whence presently, at Honorius' command, Constantius the count, having set out into Gaul with an army, shut him up in the city of Arles, captured him, and killed him; and his son Constans, whom he had made Caesar from being a monk, his own count Gerontius slew at Vienne. Now Rome was broken by the Goths in the eleven hundred and sixty-fourth year of its founding, from which time the Romans ceased to reign in Britain, after about four hundred and seventy years from the time when Gaius Julius Caesar came to that same island. They dwelt, moreover, within the rampart which we have recorded that Severus made across the island, toward the southern region, as the cities, lighthouses, bridges, and roads made there testify even to this day;
as for the farther parts of Britain, or even those islands which are beyond Britain, they held them by right of dominion. Thenceforth Britain, in the part of the Britons, stripped of all its armed soldiery, of all its military forces, and of the whole vigour of its flourishing youth—which, led away by the rashness of the tyrants, never afterward returned home—lay open only to plunder, being utterly ignorant of all use of warfare; and at last it was suddenly stunned and groaned for many years under two exceedingly savage transmarine nations, the Scots from the northwest and the Picts from the north. Now we call these nations transmarine, not because they were situated outside Britain;
but because they were remote from the part of the Britons, with two arms of the sea lying between, one of which breaks in upon the lands of Britain far and wide from the eastern sea, the other from the western, although they cannot reach one another. The eastern has in its midst the city of Giudi, the western has above it, that is to its right, the city of Alcluith, which in their tongue signifies the Rock of Cluith; for it is near the river of that name. Because, therefore, of the infestations of these nations, the Britons, sending envoys to Rome with letters, begged for aid with tearful entreaties, and promised continual subjection, provided only that the threatening enemy were driven farther off.
To them an armed legion was presently appointed, which, when it had been conveyed to the island and had engaged with the enemy, slew a great multitude of them and drove the rest beyond the borders of its allies; and having for the time freed them from that most cruel oppression, it exhorted them to build a wall across the island between the two seas, which might serve as a defence for repelling the enemy; and so it returned home with great triumph. But the islanders, building the wall which they had been ordered to make not so much of stones as of turf, inasmuch as they had no craftsman for so great a work, set it up of no use at all. Now they made it between the two firths or arms of the sea of which we have spoken, for very many thousands of paces;
so that, where the protection of the waters was lacking, there by the defence of the rampart they might guard their borders from the inroad of the enemy. Of which work made there, that is of a most broad and most high rampart, the surest traces may be seen even to this day. It begins at a distance of nearly two miles westward from the monastery of Aebbercurnig, in the place which in the speech of the Picts is called Peanfahel, but in the tongue of the English Penneltun; and stretching toward the west it ends near the city of Alcluith. But the former enemies, when they perceived that the Roman soldiery had departed, presently, conveyed by ships, broke in upon the borders, and cut down everything, and like a ripe harvest they mow down, trample, and pass over whatever lies in their way;
whence again envoys are sent to Rome, imploring aid with a tearful voice, lest the wretched fatherland should be utterly destroyed, lest the name of the Roman province, which had so long shone bright among them, should be overwhelmed by the wickedness of foreign nations and become worthless. Again a legion is sent, which, arriving unexpectedly in the time of autumn, made great slaughter of the enemy, and put to flight beyond the seas all those who could escape—men who before had been wont, with none resisting, to gather their yearly plunder across the seas. Then the Romans declared to the Britons that they could no longer be wearied with such laborious expeditions for their defence;
rather they admonish them to take up arms themselves and to undergo the zeal of contending with the enemy, who for no other cause could be stronger than they, except if they themselves should be enfeebled by sloth. Moreover, because they thought that this too would bring some advantage to the allies whom they were compelled to abandon, they placed a wall of firm stone in a straight line from sea to sea between the cities which had there been built for fear of the enemy, where Severus also had once made a rampart; which wall, indeed, famous and conspicuous to this day, they built at public and private expense, with the help of the Britons joined to them, eight feet wide and twelve high, in a straight line from east to west, as is plain even to this day to those who behold it;
and this being soon completed, they give brave admonitions to the sluggish people, and furnish examples of forming arms. Moreover, on the shore of the ocean toward the south, where their ships were kept, because from there too the inroad of the barbarians was feared, they place towers at intervals for a view of the sea, and bid farewell to their allies as though never to return. When these had departed to their own land, the Scots and Picts, learning of the refusal of their return, came back at once themselves, and being made more confident than usual, seize the whole northern and outermost part of the island, in place of the natives, right up to the wall. To meet this, a sluggish line of battle is stationed on the height of the fortifications, where with trembling heart it languished, dazed, day and night. But on the other side the hooked weapons of the enemy do not cease;
the cowardly defenders are most wretchedly dragged from the walls and dashed to the ground. What more? Abandoning the cities and the wall, they flee, they are scattered. The enemy pursues, the slaughters are hastened, more cruel than all the former ones. For just as lambs by wild beasts, so the wretched citizens are torn to pieces by the enemy; whence, cast out from their dwellings and their little holdings, they tempered the imminent peril of famine by mutual brigandage and rapacity, increasing their external disasters by domestic upheavals, until the whole region was emptied of every support of food, save the solace of hunting. In the year of the Lord's incarnation 423, Theodosius the younger, taking up the kingdom after Honorius, the forty-fifth from Augustus, held it for twenty-six years;
in the eighth year of whose reign Palladius was sent as the first bishop by Celestine, pontiff of the Roman church, to the Scots who believed in Christ. Now in the twenty-third year of his reign Aetius, an illustrious man, who was also a patrician, held the consulship a third time together with Symmachus. To him the poor remnants of the Britons send a letter, of which this is the beginning: 'To Aetius, thrice consul, the groans of the Britons'; and in the course of the letter they unfold their calamities thus: 'The barbarians drive us to the sea, the sea drives us back to the barbarians; between these two arise two kinds of death: we are either slaughtered or drowned.'
Yet even in doing this they were unable to obtain any aid from him, inasmuch as he was at that time occupied with most grievous wars against Bleda and Attila, kings of the Huns; and although in the year next before this Bleda had been slain by the treachery of his brother Attila, nonetheless Attila himself remained so intolerable an enemy of the commonwealth that he gnawed away almost the whole of Europe, the cities and forts being destroyed and invaded. Moreover, in those same times famine invaded Constantinople; and without delay pestilence followed; but also very many of the walls of that same city, with fifty-seven towers, fell down; with many cities likewise collapsing, famine and the pestilent stench of the air destroyed many thousands of men and beasts of burden.
Meanwhile the aforesaid famine, afflicting the Britons more and more, and leaving to posterity a lasting fame of its malignity, compelled many of them to give their conquered hands to the hostile plunderers; but others by no means did so, but rather, trusting in the divine where human aid had ceased, kept up a continual rebellion from the very mountains, caves, and forest glades; and then for the first time they began to inflict slaughters upon their enemies, who for many years had been carrying off plunder in the land. The shameless Irish ravagers therefore return home, to return again after no long time; the Picts in the farthest part of the island then for the first time and thereafter were quiet, yet from time to time they did not cease to carry off plunder and devastations from the British nation.
Now when the hostile devastation had ceased, the island began to abound with such great plenty of crops as no former age remembered; and with these, luxury too began to grow, and a plague of every crime hastened to accompany this without interruption—cruelty especially, and hatred of the truth, and love of falsehood, so that if any of them seemed gentler and somewhat nearer to the truth, against him, as though a subverter of Britain, the hatreds and weapons of all were hurled without regard. And not only worldly men did these things, but even the very flock of the Lord and its shepherds; submitting their necks to drunkenness, animosity, strife, contention, envy, and the other crimes of this kind, having cast off the light yoke of Christ.
Meanwhile a sudden and bitter plague seized men of corrupted mind, which in a short time laid low so great a multitude of them that the living did not suffice even for burying the dead; but not even by the death of their own, nor by the fear of death, could those who survived be recalled from the death of the soul, by which they were being laid low through sinning. Whence not long after, a sharper vengeance for their dire wickedness followed the sinful nation. For a counsel was entered upon as to what should be done, where a defence should be sought for avoiding or repelling the inroads of the northern nations, so fierce and so frequent; and it was resolved by all, together with their king Vortigern, that they should call the nation of the Saxons from the parts across the sea to their aid;
which it is established was ordained by the nod of the Lord, that evil might come against the wicked, as the outcome of events more evidently proved. In the year from the incarnation of the Lord 449, Marcian, taking up the kingdom together with Valentinian, the forty-sixth from Augustus, held it for seven years. Then the nation of the Angles or Saxons, invited by the aforesaid king, was conveyed to Britain in three long ships, and, at the same king's command, received in the eastern part of the island a place of dwelling, as though about to fight for the fatherland, but in truth about to conquer it. Having therefore entered into battle with the enemy who had come from the north to the line of battle, the Saxons took the victory. When this was reported at home, together with the fertility of the island and the sloth of the Britons;
a more ample fleet is at once sent thither, bearing a stronger band of armed men, which, joined to the cohort sent before, made an invincible army. Those therefore who had arrived received, by the Britons' gift, a place of habitation among them, on this condition: that they should fight against the adversaries for the peace and safety of the fatherland, and that the Britons should confer due stipends upon them as they fought. Now they had come from three of the stronger peoples of Germany, that is, the Saxons, Angles, and Jutes. Of the stock of the Jutes are the men of Kent and the Wihtware, that is, that nation which holds the Isle of Wight, and that which to this day in the province of the West Saxons is called the nation of the Jutes, situated opposite that same Isle of Wight.
From the Saxons, that is from that region which is now called that of the Old Saxons, came the East Saxons, the South Saxons, and the West Saxons. Furthermore, from the Angles, that is from that homeland which is called Angulus, and which from that time even to this day is said to remain deserted between the provinces of the Jutes and the Saxons, sprang the East Angles, the Middle Angles, the Mercians, the whole race of the Northumbrians—that is, of those nations which dwell to the north of the river Humber—and the other peoples of the Angles. Their first leaders are said to have been two brothers, Hengist and Horsa; of whom Horsa, afterward slain in battle by the Britons, to this day has in the eastern parts of Kent a monument marked with his name.
Now they were sons of Wihtgisl, whose father was Witta, whose father was Wecta, whose father was Woden, from whose stock the royal lineage of many provinces drew its origin. Without delay, therefore, as the throngs of the aforesaid nations flocked eagerly into the island, the people of the newcomers began to grow great, so that they became a terror even to the very natives who had summoned them. Then suddenly, having for a time entered into a treaty with the Picts, whom they had now driven farther off by warfare, they begin to turn their arms against their allies. And first indeed they compel them to furnish them provisions more abundantly, and, seeking an occasion for a rupture, they protest that, unless a more lavish supply of foodstuffs were given them, they would, the treaty being broken, lay waste all the places of the island.
Nor did they pursue their threats with any less swift execution. For, to speak briefly, the fire kindled by the hands of the pagans demanded just vengeance for the crimes of the people of God, not unlike that fire which once, kindled by the Chaldeans, consumed the walls of Jerusalem—nay, all its buildings. For so here too, with the impious conqueror acting, nay rather with the just Judge ordaining it, devastating all the nearest cities and fields, from the eastern sea to the western, with none forbidding, it continued its conflagration, and covered well-nigh the whole surface of the perishing island.
Public buildings together with private ones were collapsing, everywhere priests were being butchered among the altars, prelates together with their peoples, without any regard for honour, were consumed alike by sword and flames; nor was there anyone to consign to burial those cruelly slain. And so some of the wretched remnants, caught in the mountains, were slaughtered in heaps; others, worn out by famine, came forth and gave their hands to the enemy, about to undergo eternal servitude for the sake of receiving sustenance—if indeed they were not slaughtered on the spot; others, sorrowing, sought regions across the sea; others, remaining in their fatherland in fear, led a poor life in the mountains, woods, or steep crags, with ever-suspicious mind.
But when the hostile army, having exterminated and dispersed the natives of the island, had returned home, those people too began little by little to recover their strength and spirits, emerging from the hiding-places in which they had been concealed, and with one accord praying for heavenly aid, lest they should be utterly destroyed to the point of extermination on every side. They had at that time as their leader Ambrosius Aurelianus, a modest man, who alone of the Roman nation had by chance survived the aforesaid storm, his parents, who bore a royal name and dignity, having been slain in that same calamity. Under this leader, therefore, the Britons take up strength, and challenging the victors to battle, themselves, by God's favour, obtain the victory.
And from that time now the citizens, now the enemy were victorious, up to the year of the siege of Mount Badon, when they inflicted no small slaughters upon those same enemies, in about the forty-fourth year of their coming into Britain. But of these things afterward. Some few years indeed before their coming, the Pelagian heresy, brought in by Agricola, son of Severianus a Pelagian bishop, had defiled the faith of the Britons with a foul plague. But the Britons, since they were by no means willing to receive the perverse dogma by blaspheming the grace of Christ, nor were able by contending to refute the cunning of the wicked persuasion with words, find a wholesome counsel: that they should seek the aid of spiritual warfare from the bishops of Gaul.
For which cause, a great synod having been gathered, it was inquired in common who ought to be sent thither to succour the faith; and by the judgment of all there were chosen the apostolic priests Germanus, bishop of Auxerre, and Lupus, bishop of the city of Troyes, who should come to Britain to confirm the faith of heavenly grace. When these had undertaken with ready devotion the prayers and commands of holy Church, they enter the ocean, and as far as the middle of the journey, by which one stretches from the Gallic gulf to Britain, the ship sped safely with favourable winds. Then suddenly there meets them as they go on the hostile power of demons, who envied that such and so great men should set out to recover the salvation of the peoples; they stir up storms, they withdraw the sky and the day under a night of clouds;
the sails cannot withstand the furies of the winds; the services of the sailors gave way, overcome; the vessel was borne along by prayer, not by strength; and by chance the leader himself, the bishop, broken in body, was undone by weariness and slumber. Then indeed, as though the resister had ceased, the storm, once stirred up, gathered strength, and now the vessel was being submerged by the floods poured over it. Then blessed Lupus and all the troubled men rouse the elder to be set against the raging elements; who, the more steadfast for the immensity of the peril, invokes Christ, and, taking up in the name of the holy Trinity a light sprinkling of water, presses down the raging waves, admonishes his colleague, exhorts them all; the prayer is poured forth with one mouth and outcry;
the Deity is present, the enemies are put to flight, a serene tranquillity follows, the winds turn back to the contrary, to serve the journey, and, the stretches of the sea soon traversed, they enjoy the quiet of the longed-for shore. There a multitude, gathering from various parts, received the priests, whose coming an adverse prophecy too had foretold. For the sinister spirits announced what they feared; who, while they are driven out by the priests' command from the bodies they had possessed, confessed both the manner of the storm and the perils which they had brought on, and did not deny that they were conquered by the men's merits and command. Meanwhile the apostolic priests swiftly filled the island of Britain with their reputation, preaching, and miracles;
and the divine word was preached through them daily, not only in the churches, but also through the crossroads, through the country districts; so that everywhere both the faithful catholics were confirmed, and the depraved recognized the way of correction. They had the likeness of the apostles: both glory and authority through conscience, doctrine through letters, virtues from merits. And so the whole population of the region had readily passed over to their opinion. The authors of the sinister persuasion lay hidden in concealment, and after the manner of the malignant spirit, groaned that the peoples were perishing for them, escaping; at last, having conceived by long meditation, they presume to enter the conflict. They come forth, conspicuous in riches, gleaming in raiment, surrounded by the flattery of many;
and they chose rather to undergo the hazard of the contest than to incur, among the people whom they had subverted, the shame of silence, lest they should seem to have condemned themselves by their own silence. There indeed an immense multitude, even with wives and children, had been roused and assembled; the people stood by as spectators, to be also judges; the parties stood opposed, dissimilar in their unequal condition: on the one side divine faith, on the other human presumption; on the one side piety, on the other pride; on that side Pelagius the author, on this side Christ. In the first place the most blessed priests granted the adversaries the opportunity of disputing, which for a long time, by the mere nakedness of words, vainly occupied both the ears and the time; then the venerable bishops poured forth the torrents of their eloquence together with apostolic and evangelical showers;
their own discourse was mingled with the divine, and testimonies of the readings followed their most weighty assertions. Vanity is convicted, perfidy is confuted; so that at each objection of words it confessed itself to be erring, while it was unable to answer; the people, as arbiter, scarcely restrains its hands, yet attests its judgment by acclamation. Then suddenly a certain man of tribunician power came forth with his wife into the midst, offering to the priests for healing his daughter, ten years old and blind; whom they bade be offered to the adversaries; but these, deterred by their punishing conscience, join their prayers with the parents', and beseech of the priests the healing of the little girl;
who, beholding their adversaries inclined in spirit, briefly pour forth a prayer, and then Germanus, full of the Holy Spirit, invokes the Trinity; and without delay, having torn from his neck the little case with relics of the saints which clung to his side, he grasped it in his hands, and applied it in the sight of all to the eyes of the girl, which, straightway emptied of their darkness, the light of truth filled. The parents exult, the people tremble at the miracle; after which day the wicked persuasion was so deleted from the minds of all that they followed the doctrine of the priests with thirsting desires.
And so, the damnable perversity being suppressed, and its authors confuted, and the minds of all being composed in the purity of the faith, the priests sought out the blessed martyr Alban, intending to give thanks to God through him; where Germanus, having with him relics of all the apostles and of diverse martyrs, after prayer was made, ordered the sepulchre to be opened, intending to lay up precious gifts there; judging it fitting that the limbs of the saints, gathered from diverse regions, whom heaven had received as equals in merits, should also keep the lodging of one sepulchre.
These being deposited with honour and joined together, he took away from that very place, where the blood of the blessed martyr had been shed, a mass of dust to carry with him, in which it appeared, the gore being preserved, that the martyr's shrine had grown red while the persecutor turned pale. These things being thus accomplished, on that same day an innumerable throng of men was converted to the Lord. Whence, as they were returning, the lying-in-wait enemy, having prepared his casual snares, by the occasion of a slip crushed Germanus' foot, not knowing that his merits, like those of the most blessed Job, were to be spread abroad by affliction of the body; and while for some while he was held in one place by the necessity of his infirmity, in a neighbouring cottage where he was staying a fire broke out;
When the houses, which there were roofed with marsh reeds, had been consumed, the fire was driven by the gusting winds toward the dwelling in which he himself was lying. A throng of all the people flew together to the bishop, that, lifted up by their hands, he might escape the peril which threatened; but he rebuked them and, in the confidence of his faith, would not suffer himself to be moved. Meanwhile the whole multitude, terrified with despair, ran out to meet the blaze. But that the power of God might appear the more manifest, whatever the crowd had tried to guard was consumed; yet that which he, lying down and infirm, had defended, the flame, when the lodging of the holy man was thrown open, shuddered and leaped over, raging beyond it and short of it; and amid the rolling masses of the flaming fire the tabernacle, which its enclosed dweller kept, shone forth unharmed.
The crowd exulted at the miracle, and rejoiced that it had been overcome by the divine powers. Day and night a countless multitude of the poor kept watch before the cottage; these to have their souls healed, those desiring it for their bodies. The things which Christ wrought in His servant cannot be recounted—he who, though infirm, performed mighty works; and when he allowed no remedy to be applied to his own weakness, on a certain night he saw standing beside him a figure resplendent in snow-white garments, who with outstretched hand seemed to raise him as he lay, and commanded him to stand on firm feet. After that hour, the pains being put to flight, he recovered his former health, so that, when day returned, he undertook the labor of the journey undaunted.
Meanwhile the Saxons and the Picts, joining their forces, took up war against the Britons, whom the same necessity had drawn together into a camp; and when, trembling, they judged their own forces almost unequal, they sought the help of the holy bishops; who, hastening their promised coming, brought such confidence to the fearful that it was believed a very great army had arrived. Thus, with apostolic leaders, Christ was warring in the camp. The venerable days of Lent were also at hand, which the presence of the priests made more devout, to such a degree that the people, instructed by daily preaching, vied with one another in flocking to the grace of baptism.
For a very great multitude of the army sought the wave of the saving font, and a church, woven together of leafy boughs for the day of the Lord's resurrection, was set up, and in the field encampment was fitted out after the likeness of a city. Wet with baptism the army advanced, faith glowed in the people, and, with the protection of arms disregarded, the help of the Godhead was awaited. The discipline, or rather the model, of holiness was reported to the enemy, who, presuming on victory as though over an unarmed army, hastened on with eager spirit; yet their coming was discovered by scouting.
And when, the Paschal solemnity being completed, the greater part of the army, fresh from the font, attempted to take up arms and prepare for battle, Germanus declared himself the leader of the fight, chose out men ready for action, scoured the surrounding region, and, from the quarter where the enemy's coming was expected, observed a valley encompassed by mountains in its midst. In that place the leader of the column himself arranged a new army. And now the fierce multitude of the enemy was at hand, whom those set in ambush watched drawing near. Then suddenly Germanus, as standard-bearer, admonished them all, and proclaimed that they should answer his voice with one shout; and as the enemy were unconcerned, confident that they were arriving unexpected, the priests cried out 'Alleluia' repeated three times.
One voice of all followed, and the enclosing mountains, the air re-echoing, multiplied the raised shout; the enemy's column was laid low with terror, and they trembled lest not only the surrounding crags but even the very fabric of heaven fall upon them, and it was thought that the swiftness of their feet would scarcely suffice for the panic cast upon them. They fled in all directions, threw away their arms, glad to have snatched even their naked bodies from peril; many also, headlong with fear, the river which they had crossed swallowed up. The innocent army beheld its own vengeance, and became the idle spectator of the victory granted to it. The spoils that lay exposed were gathered, and the devout soldiery embraced the joys of the heavenly palm. The bishops triumphed over the routed enemy without blood;
they triumphed in a victory obtained by faith, not by force. So, the island having been set in manifold security, and the enemy—whether invisible or conspicuous in the flesh—being overcome, the bishops prepared their return. For them a tranquil voyage was procured both by their own merits and by the intercession of the blessed martyr Alban, and a happy keel restored them, untroubled, to the longings of their own people. [21] And not long after, it was reported from the same island that the Pelagian perversity was again being spread abroad by a few authors; and once more the prayers of all the priests were brought to the most blessed man, that he might safeguard the cause of God which he had before secured. He hastened to obey their petition.