This we have learned to have been done among the nation of the Angles, over whom your glory has been set for this very purpose: that through the good things which have been granted to you, heavenly benefits might also be bestowed upon the people subject to you. And therefore, glorious son, guard with watchful mind the grace which you have received from God, hasten to extend the Christian faith among the peoples subject to you, multiply the zeal of your uprightness in their conversion, pursue the cults of idols, overthrow the buildings of their temples, build up the morals of your subjects by great purity of life, by exhorting, by terrifying, by coaxing, by correcting, and by showing examples of good work; so that you may find him a rewarder in heaven, whose name and knowledge you have spread abroad on earth.
For he himself will render the name of your glory more glorious even to posterity, whose honour you seek and preserve among the nations. For thus did Constantine of old, that most pious emperor, by recalling the Roman commonwealth from the perverse worship of idols, subject it together with himself to almighty God, our Lord Jesus Christ, and turned himself with his subject peoples wholly toward him. Whence it came to pass that that man surpassed the name of the ancient princes by his praises, and excelled his predecessors as much in reputation as in good work.
And now therefore let your glory hasten to pour into the kings and peoples subject to it the knowledge of the one God, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, so that you may both surpass the ancient kings of your nation in praises and merits, and that, by however much you wipe away the sins of others among your subjects, by so much you may also become the more secure concerning your own sins before the terrible judgment of almighty God. Our most reverend brother Augustine the bishop, instructed in the rule of the monastery, filled with the knowledge of holy Scripture, endowed by God's authorship with good works—whatever he admonishes you, hear gladly, perform devoutly, keep diligently in memory;
because, if you hear him in that which he speaks on behalf of almighty God, the same almighty God will more readily hear him when he prays for you. But if—which God forbid—you set aside his words, when shall almighty God be able to hear him on your behalf, whom you neglect to hear on God's behalf? Bind yourselves therefore to him with your whole mind in the fervour of faith, and aid his endeavour by the strength which divinity has bestowed upon you, so that he may make you partakers of his kingdom, whose faith you cause to be received and kept in your kingdom.
Moreover we wish your glory to know that, as we learn from holy Scripture, from the words of the almighty Lord, the end of the present world is now at hand, and the kingdom of the saints is to come, which can never be brought to any end. But as this same end of the world draws near, many things threaten which were not before; namely, changes of the air, and terrors from heaven, and storms contrary to the order of the seasons, wars, famines, pestilences, earthquakes in divers places; which nevertheless shall not all come in our days, but all shall follow after our days. You therefore, if you learn that any of these come to pass in your land, in no way let your mind be disturbed;
because these signs concerning the end of the age are sent beforehand for this reason: that we ought to be solicitous about our souls, anxious about the hour of death, and that we may be found prepared in good deeds for the Judge who is to come. These things, glorious son, I have now spoken in few words, so that when the Christian faith shall have grown in your kingdom, our discourse with you may also grow more ample, and that it may please us to speak the more, by however much the joys concerning the perfect conversion of your nation are multiplied in our mind. Now I have sent some small presents, which will not be small to you, when they have been received by you with the blessing of the blessed apostle Peter.
May almighty God therefore perfect in you his grace, which he has begun, and may he both extend your life here through the courses of many years, and after long times receive you into the assembly of the heavenly fatherland. May heavenly grace keep your excellency unharmed, lord son. Given on the tenth day before the Kalends of July, in the nineteenth year of the reign of our lord Maurice Tiberius, the most pious Augustus, in the eighteenth year after the consulship of the same lord, in the fourth indiction.
[33] But Augustine, when he had received the episcopal see in the royal city, as we have said before, recovered therein, supported by royal aid, a church which he had learned to have been built there in ancient times by the labour of the Roman faithful, and consecrated it in the name of the holy Saviour, our God and Lord Jesus Christ, and there established a dwelling for himself and for all his successors. He also made a monastery not far from the city to the east, in which, at his exhortation, Aethelberht built from the foundations a church of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul, and enriched it with various gifts; in which the bodies both of Augustine himself, and of all the bishops of Canterbury, together with those of the kings of Kent, might be laid.
This church, however, not Augustine himself, but his successor Laurence consecrated. Now the first abbot of the same monastery was Peter the presbyter, who, being sent as a legate to Gaul, was drowned in a bay of the sea which is called Amfleat (Ambleteuse), and was given by the inhabitants of the place an ignoble burial; but almighty God, to show of what merit the man had been, caused a heavenly light to appear every night above his tomb, until the neighbours who saw it, perceiving that he who was buried there had been a holy man, and inquiring whence and who he was, took up the body and laid it in the city of Boulogne in a church with the honour befitting so great a man.
[34] In these times there ruled over the kingdom of the Northumbrians a most valiant king, most eager for glory, Aethelfrith, who more than all the chief men of the Angles ravaged the nation of the Britons; so that he might seem comparable to Saul of old, king of the people of Israel, except only in this, that he was ignorant of the divine religion. For no one among the commanders, no one among the kings, made more of their lands, the natives being exterminated or subjugated, either tributary to the nation of the Angles, or habitable. To him might rightly be applied that which the patriarch, blessing his son, said in the person of Saul: 'Benjamin a ravening wolf; in the morning he shall eat the prey, and in the evening he shall divide the spoil.'
Whence Aedan, king of the Scots who inhabit Britain, moved by his advances, came against him with an immense and strong army; but, being conquered, fled with few. For in a most famous place, which is called Degsastan, that is, the stone of Degsa, almost all his army was slain. In which battle also Theodbald, brother of Aethelfrith, was killed with all the army that he himself led. This war Aethelfrith brought to completion in the year 603 from the incarnation of the Lord, in the eleventh year of his own reign, which he held for twenty-four years; and further in the first year of Phocas, who then held the summit of the Roman empire. And from that time no king of the Scots in Britain has dared to come to battle against the nation of the Angles up to this day.