Gregory. St. Germanus praises St. Modoald, 1 The date is, in fact, altogether doubtful. Dr. Bright says that by tracing back twenty-two years before the year 653, in which Honorius died, we reach 631 at the latest for the coming of Felix (which followed the accession of Sigeberht), and must go back some three years further for Eorpwald's baptism and death, which Haddan and Stubbs place in 628 (iii. 89). See Bright, p. 141, note 4. 2 Bede, ii. 15. ' See Fredegar, ch. 58. 320 THE END OF SAINT AUGUSTINE'S MISSION Bishop of Treves, for teaching boys the liberal arts {(jui sagacis ingenii cei^neret puerum, liberalibus Uteris erudivii). The Abbot Frodobertus lauds the zeal of the Bishop of Troyes {apud urbem Trecassinam Pontificis Ragnesili scholis parenhtm studeo 77tancipatur). Leodegar, Bishop of Autun, was taught by Dido of Poictou all the studies which men were wont to learn at the time, and was fully equipped {adplene in omnibus disciplinae lima est politus). Prsejectus, Bishop of Clermont (Arvern- ensis), was taught letters in the school of another bishop.^ Guizot speaks highly of the episcopal schools which flourished at this time at Poitiers, Paris, Le Mans, Bourges, Clermont, Vienne, Chalons, Aries, and Gap, which he says superseded the great civil schools.^ It would have been very interesting if we could have recovered some details about the methods and processes of this teaching and of the actual proficiency of Sigeberht, the first of English princes to be educated in at all a high sense, and to know whether he was in orders, or merely a princely lay scholar. Florence of Worcester says that when in Gaul, Sigeberht made friends with Bishop Felix, and that on Eorpwald's death they came to England together.^ In the life of Felix mentioned in Hardy's Catalogue, i. 234, he is made to baptize Sigeberht when in Gaul. Bede's story, however, implies that they came to England separately, although it was 1 Smith's Bede, 723. 2 Civil, in Fr. Lect. 16 ; Bright, 1 42, note 2. 8 M.H.B. p. 529. ST. FELIX, BISHOP OF DUNWICH 321 probably on Sigeberht's invitation that Felix was induced to make the journey. Felix, according to Bede, came from Burgundy where he had been ordained (perhaps only as a priest). He may have been a protdgd of Columban. On his arrival in England he went to see Archbishop Honorius, and asked his per- mission to go and preach " the Word of Life " among the East Anglians. In one of the lives of Felix quoted by Hardy,^ Honorius is made to ordain him as bishop. This was probably in 631.^ He fixed his episcopal see at Dumnoc, now Dunwich. Dr. Bright, speaking of it, says : *' Under the Conqueror, Dunwich, though it had long ceased to be an episcopal city, still had 236 burgesses and 100 poor; and it was prosperous under Henry iii. Spelman heard that it was reported to have once had fifty churches. When Camden published his Britannia^ in 1607, it lay 'in solitude and desola- tion,' the greater part being submerged by the effect of the sea on the soft cliff on which it stood. One local tradition places the first preach- ing of Felix at Seham." * A few walls of the old town alone remain. At Dunwich, Felix, according to Bede (who refers to the happy omen of his name, sui nominis sacramentum), presided over the province for seven- teen years, and was no doubt greatly helped by ^ Cat. Brit. Hist. i. 234-35. 2 See the date discussed, Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 89, note. ' i. 448. * Bright, 143, note i. 91 3 22 THE END OF SAINT AUGUSTINE^S MISSION Sigeberht, who is said by the same author to have used great zeal after he became king in propa- gating the faith/ He says of the mission of Felix that "he delivered all the province from long- standing unrighteousness and infelicity, and as a pious cultivator of the spiritual field he found abundant fruit in a believing people."^ He had apparently been trained entirely in Gaul, and his services and his ritual at Dunwich were doubtless taken from those of Gaul. They probably did not follow the Roman pattern as much as it was followed at Canterbury, although it must be under- stood that Felix was in no way a detached bishop, but had been sent by Honorius, and no doubt treated the latter as his Metropolitan. Bede ^ tells us Felix had a great regard for St. Aidan. At this time another foreign missionary also settled in East Anglia. This was the Irish monk Furseus, who had, however, nothing to do directly with Augustine's mission.^ He founded a monas- tery at Cnobheresburg (now called Burgh Castle, in Suffolk). Bede says that Anna, King of East Anglia, and the nobility there embellished it with stately buildings and gifts.^ Returning to Sigeberht, Bede tells us that, desiring to imitate the good system he had seen in Gaul, he founded a school for the instruction of boys in letters {in qua piieri Uteris ertidirentur), in which work he was helped by Bishop Felix, whom 1 Bede, ii. 15. * lb. ^ lb. iii, 25. * lb, iii. 19. « lb. ST. FELIX, BISHOP OF DUNWICH 323 he distinctly says he had received from Kent (de Cantia acceperat), and who supplied him with masters and teachers after the Kentish pattern {pedagogos ac 7nagistros j'uxta morem Cantuariormn pi'aebente, i.e. who had been trained at Canterbury),^ This school, we can hardly doubt, was attached to the Cathedral Church of Felix at Dunwich. It will be remembered that in the long and strenuous fight between Oxford and Cambridge as to the respec- tive antiquity of the two Universities this school of Felix has been quoted on behalf of Cambridge, which is certainly more reasonable than an appeal to King Alfred as the founder of Oxford. Sigeberht after reigning for some years deter- mined to retire from the world, being the first among the Anglo-Saxon princes to become a recluse. He entered a monastery which he had himself founded {quod sibi fecerat) and received the tonsure. When the ruthless Mercian ruler Penda invaded East Anglia, Sigeberht was withdrawn from his monastery and put at the head of their forces by the leaders of his old people, who found it impossible, however, to make head against the Mercian chief. Sigeberht refused to be armed, and went into the fight with a wand in his hand. He was killed, together with his relative {cognato suo — perhaps, says Plummer, his brother-in-law) Ecgric, who had succeeded to his power when he withdrew from the world.^ According- to Thomas of Elv, in his Vit. 1 Bede, iii. 18, ' lb. iii. 18. 324 THE END OF SAINT AUGUSTINKS MISSION Aedeldriiae, Sij^eberht's monastery was situated in Bedrichswurde, afterwards called Edmundsbury, and now Bury St. Edmunds.^ No part of this early building now remains at Bury. Ecgric was suc- ceeded by Anna, the son of Eni, Red wald's brother. It was during Anna's reign that Kenwalch, King of Wessex, was driven from the throne by the Mercian ruler Penda, whose sister he had divorced. He took refuge in East Anglia with Anna, with whom he spent three years, and there he accepted the faith. ^ The Anglo-Saxon CJwonicle MSS. A and F say this was in 646. Florence of Worcester says he was baptized by Felix, which is not improbable. The Annals of Ely add that Anna was his godfather (which is also not unlikely), and say that he helped to restore him to his kingdom, and that it was this which drew on him the vengeance of Penda, which, as Mr. Plummer says,^ is probably an inference from Bede. Anna was killed by Penda. ^ The Anglo- Saxon Chronicle MSS. A, B, and C date his death in 654. He was more famous as the father of four saintly daughters than for his own acts. Bede styles him a good man, and happy in a good and pious offspring {vir bonus et bona ac sanda sobole felix).^ As I have said, he left four daughters, all of them styled saint — i, Sexburga, wife of Erconberht, King of Kent ; 2, ^thelberga, who became the Abbess of Brie, in Gaul {in Brigenti monasterio) ; 3, ^theldritha, Queen of Northumbria, and after- ^ See Smith's Bede, p. 121, note 28. * Bede^ iii. 7. 3 lb. ii. p. 143. '' lb. iii. ch, j8v P Ih. iii. 7 and 18, SAINT FELIX, BISHOP OF DUNWICH 325 wards Abbess of Ely ; and 4, Withburga, a nun in the same monastery.^ Anna was succeeded by his brother yEthelhere. St. Felix, as he was afterwards called, held his see for seventeen years,^ and according to Mr. Plummer must have died in 647 (as stated by Florence of Worcester ^) or in 648. Capgrave, A7ig. Sac. i. 403, puts his obit on 8th March. He was buried first at Dunwich, thence he was trans- lated to Seham, near Ely (now Soham) — "a town," says William of Malmesbury, "planted near the marsh which in former times had to be traversed by a dangerous route in a boat, but can now be gone over on foot." The church there was destroyed by the Danes, but Malmesbury adds that remains of it still survived, and among them was found the body of St. Felix, which was removed to Ramsey Abbey/ Several places still claim his memory, such as Felixstowe, south-east of Ipswich, in Suffolk, and Feliskirk, near Thirsk, in Yorkshire. On the death of Felix, Archbishop Honorius consecrated Thomas his deacon {diacomun ejrts) to the see. He was a native of the Province of the Gyrwas [P?'ovincia Gyrwiorum). In the Anglo-Saxon version of Bede the words are translated by " Gyrwa maegdh," the kindred of the Gyrwas. The Liber Eliensis describes the Gyrwas as "all the Southern Angles living in the great marsh in which is situated the ^ Florence of Worcester, Appendix, M.H.B. 636. 2 Bede, ii. 15, iii. 20. 3 M.H.B. p. 530. *■ William of Malmesbury, Gest. Pont. pp. 147 and 348. Lib. El. pp. 21 and 22. Plummer, vol. ii. p. 174. 326 THE END OF SAINT AUGUSTINE'S MISSION Isle of Ely."^ Thomas died five years later, prob- ably in 652 or 653, whereupon Honorius con- secrated Berctgils, whose name in religion was Boniface, and who was a Kentish man, in his place." Let us now turn to Northumbria. "When," says Bede, " ^dwin had reigned gloriously over Anglians and Britons alike for seventeen years, during six of which he had been a Christian, Caedwalla, King of the Britons, in alliance with Penda, a very vigorous man of the royal family of Mercia, and a pagan, rebelled against him." A fierce battle took place at Haethfelth (probably Hatfield Chase, near Doncaster), and y^dwin was there killed. This fateful battle was fought on the 12th October 633,^ when ^dwin was forty-eight years old. His son Osfrid and his whole army were either killed or scattered. His other son, Eadfrid, who fled for refuge to Penda, was put to death by him in spite of his oath to the contrary.* We may be certain that the upheaval which led to this catas- trophe was largely caused by the dislike of many of his people to /Edwin's change of faith, and to the fact that a very large number of them had remained pagans. Mr. Green has well expressed the actual results of this rapid change of religion, ^ Plummer, Bede^ vol. ii. p. 174. -Bede, iii. 20. ^ The Chronicle attached to Nennius dates the battle in 630, and Tighernac in 631. Tighernac, however, dates Anglian events two or three years before Bede (Skene, Celtic Scotland^ i. 243, note 25). * Bede, ii. 20. DEATH OF KING ^DWIN 327 perhaps intensified by the indecency with which the Archpriest Coifi had treated his late gods. He says : " Easily as it was brought about in /Edwin's court, the religious revolution gave a shock to the power which he had built up in Britain at large. Though Paulinus preached among the Cheviots as on the Swale, it was only in Deira that the Northumbrians really followed the bidding of their King. If .^dwin reared anew a church at York, no church or altar rose in Bernicia from the Forth to the Tees."^ In addition to the cause here as- signed for the increase in v^idwin's enemies, we may also conjecture that Caedwalla's fierce and cruel devastation of Northumbria had been inspired by the merciless way he had been driven hither and thither, and also by the British clergy, who could not have for^rotten the slaughter of the monks at Bangor, and the ruthlessness of ^thelfred. On the other hand, the exiled family of yE^thelfred may also have had a hand in the matter. Kino; Edwin's head was taken to York, and was afterwards removed to the Church of St. Peter there, the church he had himself begun, and which was completed by St. Oswald. It was placed in the Chapel [in porticu) of " St. Gregory the Pope, from whose disciples he had received the Word of Life. "2 Things in Northumbria now went hard with the Christians, who were cruelly trampled upon, and i^dwin's immediate successors relapsed into pagan- ^ Green, The Making of England, 264. - Bede, ii. 20. 328 THE END OF SAINT AUGUSTINE^S MISSION ism. "All was lost," says Bishop Browne. "A day's preaching had converted hundreds. A day's defeat swept the whole thing away. Christianity in the North was gone." ^ This is not quite accurate. When Paulinus abandoned his flock and his great mission in Northumbria, he left behind him his faithful deacon James, "a man," says Bede, "who was both an ecclesiastic and a saint," and who for a long time after, remained in the Church, and plucked much prey from the old enemy {antiquo hosti) by teaching and baptizing. " The village," says Bede, "where he chiefly worked, situated near Catterick (jtixta Cataractam), still bears his name."^ Bishop Browne says the place is now called Aikbar or Akebar, of which name, he argues, the first syllable represents Jacobus, and not Oak, as has been thought by some.^ The cross of St. James is still to be seen at Hawkswell, five miles from Catterick.* Bishop Browne says of it : " The shaft is about four feet high above ground, and it is covered with simple but unusual interlacing patterns, cut in relief, and of the type so well known to those who have studied the curious and beautiful remains of Anglian art in the north of England." The commencement of the spring of the cross-head can be seen at the upper part of the shaft. There is on the front of the shaft a small rectangular panel with raised border, and Hubner gives as the inscription on it, Haec est crux sci Gacobi. A figure of ^ Augustine and his Companions, i86. ^ Op. cit. ii. 20. ^ Conv. of the Heptarchy, pp. 218-222. ■* lb. pp. 215 f. The Inscribed Cross at Hawkswell, near Catterick. To face p. 328. THE CANTOR JAMES 329 the cross is given by Bishop Browne. Near it is St. Andrew's Church, dedicated to the patron of Paulinus' monastery at Rome. Bede says that, being highly skilled in the art of singing in church, when peace was afterwards restored in the pro- vince, and the number of believers grew, he became the master of the ecclesiastical chanting after the fashion of the Romans and Kentish men {^Qui quoniam cantandi m ecclesia erat periiissimtis, . . . etiani magister ecclesiasticae cantionis juxta morent Romanorum sive Cantuariortmi multis coepit ex- iste7'e); "and being old and full of days, as the Scriptures say, he followed the way of his fathers." ^ Bede says in another place that he survived to his own day." The latter, a famous Northumbrian himself, probably exaggerates the influence of James, who, however excellent, can only have shed a very local and small light " amidst the encircling gloom " in Northumbria at the time. The terrible desolation of Northumbria after Edwin's death left litde temptation to Paulinus to remain behind, for he was apparently not made of the same stuff as martyrs are made ; and, perhaps, as has been suggested, he felt some obligation to see the Queen, whose chaplain he had been, escorted to a place of safety. This might excuse his making a journey to Kent, but hardly justified his complete and final abandonment of his missionary Church and of the converts he had made. He accordingly set out by sea for Kent, taking ^ Bede, ii. 20. ^ lb. ii. 16. 330 THE END OF SAINT AUGUSTINE'S MISSION with him his protege, Queen yEthelberga, whom he had originally escorted to Northumbria. Bede says they were very honourably received by Arch- bishop Honorius [ab Honorio archiepiscopd) and by King Eadbald/ who was of course her half- brother. When .Edwin's widow, y^thelberga, returned to her old Kentish home, she, according to Thomas of Elmham, founded the Monastery of Lyminge, in Kent, in the town of the same name. The place of her burial is still marked by a wooden tablet on the south wall of the church there, and her name of endearment is still perpetuated in a neiCThbourino- common called Tatta's lea, while " St. ^thelberga's Well is situated to the east of the church."^ This was the first nunnery recorded to have been founded among the Saxons or Anglians. It was probably based on the type of those in Gaul, for she was a friend of Kino- Dag"obert's.^ My friend Mr. Peers has given a graphic account of the vicissitudes of the early church at Lyminge, which I will take the liberty of quoting. After reporting how ^thelberga received a gift of the royal vill of Lyminge from her brother, the Kentish King, and how she died in 647 in the monastery she had founded there, and was there interred, as was also presently her great-great-niece St. Mildred, he proceeds: "The monastery was raided by the ^ Op. cit. ii. 20. * Bright, 149. ' Vide infra, p. 333. THE SAXON CHURCH AT LYMINGE 331 Danes, but, as at Rochester, the church can only have been partially destroyed, for in 1085 Lanfranc, requiring relics for his new foundation in Canterbury, St. Gregory's, caused the bodies of the two saints to be translated from the norih por^icus of Lyminge Church to the Church of St. Gregory, and thereby started the great and long-lived squabble between the monks of St. Augustine's at Canterbury and the canons of St. Gregory's as to which house possessed the authentic relics of St. Mildred, the details of which may be read in the polemical tract of Gocelin, monk of St. Augustine's, entitled ' Contra inanes beatae Mildrethae usurpatores,' written about 1098.^ Gocelin, who seems to have been present at the removal of the relics, speaks of ..^^ithelberga's tomb as still existing : ' eminentms monwncnhtni . . . in aquilonali porticii ad australem parietetn ecclesiae arcu invohitum' ', and again, speaking of yEthelberga says : * Cujtis m limingis eminentms et migustius creditur monumentum.'' The position of the tomb, in an arched recess in the north porticus, against or near the south wall of the church, is not clear, unless the north porch and the south wall are understood as belonging to two different buildings. This would, at Lyminge, fit the case very well, as the present church is built just to the north of the old foundation, so that a north porticus of the older church could very well abut on the south wall of the later one. Canon Jenkins claims to have discovered the site of both grave and porticus in the north wall 1 Cott. MS., Br. Mus., Vesp. B. xx. f. 260. 332 THE END OF SAINT AUGUSTINE'S MISSION of the apse, just to the east of the triple arcade, but the evidence is inconclusive, and points rather to a later interment."^ In regard to the remains of St. ^thelberga's church, Mr. Micklethwaite says its foundations are situated in the present churchyard south of the exist- inof church, and show that it was of the same form as that of St. Pancras at Canterbury, but smaller, and was without any porches or external chapels. It had an arcade of three instead of a single sanctuary arch.^ Mr. Peers adds that there is nothing left of the church but the lowest foundations of the walls, which are i foot lo inches thick, of Roman materials, with good evidence of a triple arcade. No trace of ih^porticus remains in which St. ^thelberga and St. Mildred lay, and which seems to have been standing at the end of the eleventh century. Traces of Roman buildings abound on the site, and a Roman foundation underlies the western end of the nave.^ Meanwhile, Bass, a King's thane, conducted another party, which included y^dwin's daughter Eanfleda and his son Vuscfrean, together with Yffi, his grandson, the son of Osfrid, to Kent, .^thelberga presently had misgivings as to the intentions of Eadbald and Oswald towards these dangerous young people. The mention of Oswald is specially ominous. He had interests in the north which the existence of the young princes threatened. She accordingly sent them to be brought up in 1 Arch. Jou7'?i., 1901, p. 407. 2 lb.., 1896, pp. 313 and 314. ^ lb.., 1901, pp. 419 and 420. BASS ESCORTS EDWIN'S FAMILY TO KENT 333 France, to King Dagobert, who, says Bede, was a friend of hers. There they all died in infancy and were honourably buried in the church. There is a sinister sound about this part of the narrative. When he went to Kent, Bass also took with him the precious vessels, including a great golden cross and a golden chalice which ^dwin had given for the service of the church, and which Bede says were still preserved at Canterbury in his day.^ At this time there was a vacancy in the see of Rochester. Its bishop, Romanus, who had been sent on an embassy to Rome by the archbishop (perhaps in order to secure himself a pallium), was drowned in the Mediterranean. Whereupon, at the invitation of Honorius the archbishop {antistes) and of King Eadbald, Paulinus (who was at the time without a see) took charge of his church.^ After his return to the faith, Eadbald, the Kentish King, apparently provedhimselfazealous churchman. For example, we are told in the life of his daughter, St. Eanswitha, that he built a church at Folkestone dedicated to St. Peter. Eanswitha refused to marry and became a nun and abbess of a nunnery there, which was also probably founded by her father.^ We have seen how he built the small Church of the Virgin, in the precincts of St. Augustine's Abbey, which was consecrated by Archbishop Mellitus. It 1 Bede, ii. 20. 2 /^^ ' See Hardy, Catalogue, i. pp. 2?8 and 229. 334 THE END OF SAINT AUGUSTINE'S MISSION is probable that he granted lands and benefactions to the Church, but the charters associated with his name are forgeries/ Thomas of Elmham tells us that Gratiosus, the fourth abbot of the Monastery of St. Peter and St. Paul at Canterbury, died in 638, and was succeeded after an interval of two years by Petronius, a Roman. ^ King Eadbald died in the year 640. He was succeeded by his son Earconberht. Bede makes him the only son of Eadbald. A second son, Eormenred, is mentioned in an inter- polated passage in Codex A of the Chronicle, S2tb an. 640. The notice perhaps came from Florence of Worcester.^ Eormenred apparently died before his father, and, by his wife Oslava, left two sons and four daughters.'* Earconberht, according to Bede, was the first of the English Kings who insisted on the pagan idols being- forsaken and destroyed throughout his kingdom. He also caused the forty days of Lent to be observed, and issued instructions that any one who failed to obey these orders was to be visited with condign punishment.^ Paulinus remained Bishop of Rochester until his death, which took place on the 6th of the ides of October (i.e. loth October) 644, having been bishop nineteen years, two months, and twenty-one days. In this calculation Bede includes the whole ^ See Introduction. ^ Op. cit. 175. 3 See M.H.B. 627 and 635. * Florence of Worcester, M.H.B. 635, * Bede^ iii. 8. PAULINUS AT ROCHESTER 335 length of his episcopate. Of these years eight were spent at York and eleven at Rochester.^ In the Life of St. Gregory by the Whitby Monk, we are told the soul of Paulinus was seen on his death to fly to heaven in the form of a white swan.- He was buried in the sacristy [in secretario) of St. Andrew's Cathedral.^ He is said to have left the cope which the Pope had sent him to that church.^ In Bishop Gundulf's days the old church was destroyed and rebuilt by Lanfranc, when his bones were put in a casket {in scrinio) and trans- ferred to the new building. This translation took place on the 4th of the ides of January, which was a day solemnly kept at Rochester.^ In his place Archbishop Honorius ordained Ithamar, who, says Bede, was sprung from the people of Kent, and was distinguished in life and learning.^ He was apparently the first Englishman to be made a bishop, and retained his old English name. Archbishop Honorius himself died on the last day of September (ist kalends of October), 653.^ Elmham gives his epitaph : — "Quintus honor memori versu niemoraris, Honori, Digne sepultura, quam non teret ulla litura. Ardet in obscuro tua lux vibramine puro : Haec scelus omne premit, fugat umbras, nubila demit." ^ ^ See Smith's Bede, iii. 14, note 13. 2 Qp^ ^/^_ p^j._ jy_ ' Bede, iii. 14. * lb. ii. 20. 5 Smith, op. cit. note 14. " Bede, iii. 14. "^ lb. iii. 20. His life is given in the Acta Sand. vii. 698-711, » Op. cit. 183. 336 THE END OF SAINT AUGUSTINE'S MISSION Deusdedit On the death of Honorius the see was vacant for a year and a half, when Deusdedit, a native of Wessex, whose real name, according to Elmham,^ was Frithonas,^ and who was probably a monk, was elected in his place. He possibly took his name in religion from Pope Deusdedit. Ithamar came from Rochester to consecrate him, which was again an instance of a single bishop, and one too who had not received the pall, consecrating another. He was ordained on 26th March, or perhaps 12th December 654,^ and was the first archbishop of English birth. He ruled the diocese for nine years, four months, and two days.* During his episcopate he consecrated Damian as Bishop of Rochester, as the successor to Ithamar, on the death of the latter. Damian came from Sussex. We do not know when he died, but it was probably some time before Deusdedit, for, according to Bede,^ the see of Rochester had long been vacant through the death of Damian on the arrival of Theodore at Canterbury. Bede tells us that in the year of the eclipse and 1 Pp. 192 and 193. ^ Elmham says : '■''patria lingua priniitus Fritonas vocabatur ; sed propter dona gratuita, quae sui's meritis 77tultiplicibus consona- bani, nomen ejus Saxonicum nee immerito in nomen gratificum est conversuni" (op. cit. 192). ^ See Plummer, vol. ii. p. 175. During the same year, according to Thomas of Elmham, Petronius, the fifth abbot of SS. Peter and Paul's Monastery at Canterbury, died. He adds that his burial-place was not known {op. cit. 183). He was succeeded by Nathanael, one of the monks who had come with Mellitus and Justus {ib. 184). * Bede, iii. 20, * iv, 2, ARCHBISHOP DEUSDEDIT 337 of the plague which followed close upon it (14th July, A.D. 664), Deusdedit also died at this time.^ Thomas of Elmham gives his epitaph : — "Alme Deusdedit, cui sexta vocatio cedit, Signas hunc lapidem, lapidi signatus eidem. Prodit ab hac urna virtute salus diuturna. Qua melioratur quicunque dolore gravatur." Earconberht, King of Kent, died on the same day. It is very probable they both in fact died of the plague, to which, as a most potent factor in the annals of the sixth and seventh century, both religious and secular, I propose to devote a some- what detailed account in the first Appendix. On the death of Archbishop Deusdedit, on the 14th of July 664, there was apparently a great difficulty in filling his place. Bede says the see became vacant for a considerable time.^ The accounts of what followed are not quite consistent. In his history of the abbots, which is the earlier and more trustworthy work, Bede tells us that Ecgbercht, King of Kent, sent out of the kingdom a man named WIghard, who had been elected to the office of bishop. He was a person who had been sufficiently instructed in every kind of ecclesiastical institution {omni aecclcsiastica instihitione siLfficienter edoctus) by the Roman disciples of the blessed Pope Gregory in Kent.^ It was Ecgbercht's desire that Wighard should be ordained at Rome as his own bishop, so that, 1 Op. cit. 193. 2 /y £-^ jv I. ^ Bede, Historia Abbaium, par. 3. 22 3 38 THE END OF SAINT AUGUSTINE'S MISSION possessing a bishop of his own nation and language, "he himself and the people who were subject to him, might become the more perfectly instructed in the words and mysteries of the faith, inasmuch as they would then receive them not through the medium of an interpreter, but from the tongue and the hands of a kinsman and a fellow- countryman." In all this, not a word is said of Northumbria. The whole question is treated as a Kentish question, and was decided by the Kentish King to meet his own needs and convenience. The notice is interesting as showing how irksome the ministrations of the foreign monks who did not know English (or, if they did, knew it very badly) had become, and how anxious the King was to have an English archbishop who could speak to him and his people in their own tongue, who was English in his ways and instincts, and who was very learned in matters of ecclesiastical discipline (vtr m ecclesiasticis disciplinis doctissifnus)} Wighard was the bearer of some lordly gifts for the Pope, including not a few gold and silver vessels (vasts). On arriving at Rome, where Vitalian was then Pope, he had an interview with the latter, and reported the object of his mission ; but most unfortunately, he soon after, with the majority of those who had gone with him, perished of the plague. With the death of Deusdedit passed away the ^ Bede, J7.E. iv. i. END OF SAINT AUGUSTINKS MISSION 339 last Archbishop of Canterbury who belonged to the mission of St. Augustine and who could trace his Orders to that evangelist. It is a very remark- able thing that this " succession " should have been permitted to die out. It could not be because of any increased stringency in the rule about ordination by a single bishop, since there was still a bishop in East Anglia (who however, died soon after), who might have concurred with Deusdedit. It cannot have been that Deusdedit, not having received a pall, did not feel competent to consecrate a bishop, since he had already consecrated Damian to the see of Rochester.^ Whatever the reason, there can be no doubt that his death marks a distinct gap in the history of the English Church, and with it that Church had to make a fresh start. It was my purpose in writing these pages to try and bring together, as far as my materials and my limited gifts enabled me, a connected picture of the first attempt to evangelise England, and especially to keep in view the fact that as Britain is only a detached fragment of Europe geographically, its history and the changes and movements that have taken place among its people can only be understood by continual reference to the political and religious movements that have meanwhile occurred elsewhere. I began by drawing a detailed, and I hope fairly adequate, picture of the great Pope who was the initiator of the movement, of the changes he made in the administration, and, above all, of the theology ' Bede, iv. 20. 340 THE END OF SAINT AUGUSTINE'S MISSION he taught, which have since so largely dominated the Holy See and its satellites. To this I devoted a previous volume. I have tried in this volume con- tinually to remember that Augustine the Missionary was what Gregory the Pope, his master, had made him, and that in view of the scantiness of materials which have been preserved in regard to the domestic doings of the missionaries we may turn confidently to the almost excessive materials supplied by the writings of Gregory to beacon our feet and illumi- nate our minds as to the kind of religion Augustine brought and taught. The enterprise Gregory had so much at heart and which he so much cherished might perhaps have had a more successful issue if more worldly wisdom had been shown in the selection of his agents. Here again, however, we must realise how few materials were available, and how, of these, the men who were willing to face the dangers and difficulties of the task were only to be found among those who had said a final good-bye to the world and its attractions and who were not men of the world, but, in the language of the time, were saints. On the other hand, things might have been different if England had been a united kingdom under one ruler, or ruled by one family, instead of (as it was) a disintegrated body made up of several fragments with a different origin and with very small common interests. It was presently the work of the Church to create and foster this unity and with it a common patriotism. Meanwhile the missionary RESULTS OF SAINT AUGUSTINE'S MISSION 341 cause suffered greatly from the perpetual strife and the divergent ambitions of the various tribes and their several chiefs. The actual work of the mission has been well summed up by Dr. Mason. He says : "The Augus- tinian line of bishops had died out. Gregory's sanguine vision of two metropolitans with twelve suffragans apiece was very far from being realised. Eleven bishops in all owed their consecration directly or indirectly to Augustine. The first six of these were Italians, who either came with Augustine or joined him in 601 — Laurence, Mellitus, Justus, Romanus, Paulinus, and Honorius." All of these except Romanus are claimed as alumni of St. Andrew's Monastery in the inscription inscribed on the facade of the existing church. They occur with others, including Paulinus the Evanorelist of Northumbria, and Peter the Abbot of Canterbury, and the whole list is headed : " From this monastery there set out," etc. {£x hoc mo7iasterio prodierunt). "The other five were Englishmen — Deusdedit, Ithamar, Damian, Thomas, and Boniface, who occupied the sees of Canterbury, Rochester, and Dunwich. Boniface of Dunwich was the last. He died in the year that Theodore reached England. In him that succession became extinct. No sacred Orders now existing can be traced up to Augustine. If the episcopal succes- sion is the framework of the structure of the Church, the foundation of the present Church of England begins with Theodore of Tarsus. Again, only a small 342 THE END OF SAINT AUGUSTINE'S MISSION part of England, it will have been seen, directly owes its Christianity to the missionaries sent by Gregory. Canterbury was the one and only centre in which the work begun by them had had an uninterrupted and continuous history. Even at Rochester, within the kingdom of Kent itself, there was a short break. London, so far as any visible result was concerned, wholly repudiated their opera- tions. Their magnificent successes in Northumbria were to a great extent swept away. East Anglia alone (out of Kent) retained ecclesiastical connection with them from the time of its first acceptance of the Gospel ; but so far as we can see they would hardly have evangelised East Anglia but for their timely reinforcement by the Burgundian bishop, Felix. The first Christianising of Wessex was accom- plished without the least reference to the chair of Augustine, indeed almost in defiance of it. . . . Nevertheless, the history of the Church of Eng- land begins with Augustine and centres round his see of Canterbury."^ Having thus traced the thread of the history of the English Church down to where it broke in twain, I have reached a fitting halting-place. I hope I may be able in a third volume to describe how the broken thread was again pieced, and how under happier conditions and stronger men the Church's second start proved more fruitful and more lasting. ^ Mason, The Mission of St. Augustine.^ pp. 202-203. APPENDIX I The Bubonic Plague in the Sixth and Seventh Centuries There is no more dismal episode in the world's history, nor yet one the effects of which have been so inadequately appreciated, as the desolating and wide- spread epidemic which depopulated Europe in the first half of the seventh century. There have been many and terrible plagues which have decimated the world at times, and notably the Black Death in the fourteenth century, but I know of none in which the effects were so awful in selecting for destruction in such large numbers, those men who were the very salt of the human family. This kind of material was not too abundant in the sixth and early seventh centuries, and the corresponding loss and penalty were terrible. The particular epidemic to which I refer was known to the Latin writers as the Lties inguinaria, i.e. the bubonic plague. It apparently broke out in special paroxysms and was then comparatively dormant for a while. In describing the plague and its effects, I cannot do better than adopt one of those magnificent pieces of condensed rhetoric in which 344 SAINT AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY Gibbon has so often baffled imitation, and in wliich the craft of the historian is presented in its most ideal form. " ^Ethiopia and Egypt," he says, "have been stigmatised in every age as the original source and seminary of the plague. In a damp, hot, stagnating air, this African fever is generated from the putrefaction of animal substances, and especially from the swarms of locusts, not less destructive to mankind in their death than in their lives. The fatal disease, which depopulated the earth in the time of Justinian and his successors, first appeared in the neighbourhood of Pelusium, between the Serbonian bog and the eastern channel of the Nile. From thence, tracing as it were a double path, it spread to the East, over Syria, Persia, and the Indies, and penetrated to the West, along the coast of Africa, and over the continent of Europe. In the spring of the second year, Constantinople, during three or four months, was visited by the pestilence ; and Procopius, who observed its progress and symptoms with the eyes of a physician, has emulated the skill and diligence of Thucydides in the description of the plague of Athens. The infection was sometimes announced by the visions of a distempered fancy, and the victim despaired as soon as he had heard the menace and felt the stroke of an invisible spectre. But the greater number, in their beds, in the streets, in their usual occupation, were surprised by a slight fever ; so slight, indeed, that neither the pulse nor the colour of the patient gave any APPENDIX I 345 signs of the approaching danger. The same the next, or the succeeding day ; it was declared by the swelling of the glands, particularly those of the groin " (whence its name of lues inginnarid), " of the armpits, and under the ear ; and, when these buboes or tumours were opened, they were found to contain a coal^ or black substance, of the size of a lentil. If they came to a just swelling and suppuration, the patient was saved by this kind and natural discharge of the morbid humour. But, if they continued hard and dry, a mortification quickly ensued, and the fifth day was commonly the term of his life. The fever was often accom- panied with lethargy or delirium ; the bodies of the sick were covered with black pustules or carbuncles, the symptoms of immediate death ; and in the constitutions too feeble to produce an eruption, the vomiting of blood was followed by a mortification of the bowels. To pregnant women the plague was generally mortal ; yet one infant was drawn alive from his dead mother, and three mothers survived the loss of their infected foetus. Youth was the most perilous season, and the female sex was less susceptible than the male ; but every rank and profession was attacked with indiscriminate rage, and many of those who escaped were de- prived of the use of their speech, without being secure from a return of the disorder. The physicians of Constantinople were zealous and skilful, but their art was bafiled by the various symptoms and pertinacious vehemence of the 34<5 SAINT AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY disease ; the same remedies were productive of contrary effects, and the event capriciously dis- appointed their prognostics of death or recovery. The order of funerals and the right of sepulchres were confounded ; those who were left without friends or servants lay unburied in the streets or in their desolate houses ; and a magistrate was authorised to collect the promiscuous heaps of dead bodies, to transport them by land or water, and to inter them in deep pits beyond the precincts of the city. Their own danger and the prospect of public distress awakened some remorse in the minds of the most vicious of mankind ; the con- fidence of health again revived their passions and habits ; but philosophy must disdain the observa- tion of Procopius that the lives of such men were guarded by the peculiar favour of fortune or providence. He forgot, or perhaps he secretly recollected, that the plague had touched the person of Justinian himself; but the abstemious diet of the Emperor may suggest, as in the case of Socrates, a more rational and honourable cause for his recovery. During his sickness the public consternation was expressed in the habits of the citizens ; and their idleness and despondence occa- sioned a general scarcity in the capital of the East. "Contagion is the inseparable symptom of the plague ; which, by mutual respiration, is transfused from the infected persons to the lungs and stomach of those who approach them. While philosophers believe and tremble, it is singular that the existence APPENDIX I 347 of a real clanger should have been denied by a people most prone to vain and imaginary terrors. Yet the fellow-citizens of Procopius were satisfied, by some short and partial experience, that the infection could not be gained by the closest con- versation ; and this persuasion might support the assiduity of friends or physicians in the care of the sick, whom inhuman prudence would have con- demned to solitude and despair. But the fatal security, like the predestination of the Turks, must have aided the progress of the contagion, and those salutary precautions to which Europe is indebted for her safety were unknown to the government of Justinian. No restraints were imposed on the free and frequent intercourse of the Roman provinces ; from Persia to France, the nations were mingled and infected by wars and emigrations ; and the pestilential odour which lurks for years in a bale of cotton was imported, by the abuse of trade, into the most distant regions. The mode of its propagation is explained by the remark of Procopius himself, that it always spread from the seacoast to the inland country ; the most sequestered islands and mountains were successively visited ; the places which had escaped the fury of its first passage were alone exposed to the contagion of the ensuing year. The winds might diffuse that subtle venom ; but, unless the atmo- sphere be previously disposed for its reception, the plague would soon expire in the cold or temperate climates of the earth. Such was the universal 348 SAINT AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY corruption of the air, that the pestilence which burst forth in the fifteenth year of Justinian was not checked or alleviated by any difference of the seasons. In time, its first malignity was abated and dispersed ; the disease alternately languished and revived ; but it was not till the end of a calamitous period of fifty-two years that mankind recovered their health or the air resumed its pure and salubrious quality. No facts have been pre- served to sustain an account, or even a conjecture, of the numbers that perished in this extraordinary mortality. I only find that, during three months, five, and at length ten, thousand persons died each day at Constantinople ; that many cities of the East were left vacant; and that in several districts of Italy the harvest and the vintage withered on the ground. The triple scourge of war, pestilence, and famine afifiicted the subjects of Justinian, and his reign is disgraced by a visible decrease of the human species which has never been repaired in some of the fairest countries of the globe." ^ "The plague," says Dr. Bury, "seems to have appeared in Egypt in 541. Before the end of the year it was probably carried to Constantinople, for Theophanes says that it broke out in October, A.D. 541, but it did not begin to rage till the following year, a.d. 542, the year of the third in- vasion of Chosroes." Bury doubts the statement of Gibbon that it penetrated into the west "along the ^ Gibbon, Decline and Fall of tlie Rojnan Empire, ed. Bury, iv. 436-440. APPENDIX I 349 coast of Africa." It must have reached Africa from Constantinople, and the desert west of Cyrenaica, the modern TripoHs, was an effectual barrier against the invasion ; and Corippus distinctly says the Moors escaped it. The malady spread in Africa in a.d. 543.^ The same author attributes the lassitude and change of character which overtook Justinian in his later days to the results of his own attack of the plague. "He was touched," he says, "with dispiritedness or with the malady of the Middle Age." ^ As Bury says, its presence in Persia caused Chosroes to retire prematurely from his campaign in 542, a few months before it reached Con- stantinople, where it raged for four months. " Procopius was especially impressed with the universality of the scourge ; it did not assail any particular race or class of men, nor prevail in any particular region, nor at any particular season of the year. Summer or winter, north or south, Greek or Arabian, washed or unwashed — of these distinctions the plague took no account ; it pervaded the whole world. A man might climb to the top of a hill, it was there : or retire to the depth of a cavern, it was there also. If it passed by a spot, it was sure to return to it again." The frivolous and the wicked seemed to escape the most readily. In the words of Procopius : " This pestilence, whether by chance or providential design, strictly spared the ^ Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire^ ed. Bury, iv. 436 and 437, note 128. ^ The Latei' Roman Emph-e, i. 358. 3 50 SAINT AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY most wicked." "The plague," continues Mr. Bury, speaking of the years 542 and 543, "aggravated the disastrous condition of the people, which had suffered from the pressure of taxation. It pro- duced a stagnation of trade and a cessation of work. All customary occupations were broken off, and the market-places were empty, save of corpse- bearers. The consequence was that Constantinople, always richly supplied, was in a state of famine, and bread was a great luxury. "In 558 there was another outbreak of the pestilential scourge in the East ; it lurked and lingered in Europe long after the first grand visitation. In the last years of Justinian it pro- duced a desolation in Liguria which was graphically described by Paul, the historian of the Lombards. * Videres,' he writes, 'saeculum in antiquum re- dactum silentium,' — the country seemed plunged in a primeval silence." ^ It was equally fatal elsewhere. An outbreak of the bubonic plague occurred in the year 600 in the army of the Great Khan of the Avars, who lost seven sons in one day, and compelled the heart- broken chief to raise the siege of Constantinople and to withdraw.^ It is no wonder that the Greek historians of those times, who still mingled philosophy with their narratives, were baffled by trying to find an explanation which should justify to their readers ^ The Later Roman Empire, i. 402 and 403. * lb. ii. 139, Theoph^nes ad an. APPENDIX I 351 the terrible and apparently arbitrary destruction of human life in this dread visitation, which looked so much more like the operations of an aimless fate than of the tender Father of mankind Procopius and Agathias, one a determinist and the other a champion of free will, and both men of remarkable faith, tried their hand and found no better solution than in attributing the scourge to the punishment of a wicked race by a wrathful God. We have seen in a former volume what a terrible visitation of the plague there was at the end of the sixth century in Italy, when Pope Pelagius died of it and the city was desolated, while it was one of the glories of St. Gregory's reign as Pope to design measures for its mitigation. In his Dialogues Gregory gives a bizarre account of a boy called Theodore, to illustrate his theory that the soul, while still in the body, receives punishment both for its own good and the benefit of others. He says that Theodore was a very unruly boy, and with his brother, entered St. Gregory's Monastery on the Caelian Hill, where he was very unwilling to hear any talk about spiritual matters, and would scoff or swear or protest against the notion that he would ever adopt a spiritual life. When the plague came, and the greater part of the city was grievously stricken, Theodore himself lay sick, and being at the point of death all the monks repaired to his chamber to pray for the happy departure of his soul, which could not apparently be far off, since half his body was 35 2 SAINT AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY dead and only a little life remained in his breast. Thereupon he cried out and tried to interrupt their devotions, bidding them depart, since he said he was being devoured by a dragon and their presence prevented him from dispatching him. " He hath already swallowed my head in his mouth : why should they prevent him having his way if it was his fate to eventually devour me ? " The monks at these fearful words bade him sign himself with the cross. He declared he would do this willingly if he could, but he could not, as he was so loaded with the dragon's scales. Thereupon the monks all fell on their knees and piteously prayed God to deliver the boy, who mercifully heard them, for he presently declared that the dragon had fled, and asked them to pray for forgiveness of his sins, declaring that he was ready to adopt a better life. He thus turned to God with his whole heart. ^ A few words must be added in regard to the effects of the plague farther west. Gregory of Tours, in describing the career of St. Gall, refers to its devastations in Gaul, especially in the diocese of Aries. He tells us how, by the prayers of the Saint, the city of Auvergne escaped the malady, and adds that the poor people in his diocese were conscious of a special protection, since they noticed that the houses and churches there were marked with a Tau!^ Some years later, namely, in 571, the pest broke out with especial virulence in the same district. There was such a mortality, says ^ Op. cit. lib. iv, ch. xxxvii. ^ Op. cit. iv. ch. v. APPENDIX I 35 3 Gregory, that it was impossible to count the multitudes who perished. There were not sufficient coffins in which to place the dead, and they were buried ten or more in a single hole. On one Sunday three hundred corpses were to be found in the basilica of St. Peter. " Death came very suddenly," says our author. " There arose in the armpit or the groin a sore in the form of a serpent, and within two or three days the victim died, after losing his senses. Thus perished the priest Cato, who, while others fled, remained faithfully to tend the sick. The bishop Cautinus, who had wandered hither and thither to escape the malady, and who re- turning to the city, caught it, and died on the Sunday of the Passion. Tetradius, his cousin, died at the same time. Lyons, Bourges, Chalon, and Dijon were grievously depopulated during the attack."^ In 580 the pest took another form all over Gaul, namely, that of a most deadly dysentery, a violent fever with vomitings of a nauseous kind, with pains in the kidneys, while the heads and necks of the victims turned yellow and even green in colour (!). The peasants fancied that their hearts were covered with boils [Rusticiores vero cor ales hoc pusulas nominabani). Some found a cure in profuse blood- letting, in which the blood seemed corrupted, while others had recourse to potions made by the herb doctors. The disease began in August and es- pecially attacked infants. Among others who were attacked were King Chilperic and his two sons, and ^ Op. cit. iv. 31. 3 54 SAINT AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY even the fierce and cruel Fredegondis, his wife, was moved into some semblance of tenderness by the appalling malady, and persuaded her husband to burn the registers of the tax-collectors. One of her two sons died. Another victim of the disease was Austr^childis, the shameless wife of King Gontran, " who, in dying," says Gregory, " decreed that people should weep for others beside herself, and made her husbandpromisetoputherdoctorstodeath." Another prominent victim was Nantin, Count of Angouleme.^ A litde later another outbreak took the form of a kind of smallpox at Senlis, while Nantes was deso- lated by the true plague itself. A mong the victims of the former was Felix, Bishop of Nantes, the details of whose illness are given by Gregory of Tours.' Lastly, somewhat later, we read of the renewal of the plague at Narbonne after a surcease of three years, and of its causing a terrible mortality there. The famous city of Albi also suffered grievously.^ Let us now turn to the great islands beyond the English Channel which so immediately concern us, and first to Ireland, where our documents are most abundant. In the Annals of Ulster we read under the year 544 of the first mortality, which is called blefed, in which Mobi Clarainech died. The Chron. Scot, dates this in 541, and tells us the victim was called Bercan. Under the year 548 we read in the Ulster Annals of a great mortality, in which Finnio Macc-U-Telduibh, Colam descendant 1 Op. cit. V. 35-39. ^ lb. vi. 14 and 15. 3 lb. ch. xxxiii. APPENDIX I 355 of Craumthanan, Mac Tail of Cill Cuilind, Sinchell, son of Cenandan, Abbot of Cill^achaidh of Druim- fota and Colum of Inisceltra, died/ In the year 553 we read: "The distemper, which is called the Samthrose'' (it is glossed by scabiem, and no doubt the word means a skin disease). In 555 2 we read : "A great mortality in this year, i.e. the cron-conaill, i.e. the buidhe ckonailC Cron, says Dr. Hennessy, means saffron-coloured, and duidke, yellow ; conaill'is the same as the word connall (glossed b)' stipulamy In the year 663 (660 in the Chron. Scotorum) we read in the Annals of Ulster: "A pestilence reached Ireland on the kalends of August. The mortality raged at first in Magh Itho of Fothart." In the Annals of the Four Masters we read under the same year: " Baetan Mac- Ua-Cormaic, Abbot of Cluain mic Nois, died. Comdhan Maccutheanne ; Bearach, Abbot of Beannchair ; Cearnach Sotal, son of Diarmaid, son of Aedh Slaine, died, together with the aforesaid persons, of a mortality which arose in Ireland, on the Calends of the August of this year in M^gh Itha, in Fotharta." In 664 the Ulster Annals again speak of a great mortality. "Diarmait, son of Aedh Slaine, and Blathmac (his brother), two kings of Erin, and Maelbresail, son of Maelduin, died of the Buidhe chonaill, Ultan, the son of Cunga, Abbot of Cluain Iraird, died. The falling asleep of Feichen of Fabhar ' Ckrcn. ^^^/. puts it in 551. ^ The Chron. ScoL puts it in 554. See Annals of Ulster, vol. i. p. 55, note 5. 3 56 SAINT AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY [i.e. St. Ferchin, Abbot of Fobhar), that is, from the same distemper, and of Aileran (or Ereran) the Wise, and Cronan, son of Silne. Cu cen mathair, son of Cathal, King- of Munster, died. Blathmac of Tethba, Oengus Uladh, Manchan of Liath, and bishops and abbots, and other persons innumerable died. Colman Cas, Abbot of Cluain mic Nois, and Cummeni, Abbot of Cluain mic Nois, slept." The Chiton. Scotorum, which dates these deaths wrongly in 66 1, adds to the names just given Ronan, son of Berach, Maeldoid, son of Finghin. In 665 there is a long obituary in the Ulster Annals, and, although the cause of death is not actually given, we can hardly doubt it was the plague. It includes Ailill Flannessa, son of Domnall, son of Aedh, son of Ainmire ; Maelcaich, son of Scannal of the Cruithni ; and Maelduin, son of Scannal, King of Cinal Coirpi ; also Eochaid larlaithi. King of the Cruithni ; Dubhinnrecht, son of Dunchad, King of Ui Briuin-Ai ; and Cellach, son of Guaire ; while the same author says that " Guaire Aidhne also died, according to another book " (his death had been reported in 662).^ The Four Masters add the additional name of Baeithin, Abbot of Beannchair or Bangor. In 666 the Annals of Ulster repeat that there was a mortality in Ireland. The Chron. Scot., which wrongly puts this in 663, states that four Abbots of Bennchair Uladh {i.e. of Bangor in Ulster) died of this plague, namely, Berach, Cumine, Colum, and Aedhan. The Four ^ The same deaths are reported in the Chron. Scot, in 662. APPENDIX I 357 Masters date it in 666. In 667 the Ulster Annals again refer to a great mortality, i.e. the Buidhe chonaill, adding, " Fergus, son of Mucoid, died, Diarmaid and Blathmace, the two Kinors of Ireland, and Feichin of Fobhar, and many others died, i.e. of the Buidhe chonaill, according to another book."^ In 682^ we read in the Ulster Annals, "the beginning of the mortality of children in the month of October." In the year 683^ there is in the same Annals the entry, "Mortality of the Children " [mortaliias parvuloT2ivi). Neither of these facts is mentioned in the Annals of the Four Masters. They have a reference, however, in 684 to a mortality amonganimals in general throughout the whole world for the space of three years, so that there escaped not one out of a thousand of any kind of animals. This is not mentioned in the Ulster Annals nor the Chron. Scot. Turninof from Ireland to the Welsh records, we first read of the plague in 547, when we are told there was a great mortality in which Mailcun, King of Gwenedota, or North Wales died (pausat). In 682 we read there was a great mortality in Britain, in which " Cats^ualart, son of CatCTuolaum," died.* Adamnan, in his life of St. Columba, has an interesting reference to the plague. He says that in his time it twice devastated the greater part of the world. " I will be silent," he says, "in regard ^ These names had aheady been mentioned in these Annals in previous years ; see Reeve's Adamnan, p. 182. - 679 in the Chron. Scot. ^ 680 in Chron. Scot * An. Cambr., M.H.B., pp. 831 and 833. 3 58 SAINT AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY to other regions, such as Italy and the city of Rome, the provinces of Cis-Alpine Gaul " (by which he means Gaul north of the Alps), "and Spain." He then says that the islands of Britain, that is to say, Scotia and Britannia (mark the order of the names), were twice devastated by the dire pestilence, except two peoples, namely, those of the Picts and Scots, between whom the dorsal mountains of Britain passed, who were protected against it, he says, by his own prayers and those of his patron {i.e. of St. Columba). He claims that not a single one of the nobles {comites) of the Picts and Scots nor of their people were attacked by the plague.^ It especially wasted Northumbria, once after King Ecgfrid's war, and the other time two years later. Turning to England, Bede tells us how on the 3rd of May in the year 664 (which fixes the date) there was an eclipse of the sun. In the same year a sudden pestilence first depopulated the southern coasts of Britain, and then extended into Northumbria, and for a long time ravaged that country far and near, and destroyed a great multitude of men. Among others, he says, there died Tuda, the Bishop of the Northumbrians, who was buried in the monastery called Paegnalaech (probably Finchale, near Durham). The same pestilence, he says, did no less harm in Ireland. Many of the nobility and of the middle class of the English nation were in Ireland at that time. In the days of Bishops Finan and Colman they ^ Lib. Col. ii. ch, xlvi. APPENDIX I 359 had forsaken their native island and retired thither either for the sake of divine studies or a more continent Hfe, and some of them presently devoted themselves faithfully to the monastic life, others chose to apply themselves to study, going about from one master's cell to another. The Scots [i.e. the Scots of Ireland) willingly received them all, and took care to supply them gratuitously with daily food and with books to read, and taught them without charge. Among them were Aedllhun and Ecgberht, two youths of great capacity of the English nobility, the former of whom was brother to Aediluini, who after studying in Ireland returned to England and became Bishop of the Lindissi. The two young men just named were in the monastery called Rathmelsige, by the Scots afterwards known as Mellifont, and having lost all their companions, who were either cut off by the pestilence or dispersed in other places, both fell sick of the same disease and were grievously afflicted. Ecgberht recovered, but Aedilhun died.^ Another and more famous victim was Bishop Cedd, who died while on a visit to the monastery of Laestingaeu (i.e. Lastingham, near Whitby in Yorkshire), and was buried first in the open air, but presently in a stone church in the same monastery. The terrors of the plague seem to have been especially severe among the East Saxons, many of whom, we are told, once more relapsed from Christianity, and with their King, Sigheri, became apostates and restored the ^ Bede^ iii. ch. xxvii. 36o SAINT AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY old idols and gods. It is pretty certain, although Bede does not expressly say so, that Earconberht the King of Kent, and Archbishop Deusdedit, who died on the same day, namely, the 14th of July 664, also perished from the plague. Mr. Plummer suggests that Bishop Damian of Rochester, who died at the end of the same year, was also carried off by the same visitation. Florence of Worcester^ declares that Bosil, Abbot of Mailros, died of the plague {^lethali inorbo pressus). It is possible that the East Anglian King y^thelwald, who also died in 664, also perished from it. Some years later St. Chad died of the plague on 2nd March 672,^ and during St. Cuthbert's residence on Fame Island (676-84) nearly all the Lindisfarne community was swept off by it.^ St. Aetheldrytha died of it in 679 or 680, and it was reported that she had pro- phesied that this would be so and also foretold the number of her companions who would also die.* As we have seen, Cadwaladar died in 682.^ The mortality was especially terrible in the monasteries, where the inmates were congregated together under bad sanitary and other arrange- ments. We have seen how this was the case at Lindisfarne and Lastingham. So it was at Selsey ; thus Bede says that, about the time when the South Saxons embraced the faith, a grievous mortality ran through many provinces of Britain, which by the divine dispensation reached to the aforesaid ^ M.H.B. 532. 2 Florence of Worcester, ib. 533. ' Vit. Cuth., ch. xxvii. * Bede, iv. 19. * Plummer, Bede, ii. 195. APPENDIX I 361 monastery, then governed by Eoppa, and many, as well of those who had come thither with the bishop {i.e. Wilfred), as also of those of the South Saxons who had been lately called to the faith, were in many places snatched out of this world. The brethren, in consequence, thought fit to keep a fast of three days, and humbly to implore the divine mercy. Bede mentions how at that time there was in the monastery a little boy of Saxon race lately called to the faith, who had been seized with the same disorder and had long kept his bed. On the second day of the said fasting, the boy was left alone in the place where he lay sick, when St. Peter and St. Paul (Bede calls them the " Princes of the Apostles ") appeared to him and bade him not fear death, and told him that that very day after receiv- ing the viaticum he should be conducted to heaven by themselves, and be thus freed from sickness. He was further told that his prayers for the sick brethren had been heard, and no one would thenceforth die of the plague, either in the monastery or in its adjacent possessions, but that all their people who were ill of the distemper should be restored to health, except himself, who was to be carried at once to heaven as a reward for his services. This good fortune, they said, had been due to the personal intercession of St. Oswald, who had been killed in battle this very day, and was then in heaven, and they were all bidden to communicate in the heavenly sacrifice, to cease from fasting, and to refresh themselves with food. The boy 362 SAINT AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY summoned a priest and told him what had hap- pened, and described the heavenly visitors to him. One of them, he said, was shorn like a clerk, while the other had a long beard. The brethren then ordered dinner, provided that Masses should be said, and that all should communicate as usual, and caused " a portion of the sacrifice of the Lord's oblation " to be carried to the sick boy. Soon after, and on the same day, the boy died. No one else except himself at that time suffered, and from that time we are told the day of the nativity of that king and soldier of Christ [i.e. of King Oswald) began to be yearly honoured with Masses, not only in that monastery but in many other places.^ So also at Wearmouth, where Bede may have been an eye-witness of what occurred. He tells us how, after Benedict Biscop's return from his sixth visit to Rome, he found troubles awaiting him — among other things, the venerable presbyter, Eosterwini (whom at his departure he had appointed abbot), and a large number of the brethren had died from the pestilence which was then everywhere raging. In the anonymous History of the Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow we are told that when the plague attacked the latter monastery all who could read or preach or recite the antiphons and responses were swept away, except Abbot Ceolfred himself and one little lad nourished and taught by him, ^ Bede, iv. 14. APPENDIX I 363 " who is now a priest of the same monastery, says our author. . . , And the abbot, sad at heart because of this revelation, ordained that, contrary to their former rite, they should, except at vespers and matins, recite their psalms without antiphons. And when this had been done, with many tears and lamentations on his part, for the space of a week, he could not bear it any longer, but decreed that the psalms, with their antiphons, should be restored accordinor to the order of the regular course. By means of himself and the aforesaid boy, he carried out, with no little labour, that which he had decreed, until he had either trained himself, or procured from elsewhere, men able to take part in the divine service."^ It has been reason- ably thought that the boy here referred to was none other than Bede himself. At Barking was a double monastery comprising a house of monks and another of nuns. It would seem that the nuns had their own cemetery. When the plague attacked the part of the house where the men lived, and they were "daily hurried away to meet their God," the Mother of the women's house began to inquire among the sisters in what part of the nunnery they would have their bodies buried if they died of the pestilence, and where a special burying-place for those infected was to be placed. The nuns being uncertain about it, a special sign from heaven was afforded them in the form of a divine light which moved along to ^ Plummer, Bede^ ii. p. 393. 364 SAINT AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY the place where it had been determined by the higher powers that the new cemetery should be planted.^ "At this time there was in the monastery," ac- cording to Bede, a boy about three years old named yEsica, who was brought up by the nuns. Having been seized by the plague, when at the last gasp he called by name upon one of the consecrated virgins as if she had been present, namely, " Eadgyd, Eadgyd, Eadgyd ! " and then died. The virgin in question was thereupon immediately seized with the distemper, and died the same day. At the same time, another of the nuns, being ill of the same disease, cried out to her attendants to put out the candle that lighted her, saying she saw the house full of light while the candle itself was quite dark. They heeded not what she said. She then declared that a man of God had visited her in a vision, and told her that at the break of day she should depart to Eternal Light, which came about, for she died next morning.^ I have enlara^ed at oreater leno^th than some may deem reasonable on the details of the awful visitations of pestilence which marked the sixth and seventh centuries, and which destroyed so many of the men and women among the classes most indispensable in maintaining the life of man at an ideal standard and especially of those in Holy Orders and the tenants of the Monasteries. We cannot realise the terrible void that must thus ^ Bede, Hist. Eccl. iv. ch. vii. ^ lb. ch. viii. APPENDIX I 365 have been created, nor wonder that it took centuries to reman the armies of civilization in Europe with adequate and competent administrators, and to battle successfully with all the nether forces which had meanwhile been let loose. It is for this reason that I have converged attention upon the results of the plague as an element in shaping the course of the succeeding centuries. APPENDIX II Pope Honorius and the Monothelites The history of the origin of Dogmas and of their development is one of the most intricate inquiries which the historian of Christianity has to face. The theory which underlies what is known as the Rule of Faith has been subject to many vicissi- tudes. Nothing is more difficult than to answer the question — What ought a Christian man to believe ? and why ? For a long time it was possible to reply that a Christian man should hold what is taught by the Church. So long as the Church was unbroken and held together by a common nexus of opinions and of ritual this view was sustainable. Presently, however, came a time when for various reasons the authority of the Church was denied and repudiated by large bodies of the most intellectually powerful of Christians. They denied the validity of an appeal to it as the final arbiter of Christian truth, and professed to go behind the Church to the Bible. They claimed that in this book we have the written Word of God directly inspired by Him, and further claimed that its interpretation did not need the help of the Church, 366 APPENDIX II 367 but was within the reach and compass of any godly man. I am not concerned with the validity of this claim. I am only concerned with the new issue which it raised, which compelled the Church to justify itself, a condition which had hitherto been unnecessary, since everybody had bowed without questioning to its authority. Not only was it driven to defend its authority which had been questioned, but it was further constrained to define with greater precision what was the basis upon which it proposed to stand, and to justify its claim to prescribe for mankind what they must believe if they were to be the champions of Truth. Put on its defence the Church declared that its authority was based on two sources, namely, the Bible and Tradition, and not on one alone, namely, the Bible, as those whom it looked upon as its rebellious children held. It claimed, in fact, that the Bible only contained a tittle of the wisdom and knowledge which Christ and His apostles had published, and that much the larger part of this knowledge had been preserved and handed down, not in the written book, but by a continuous tradi- tion going back to its original fountain source. In order to ascertain what the traditional view was on any subject in dispute a method was devised which was also reasonable. The bishops of the various Sees of different parts of the Christian world were summoned to a Council. Each one was supposed to be a Trustee for the Faith and to be able to report what had been taught in his diocese^ 368 SAINT AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY Mr. Percival has put very clearly and usefully what was the theory underlying these conciliar decisions. The question the Fathers considered was not what they supposed Holy Scripture might mean, nor what they from a priori arguments thought would be consistent with the mind of God, but something entirely different, to wit, what they had received from their fathers. " They understood their position to be that of witnesses, not of exegetes. They recognised but one duty resting upon them in this respect — to hand down to other faithful men that good thing the Church had received according to the command of God. The first requirement was not learning but honesty. The question they were called upon to answer was not. What do I think probable, or even certain, from Holy Scripture? but, What have I been taught? What has been entrusted to me to hand down to others ? When the time came, in the Fourth Council, to examine the Tome of Pope St. Leo, the question was not whether it could be proved to the satisfaction of the assembled Fathers from Holy Scripture, but whether it was the traditional faith of the Church. It was not the doctrine of Leo in the fifth century, but the doctrine of Peter in the first, and of the Church since then, that they desired to believe and to teach, "^ and so, when they had studied the Tome they cried out : " This is the faith of the Fathers ! This is the faith of the Apostles ! . . . Peter hath thus spoken by ^ Percival, the seven oecumenical councils. Hist. Note to the first (Ecurei. Council, APPENDIX II 369 Leo ! The Apostles thus taught ! Cyril thus taught," etc. "This is clearly set forth," adds Mr. Percival,^ " by Pope Vigilius as follows : No one can doubt that our fathers believed that they should receive with veneration the letter of blessed Leo if they declared it to agree with the doctrines of the Nicene and Constantinopolitan Councils, as also with those of blessed Cyril, set forth in the first of Ephesus. A nd if that letter of so great a Pontiff needed to be approved by those comparisons, how can the letter to Maris the Persian, which especially rejects the First Council of Ephesus and declares to be heretical the expressed doctrines of the blessed Cyril, be believed to have been called orthodox by those same Fathers, conde77tning as it does those writings by comparison with which, as we have said, the doctrine of so great a Pontiff deserved to be commendedy^ This expresses in clear language what had in substance been said long before by Vincent of Lerins, who died about 450 a.d., and whose famous work, the Commofdtorium, is one of the most important ecclesiastical classics. In this he tells us that an appeal to Tradition as a source of Divine truth would not have been necessary had not all the leading heretics claimed the support of Holy Scripture.'^ In defining what a genuine Tradition implies, he says, it must have been believed every- where, always, and by all {q2iod ttbique, quod ^ See Migne, Ixix. col. 162. Percival, loc. cit. ' Vigilius Const, pro. dam. Trium Capitulorum. * Chaps. I and II. 24 370 SAINT AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY semper, quod ab omnibus creditus est). In other words, we must follow Univei'sitas, Antiquitas, Con- sensio, understanding by the last the agreement of all, or almost all, bishops and doctors.^ It would have been well, perhaps, if the estab- lishment and preservation of dogmas had continued to be thus based (as the primitive theory required) upon the Bible or upon Tradition, in each case receiving its ultimate warrant from the inspired teaching of the Saviour and His apostles. Unfortunately this method of dogmatic teaching did not suffice for those who eventually shaped the Church's theology. The Greeks, who so largely fathered the latter, were a good deal more than mere theologians — they were keen philosophers steeped in the theories which had been pursued along different lines by their acute-minded pre- decessors, the Sophists and their allies. They were too much imbued with the practice of investigating the inner nature of things, of causes, and ends, to be content with the simple dogmas of primitive belief. They proceeded to sift and analyse these with extraordinary dexterity, not by a process of safe and sound induction, but by a very unsafe and dangerous deductive method. The process really began with St. Paul, who was a Greek in mind and thought, and not a Jew. The method was in essence what is known as Scholasticism, viz. the application of logic and reasoning to the simple factors of primitive 1 Chap. II., see Cazenove, Diet. Chr. Biog., iv, 1154. APPENDIX II 371 Faith, and thus building- up out of them a huge scheme of reasoned theology. It has been re- peatedly urged that Scholasticism started in the twelfth century with Anselm and others. This seems to me an entire mistake. It no doubt received a great impetus from them, and a still greater impetus when Aristode's works were in laro-e part recovered, and when those who used them found themselves in possession of a much more powerful weapon for ratiocination. In essence, however, this later Scholasticism was the same as the process followed in embryo by St. Paul. Once dogma became the child of dialectics, instead of being the product of Faith, every kind of danger was introduced into the discussion. Zeno and his scholars had taught men to use dialectics in a most subtle fashion to sustain almost any conclusion, and if there had been a free play of discussion the whole of the Chris- tian Faith would have been dissolved into chaos by the Dialecticians. What happened was perhaps even worse than chaos. A certain number of men with strong wills and aggressive pens and tongues, and endowed also with considerable gifts, who became known in early times as Fathers or "Fathers of the Church," and who were succeeded by others in later times known as Doctors, were accepted as the final Arbiters of the Faith. They had no real authority of any kind except that which comes from learning, character, or skill in argument. These last attributes in an age which was getting very barren in such qualities, secured for them and 372 SAINT AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY their opinions very considerable influence. So much so that they came to be looked upon as in a measure inspired, and the results of their meta- physical skill came to be treated as Divine truths. Men were even led to treat their opinions and to quote them as having equal potency and authority with the contents of the Bible, the Creeds, and the pronouncements of Councils. In a later age the obiter dicta and opinions of these Fathers and Doctors were collected by the so-called Masters of the Sentences, and ranged alongside of quotations from the Bible as the common material on which the great scheme of Theology was based ; both being treated as having virtually co-ordinate authority. No definite distinction was made, for instance, between a pronouncement by Thomas Aquinas and a state- ment by an Evangelist. The theologians did not claim that the great mass of these pronouncements were directly drawn from the Bible, but only that they were consequen- tial, and followed as inevitable corollaries from the simpler truths enshrined in Holy Writ or handed down by tradition. This was in many cases an unjustifiable pretension, for they were of no more real weight and authority than other and con- tradictory deductions which could be and were derived from the same premises by rival Fathers and Doctors. They were of no more warrant again than the equally honest, and in many cases equally irrational, views of others who differed from them and whom they with great complacency styled heretics. APPENDIX II 373 That their views eventually prevailed was due very largely to accident, to persistent iteration, to the use of illegitimate methods of pressure or corruption, or to the overwhelming- votes of ignorant and prejudiced men, always at the mercy of the most fanatical advocates, and always frightened at the word heresy. No one has ever defined what a Father of the Church is, or what right or claim he has to define dogmas beyond that which is possessed by any educated man with trained reasoning powers. Nevertheless we find that during the earlier cen- turies of Christianity a few subtle-minded people succeeded in imposing on the world without any authority a crowd of propositions, most of them purely verbal and incapable of being pictured in the mind, which have been forced on the Church by an active and aggressive section of it, a section which has arrogated to itself the sole claim to ortho- doxy. Let us now turn from this rather abstract preface (which is necessary to understand the problem), to one more concrete, and try and analyse a particular instance of what I mean. The incarnation of Christ is professedly one of those mysteries which, as Occam, the great English schoolman who destroyed Scholasticism, showed long ago, can only be apprehended by Faith, and cannot be explained by any reasoning process. The Bible statements about it are simple enough. They tell us that God became incarnate, in a virgin who was made pregnant by the Holy Ghost. That statement cannot be made the sub- 374 SAINT AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY ject-matter of deductive reasoning, because its elements are entirely outside all analogies. No amount of dialectic skill can carry the question further than the original statement of it in Holy Writ. The Union of God and man ; of the uncon- ditioned, the infinite, the omnipresent, the immortal, the all-powerful, the all-knowing, with the con- ditioned, the finite, the local, the mortal, the frail, the ignorant, etc., in one person is not thinkable. Directly we begin to try and think or write about it, we begin to condition the uncon- ditioned, to define the indefinable. It may be possible to accept the simple words as a phrase or a definition, untranslatable to our minds, and to give our assent to them by Faith without pretending to form a mental picture of what they mean, but further we cannot go, for we cannot transcend our own thought. It has been the object of Scholasticism in this, as in other cases, to try and pierce this solid wall which 2"irdles our thought about and limits our human horizon in such issues, and to try and transcend both thought and consciousness, and to take us into a transcendental metaphysical world. It has further been the continual effort of the orthodox, as they call themselves, to insist upon all men with their lips, declaring that they accept one alleged deduction from some particular dogmatic definition rather than another. They have gone further, and have demanded from the orthodox that they shall suppress every alternative pronouncement APPENDIX II 375 under penalty of fire and sword, and have put to death with cruel torture myriads of men and women in the process. The attempt has not only entirely failed in producing uniformity of opinion, butwe are not a whit nearer a solution of these everlasting paradoxes as a consequence of the gigantic mass of sophistry which is known as Scholasticism. No bridge has been found anywhere to traverse the gulf between infinity and what is finite, between what has conditions and what has none. No interpreter has succeeded in really translating into rational thought ideas and conditions which ex hypothesi cannot be compre- hended by reason. The notion that any legitimate solution is feasible betrays, in fact, a stupendous ignorance of the very elements of thought and consciousness. Let us see what really happened in the case we are discussing. Instead of leaving the mystery as it appears in the Bible, and merely affirming the Incarnation as an ineffable and unthinkable union of the Divine and human, the ever restless and unsatisfied minds of the Greeks proceeded to refine, discriminate, and build up a quite fantastic super- structure, fantastic because unwarranted by the pos- sibilities of any legitimate logical process. Thus a number of theories contradictory or inconsistent with each other arose, all of them being attempts to transcend human experience, and none of which, whether dubbed orthodox or heterodox, had the slightest claim to be pronounced true or false. No human tribunal being competent to try the issue. 376 SAINT AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY Among these transcendental puzzles, perhaps the one that caused the greatest heat and the most wideworld consequences was the question of the real nature of the God-man Christ. The Nestorians had maintained that in Christ there were two distinct hypostases or persons (as the Latins translated the evasive term), one human and the other Divine, which were both perfect. This view was pronounced to be heretical by the Fathers who dominated the Council of Ephesus in 431, as more or less involving two Christs, two Sons of God, etc. At the other extreme, another set of writers insisted that the parentage of Christ involved similar conditions to those of man, and that the natures of the father and mother were merged in the offspring, and did not continue to exist as separate or separable entities in Him. Such was the view of one of the most powerful sects, hence named Mono- physites. The view was repudiated by the section which eventually dominated the position, and which was treated as orthodox. This latter section main- tained the unthinkable position that the God-man, although he was "one" in essence, comprised two separate and separable persons, one human, and partaking of all the qualities of 2, perfect man (that is to say, of such a man as never existed in all time : for the definition of man implies a man subject to frailty, error, sin, and other limitations), and a perfect God bound by no limitations and undefinable. These two persons were supposed to coexist in the God-man without one interfering or trenching on APPENDIX II 377 the other, and )et without friction or diversity of thought or purpose. In either case the opinion was really quite immaterial for simple men, who could not even understand the problem, since there was no authority under heaven which could finally decide a meta- physical issue like this, based, as so many others are based, on purely transcendental argu- ments entirely beyond the reach of legitimate dialectics. Both theories were equally unthinkable, and neither of them had the slightest moral purpose or interest. The feud between the Orthodox, as they called themselves, and the Monophysites was the more bitter and furious because it was about a mere metaphysical and not a real issue, one too which the crowd could not even comprehend and which the champions on each side found the greatest difficulty in expressing in rational language. What was really fought about was a form of words emptied of any comprehensible meaning and which thus became a real shibboleth. On both sides there was the same infirmity, namely, an attempt to define a mystery which could not be compre- hended by reason, and which, as presented by the Scriptures, appealed to faith only and not to logic. All that can be said about it is, that if (which is not the case) the analogy of human nature is of any value whatever, in the settlement of such a problem, the Monophysites had much the best of the argument since they did appeal to human 378 SAINT AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY experience. The case on the other side was sustained by quite illegitimate and sophistical arguments, in which the validity of the deduction was entirely destroyed by being based on purely arbitrary and unverified postulates. While the furious combatants on each side fought most fiercely about their empty shibboleths, which could not be translated into thought, the Empire was being sapped by the hatred and feud which was thereby engendered among its subjects, and presently, as we have seen, the feud was the main cause of the collapse which took place when half the Christian world was destroyed by the Muhammedans, It is not wonderful that the Emperor Heraclius, who at that time was in the full strength of his mental and bodily vigour, should have been very anxious to piece the rent in the community which was undoing his Empire and to bring the Orthodox and the Monophysites, who were very numerous, into one fold. His friend Sergius, the Patriarch of Constantinople, also a man of far-seeing views, was of the same mind with himself. The latter presently informed his master that his own pre- decessor, Mennas, in one of his writings had put forward a formula which he thought might be accepted by the Monophysites as a reasonable and acceptable compromise. This formula, while conceding two natures in Christ, postulated a single operative will, Oekrjfjba, which he called a divine-human energy, /jlU evepjeia S" dvSpiKri. It APPENDIX II 379 seemed to him, as it surely seems to any person who will analyze the problem, that in regard to the will it is impossible to understand how Christ can have two wills, a Divine will and a human will, working with complete independence, and each with complete potency. The very essence of a will is that it shall be free. To postulate the existence of two free wills in one person, where neither shall be constrained and dominated by the other, is to postulate an un- workable machine as the operative part of thought and conviction. Even those who pressed the view allowed that the two wills must always act in unison and never conflict with one another, a concession which really made their contention a mere verbal one, as so many dogmatic pro- nouncements in fact are.^ ^ This may be illustrated by a paragraph from the Definition of Faith made at the Council of Constantinople in 680, where we read : "We declare that in Him " {i.e. in Christ) "are two natural wills, . . . and these two natural wills are not contrary one to the other (God forbid !), as the impious heretics assert, but His human will follows, and that not as resisting and reluctant, but rather as subject to His Divine and Omnipotent Will." Can verbal distinctions without real meaning go further ? It will not be uninteresting to quote another passage on this subject from a very modern writer, who has great authority among English Roman Catholics, namely, Mr. Luke Rivington, to show what a quagmire of mere meaningless verbiage can be imposed upon us as genuine psychology by an able man who sees theological questions through a smoked glass. He says: " Further, there is in our Lord's human nature what is sometimes called the will of the reason and the will of the senses, but between the two there is not, and there cannot be, contrariety. In the Agony the will of the senses expressed itself, but was incapable of disobedience, for it was not wounded by the fall, and it was the will of the Eternal Word. There was no triumph of one over the other, for there was no rebellion, no faintest wish that it might be otherwise. In a word, the operation of 380 SAINT AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY Having framed the formula, the Patriarch Sergius communicated it to the other Patriarchs and to the heads of the so-called Monophysite schism, and those associated with them. It met with a very satisfactory welcome, and it looked as if Mono- thelism, as it was called, was going to bring peace and ""oodwill to the fiohting- sects. It was accepted by Severus the champion of the Monophysites, and by the Jacobite Patriarch Anastasius. While among the orthodox, Cyrus, Bishop of Phasis, who became Patriarch of Alex- andria, and the Patriarch of Antioch, both con- curred. The action of the Pope was more significant and more far-reaching. His view of the position was contained in two very friendly and sympathetic letters written to Sergius. These letters of Honorius were apparently not known at Rome, or the copies of them, if any, had been lost. They were only published to the world by the Council of Constantinople in 680, a Council specially called to settle the differences on the subject of Monothelism, and entirely manoeuvred so as to secure its adhesion to the Roman view, and where, therefore, it would be the interest of those who the human will (with its two departments) is distinct from the operation of the divine in the same Person of the Word, but while distinct, incapable of contrariety." What is this? Is it philosophy? is it theology ? is it capable of being thought ? Is this stuff really accepted in Roman seminaries as part of the Divine Wisdom imparted to simple men by Christ and His apostles, or merely a handful of cobwebs from a disordered brain trying to give form to a nightmare, and imposed on simple men without any authority under heaven, by a private and lay member of a Church which repudiates all exercise of private judgment as pernicious in those outside its fold ? APPENDIX II 381 controlled the Council to keep the letters of Honorius dark if possible. The genuineness of the letters has been questioned by some Roman Catholic apologists of obscure reputation, such as Gravina, Coster, Stapleton, Wiggers, Bartoli, and Ughi, but this is no longer the case. Thus Father Mann in the latest history of the Popes, says : " Contrary to the opinion of some Catholic writers, the letters are here allowed to be genuine and incorrupt. . . . This is in accordance with nearly all the best Catholic writers." He then quotes Hefele, Hist, of the Councils, v. p. 56 seq., p. 191 of the English translation.^ He might also have quoted Pennachi's monograph entitled, De Honorii I. Rotnani Pontificis, causa in Concilio VI., or, still more effectively, the Jesuit Grisar's Analecta. Dollinger, writing on the same side, also makes an effective reply. "Seeing," he says, "that the letters of Honorius were laid before the Council,* examined and condemned in the presence of the papal legates (who at any rate must have known their contents), it was found necessary to abandon this method of getting out of the difficulty." Even if they had been forged, a supreme difficulty would still remain. It has been overlooked by the champions of Papal Infallibility that the Pope did not stand alone in the matter. The doctrine of Papal Infallibility was quite unknown at the beginning of the seventh century, and at that date the pro- ^ See Mann, op. cit. i. p. 337. ^ i.e. the Council of 680. 382 SAINT AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY nouncement of one Patriarch was as good and as authoritative as that of another, and Honorius in his action really stood alongside of his three brother Patriarchs who had co-ordinate jurisdiction and authority with himself. We must therefore very largely extend the area of forgery if we are to include them. The fact is, the suggestion of forgery in this case is based on no single fact or reason except the supposed necessity of saving the face of an infallible Pope. The original copies of these letters in Latin, says Hefele, are no longer extant, but we still possess the Greek translation which was read at the sixth oecumenical Council, was then compared by a Roman delegate with the Latin originals still extant in the patriarchal archives at Constantinople and found to be correct. From the Greek translation two old Latin versions were made, which are printed in Mansi and Hardouin. Of these, the first was doubt- less prepared by the Roman Librarian Anastasius.^ In his letter the Pope makes a sharp distinction between what the Greeks called OeXTjixa and ivipyeia, (translated operatio by the Latins), i.e. the will and its operative and resultant action. It has been urged that he did not quite understand the subtlety of the distinction as defined by the Greeks. This seems to me very improbable. There were plenty of Greeks at Rome at this time who could help him even if he had not been the scholar he was. In his letters Honorius disputed the formula of ^ Hefele, Councils, Eng. ed. v. 28. APPENDIX II 383 Sergius in one respect, and declared that he held it not to be correct to say there were only one or two, or any specified number of ways by which the decision of the will could be put into operation, but many ways [TroXvTpoirai'i), and he therefore deemed it idle to discuss that subject and advised that discussion on it should cease. The words of the Latin translation are worth quoting as they stand. Utrtmi a2ite'ni propter opera divinitatiset humanitatis, U7ia, an gemmae operationes debeant derivatae dicivel intelligi, ad nos ista pertinere non debent, relinqzientes eagranimaticis, quisolent parvulis exquisita derivajido no77iina venditare. Nos enini non unam operationem vel duas Dominum Jesuin Christum, ejusque sanctum. Spiritum, sacris littcris percepimus, sed multi- formiter cognovimtis operatum'' So much for the operations of the will, now for the will itself, deKt^ixa, which was the real issue ; that upon which the subsequent trouble arose, namely, as to the unity or duality of Christ's " will" Upon this the language of Honorius is as precise and explicit as it can well be. I will give it both in its Greek and Latin form : oOev koI ev deXrjfia ofioXoyov/xev rov Kvpiov ^Irjcrou XpiGTov ; in Latin, luide et zmamvoluniate^n fatemur Domini nostri Jesu Christi^ (i.e. whence also, we confess one Will of our Lord Jesus Christ). N othing can be plainer. Not only so, but he made an express reply to those who quoted the two critical texts relied upon by the other side, namely, " I came not to do mine * lb. 29. 384 SAINT AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY own will, but the will of him that sent me," and " Not my will, but thine be done," which he declared should be taken in a figurative sense only, and that Christ meant the two phrases merely as an ex- hortation to us to submit our wills to the divine will, which was apparently the very argument used by the Monophysite Severus in the same behalf. Others have urged that the Fathers at the Council misunderstood the meaning of Honorius when they condemned him as a heretic. This is treating the one hundred and seventy-four members of the Synod who signed its Acts and who were all Bishops with very scant courtesy. They condemned the letters of Honorius after examining them, and ordered them to be burnt. Apart from this, the very words of Honorius in regard to the single will, which I have quoted above, are as plain and clear as they can be made, and the majority of those who have discussed these passages, especially those who are more directly responsible for the pronouncement on Papal Infallibility, have overlooked what the declaration of the Pope really meant. It will be remembered that up to this date there had been no official or authoritative pronouncement on the subject of Monothelism, the particular issues had not been raised and decided by any authoritative body. There were certain obiter dicta of individual scholars, but so far as I know there had been no definite pronouncement as to what was or was not the orthodox view. The Pope seems to say this in another clause of APPENDIX II 385 his letter, thus, Non opertet ad dogmata haec ecclesiastica 7^etorquere, quae neque synodales apices super hoc exaiizinantes, neque auctoritates canonicae visae sunt explanasse, tit unam vel duas energias aliquis p7'aesuniat Christi Dei praedicare, quas neque evangelicae vel apostolicae literae, neque synodalis examinatio super his habita, visae stmt terminasse, nisi fortassis, sicut praefati stmtus, quidam aliqua balbtitiendo docuerunt, condiscendentes ad informan- das vientes, atqtie intelligentias parvulorum, quae ad ecclesiastica dogmata Iraki non debent, quae unusqtiisqtie in sensu suo abundans, videttir secundtim propriam sententiam explicare} It would seem, therefore, that Pope Honorius, together with the other Patriarchs, were the first authoritative persons who defined the orthodox position on the subject of Monothelism v. Duo- thelism ; and further, that if we accept his own plain and unqualified language as it stands, we must admit that he, with the other Patriarchs, accepted Mono- thelism as the orthodox faith. This, as we shall see, was also the opinion of his immediate successors on the Papal throne and of the Church both East and West. A more powerful Court to decide such a question it would be impossible to conceive, except the decision of a general Council, and it certainly- committed the Church most completely to Mono- thelism. From such a decision, it seems to me, the champions of Papal infallibility cannot appeal without rebelling against the Vatican Council. ^ Migne, P.L. xxxvii. 474. 25 386 SAINT AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY Meanwhile, precisely in accordance with the views of Honorius as set out in his first letter to Sergius, the latter drew up a pronouncement which was called an Ecthesis, in which it was forbidden to discuss the question of a single or a double "energy" or operation; while in regard to the "Will of Christ" it was declared to be a single one only. This Ecthesis was officially issued in the name of the Emperor and was confirmed by a Synod assembled under Sergius at the end of 638.^ Soon after which both Sergius and Honorius died. While all the patriarchs were united as champions of Monothelism and their decision was confirmed by a Synod at Constantinople, a sharp opponent to it arose in the person of the monk Sophronios. The fact that Sophronios and another monk named Maximus were the great protagonists of the opposition to Monothelism seems to show that, as Mil man long ago suggested, the movement was in substance a Monkish one, and that the result was the first great victory gained by the Regulars over the Seculars. This meant a victory of monks who were not in Orders and merely laymen under vows, against a Pope, against all the Patriarchs, and against a general Synod of the Church, a position that is positively ridiculous when we remember that they in fact succeeded in forcing their unauthorised view upon the Church. Sophronios aroused the fanaticism of the crowd by raising the popular cry that the proposed peace was to be purchased by ^ Mansi, x. 1000. APPENDIX II 387 a complete surrender to the hated Monophysites, by arousing jealousies of the Constantinople Church among the Latins, and by raising the cry of heresy, which in Italy at that time was easily believed, since the Latin Church was then sunk in torpor and ignorance. The forces of the secular power and the influence of three of the Greek patriarchs quietened Sophronios for a while and misled the Emperor, who appointed him Patriarch of Jerusalem. He thereupon began his furious campaign afresh. In previous pages I have described what happened at Rome after the death of Honorius. He was succeeded successively by Severinus and John the 4th, neither of whom apparently took part in the disputes about Monothelism, the contrary opinion being, so far as we can see, based on a mistake.^ John was in turn succeeded by a Greek named Theodore, whose father had been Bishop of Jerusalem, and who was himself a friend and adherent of Sophronios and had perhaps been a monk. He was attached to the latter's views on Monothelism. Meanwhile the Emperor Constans the 2nd, succeeded to the throne of Constantinople, and apparently at the instance of his Patriarch Paul, withdrew the Ecthesis which had been issued under the segis of Heraclius and substituted for it another document called the Type} Theodore died in 649. Thereupon it would appear that the bishops and priests at Rome who had been worked upon by * Vide ante, pp. 290-293. ' Ante, pp. 206, 207. 388 SAINT AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY the monks and who were opposed to Monothelism proceeded to elect Martin, a famous champion of the two wills (that is, of a heresy, according to the only decision of the Church at the time). He was consecrated without the Emperor's consent having been obtained to his election, and was thus de jure not a Pope at all/ Martin proceeded to summon a provincial Council at Rome, to which he gave the name of " General," but which was in reality only an Italian provincial Council, and did this without the knowledge of the Emperor, to whom the right alone belonged of summoning every legitimate Council. At this quite irregular Latin synod, which met on the 5th of October 649, the Monothelite prelates Theodore of Pharan, Cyrus patriarch of Alexandria, Sergius, Pyrrhus, and Paul, patriarchs of Constanti- nople, were condemned and anathematised as supporters of Monothelism, while the Imperial edicts, the Ecthesis and the Type, were styled impious and declared inoperative. The result of all this quite arbitrary action was that the election of Martin as Pope was declared void on the ground of its irregularity, not by the Emperor only, but by the Roman clergy, who deposed him and elected his successor. This clearly made all the acts of his reign, including those of his Roman synod, also void. Martin was removed to Cherson, and a fresh Pope, Eugenius the 4th, was elected in his place by the bishops and clergy of Rome, and he was duly con- 1 Vide ante, pp. 298, 299. APPENDIX II 389 secrated after his election had been confirmed by the Emperor/ It is a noteworthy fact that the Patriarch Paul in writing to Martin's predecessor, Theodore, justifying his adhesion to Monothelism, stated that " he had followed the doctrine of Honorius," who was in fact as much committed to that opinion as any of the four Eastern prelates who had been anathematised by the Synod of Rome. The name of Honorius does not appear, however, among those denounced at the latter synod. Probably the fact of Honorius having already compromised the position was not known there, and perhaps if it had been the Roman Synod would not have been held. Let us now pass on a few years. Milman sug- gests that by the exertions of the Eastern Monks a considerable change had recently taken place in the view of the Eastern Church on Monothelism. The Emperor Constantine Pogonatos (663-685) seems to have been as anxious to reunite the broken fragments of the Church as his predecessor Heraclius. If he was to do so, however, It was neces- sary that he should conciliate the Latin Church, which after the conquests of the Muhammedans had become relatively much more important, and where the monks were all-powerful. He found the Church of Constantinople, which had become most Erastian, very complacent, and ready to turn its back on the views it had maintained when the Ecthesis and the Type were issued. ^ Vide anlc, pp. 300-306. 390 SAINT AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY On the 7th of November 680, Constantine caused to be summoned at Constantinople what is known as the 6th QEcumenical Council, which was attended by nearly three hundred bishops, of whom 174 signed its Acts. At this Council, which was presided over in person by the Emperor, all the five patriarchs were represented. The repre- sentatives of Pope Agatho were seated on the left of the Emperor. The Pope himself was summoned to the Council as "the most holy and blessed archbishop of Old Rome and oecumenical Pope," and the Patriarch of Constantinople as " the most holy and blessed Archbishop of Constantinople and oecumenical Patriarch." In his letter to the Emperor, Agatho enumerates the delegates whom he had sent to the Constantino- politan Council. These he styles "our fellow-serv- ants, Abundantius, John, and John ; ourmost reverend brother bishops, Theodore and George ; our most beloved sons and presbyters, with our most beloved son John, a deacon, Constantine a sub-deacon of this holy spiritual mother, the Apostolic See, as well as Theodore the presbyter legate of the holy Church of Ravenna, and the religious servants of God, the monks.^ Mark this phrase : What legitimate place had Monks at a Council according to the traditions of the Church ? The Pope was therefore well represented at the Council. His legates and representatives signed its acts and took them back with them to Rome. ^ Percival, op. cit. 329. APPENDIX II 391 The four representatives of the Pope signed themselves "John, an humble deacon of the holy Roman Church, and holding the place of the Most holy Agatho, oecumenical Pope of the City of Rome ;" "John, by the mercy of God, bishop of the City of Thessalonica, and legate of the Apostolic See of Rome;" "John, the unworthy bishop of Portus, legate of the whole Council of the Holy Apostolic See of Rome;" "Stephen, by the mercy of God, bishop of Corinth, and legate of the Apostolic See of Old Rome." The Council beean with the reading of a letter from the Pope in answer to the Emperor's invitation [sacra), reciting that during the previous forty-six years certain novelties contrary to the orthodox faith had been introduced by those who at various times had been bishops of the Imperial city, namely, Sergius, Paul, Pyrrhus, and Peter, by Cyrus at one time Archbishop of Alexandria, and by Theodore Bishop of Pharan, against which novelties he, Agatho, had persistently prayed ; he begged that those who shared these views in the most Holy Church of Constantinople might explain what was their source. It will be noted that the Pope's representatives do not here name Honorius, another proof that the existence of the letters of that Pope were not then known at Rome. To the letter of Pope Agatho the Monothelites present protested that they had brought forward no new method of speech, but had taught what they had received from the Holy 392 SAINT AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY CEcumenical Synods, as well from the archbishops of "this Imperial city," to wit, Sergius, Paul, Pyrrhus, and Peter, as also from Honorius who was Pope of Old Rome, and from Cyrus who was Pope of Alexandria, that is to say, In reference to the Divine Will and its operation, and so we believe and so we preach, and we are ready to stand by and defend this faith/ The mention of Honorius in this protest was probably a revelation and a great surprise to the Papal delegates. At the fourth session of the Council a letter from Pope Agatho addressed to the Emperor, and to Heraclius, and Tiberius Augustus, setting out at considerable length the case of those who held the doctrine of two Wills, and appending a catena of passages from the Greek Fathers was read.^ Then followed a similar letter addressed to the same three high personages from Pope Agatho and a synod of 125 bishops which had met at Rome, which claimed to represent the views of the Lombards, Slavs, Franks, French {sic) Goths, and Britons, and further claimed that these views repre- sented the traditional faith as set forth in the Council presided over by St. Martin, the forlorn character of which I have already described.^ After the reading of these letters the Emperor asked George, Archbishop of Constantinople, and ^ Labbe and Cossart, Con. vi. col. 609, etc. - A more extraordinary specimen of inept logic, sophistical use of irrelevant analogies, and mere puerilities than this letter it would be difficult to find. * Percival, op. cit. 340-41. APPENDIX II 393 Macarius, Archbishop of Antioch, and their suffragans, to say if they accepted the views set out by Agatho and by his Synod. The former on behalf of himself and his bishops, except only Theodore of Miletus (who handed in his assent at the tenth session), declared that they accepted the Pope's letter and its contents ; an excellent example of the utterly Erastian character of the Church of Constantinople at this time, for it really meant entirely reversing the previous decision of the Church. On the other hand Macarius, the Patriarch of Antioch, replied, "I do not say that there are two wills or two operations in the dispensation of the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, but one will and one theandric operation." At the thirteenth session of the Council, sentence was pronounced against the Monothelites. In the document containing this sentence the Fathers at the Council declared that they had reconsidered the letters of Sergius, Patriarch of Constantinople ; Cyrus, Bishop of Phasis ; Honor ms, sometime Pope of Old Rome, as well as the letter of the latter to the same Sergius^ and declared that these documents were quite foreign to the apostolic dogmas ! to the declarations of the Holy Councils! and to all the accepted Fathers ! and that they followed the false teachings of the heretics. They further pro- nounced that the names of those whose doctrines they execrated must also be thrust forth from the Holy Church of God. Then follow the names of 394 SAINT AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY Serglus, Cyrus of Alexandria, Pyrrhus, Paul, and Peter of Constantinople and Theodore of Pharan, who had all been rejected by Pope Agatho because they were opposed to the orthodox faith and upon whom they pronounced anathema. The document then continues, and with these we define that these shall be expelled from the holy Chuj^ch of God, and anathematised Honorius, who was sometime Pope of Old Rome, because of ivhat we fonnd written by him to Sergius, that in all respects he folloived his view and confimned his impious doctrines, etc. etc.^ This was followed by the acclamations of the Fathers, in which, after greeting the Emperor in fulsome phrases, together with Agatho the Pope, George, Patriarch of Constantinople, and Theo- phanes of Antioch, the Council, and the Senate, they pronounced anathema against Theodore of Pharan the heretic, Sergius the heretic, Cyrus the heretic, Honorius the heretic, etc. etc."-^ Then followed the definition of the Faith, which was made at the eighteenth session, in the midst of which occurs a denunciation of the personages previously declared to be heretics, and, inter alia, the Fathers declare "how the author of evil, who in the bes^innine availed himself of the aid of the serpent, . . . had found suitable instruments for working out his will." Then comes a list of the leaders of the Monothelites who had been thus mis- led by the Devil ; in which we read : "And moreover Honorius, who was Pope of the Elder Rome."^ ^ Percival, op. cit. 342-43- ' ib. 343, ^ lb. 344. APPENDIX II 395 There then follows the so-called Prosphoneticus, or Report of the Council to the Emperor, with a recapitulation of the Faith and a denunciation of various heretics, including the leaders of the Mono- thelites. "We cast out of the Church," says the document, "and rightly subject to anathema all superfluous novelties as well as their inventors, that is to say, Theodore of Pharan, etc. etc." Then follows the sentence, "And with them Honorius, who was the ruler (irpoeSpov) of Rome, since he followed them in these thinos." Then follows a letter from the Council addressed to Pope Agatho, telling him how, by the help of the Emperor Constantine, the Fathers there had overthrown the error of impiety, etc. etc., and had slain with anathema as lapsed concerning the faith and as sinners certain persons ... in accordance with the sentence already given concerning them in the Pope's letter, . . . "their names," they add, "are these: Theodore, Bishop of Pharan, Sergius, Honorius, Cyrus, Paul, Pyrrhus, and Peter," etc. etc.^ Lastly, followed the Imperial decree proclaim- ing the finding of the Council, which was posted up in the third atrium of the great Church near the Dicymbala. In this decree the Council speaks of "the unholy priests who infected the Church and falsely governed it," and mentions the Mono- thelite leaders by name, among them " Honorius, the Pope of Old Rome, the confirmer of heresy who contradicted himself." It then proceeds to ^ Percival, op. cit. 349. 396 SAINT AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY anathematise the originator [i.e. Sergius) and " these patrons " of the new heresy. Among them " Honorius, who was Pope of Old Rome, who in everything agreed with them, went with them and strengthened the heresy" : top Kara nrcivra tovtol^ avvaLpeirjv koX crvvhpofxov Kol ^e^aicorrjv ri]