before we came to know them, believing that they walked according to the manner of the universal Church, we venerated both the Britons and the Irish with great reverence for their holiness; but coming to know the Britons, we thought the Irish better. The Irish, however — through bishop Dagan coming into this island which we mentioned above, and through abbot Columban coming into Gaul — we learned to differ in no way from the Britons in their manner of life. For bishop Dagan, coming to us, would not take food, not only with us, but not even in the same lodging in which we were eating. The same Laurence, together with his fellow bishops, also sent to the priests of the Britons letters befitting his rank, by which he strove to confirm them in catholic unity.
But how much he profited by doing these things, the present times even yet declare. At these times Mellitus, bishop of London, came to Rome to treat with the apostolic pope Boniface concerning the needs of the Church of the English. And when the same most reverend pope was convening a synod of the bishops of Italy, to make ordinances concerning the life and peace of monks, Mellitus himself also sat among them, in the eighth year of the reign of the emperor Phocas, in the thirteenth indiction, on the third day before the Kalends of March;
so that what things had been canonically decreed he might confirm by subscribing them with his own authority also, and, returning to Britain, might carry them with him to be enjoined upon and observed by the Churches of the English, together with the letters which the same pontiff directed to Laurence, archbishop beloved of God, and to all the clergy, and likewise to king Æthelberht and the English nation. This is that Boniface, the fourth from the blessed Gregory, bishop of the city of Rome, who obtained from the emperor Phocas that there should be granted to the Church of Christ the temple at Rome which was called by the ancients the Pantheon, as if it were the image of all the gods; in which he himself, every defilement having been cast out, made a church of the holy Mother of God and of all the martyrs of Christ;
so that, the multitude of demons being shut out, the multitude of saints might there have a memorial. In the year from the Lord's incarnation 616, which is the twenty-first year since Augustine with his companions was sent to preach to the English nation, Æthelberht, king of the men of Kent, after a temporal reign which he had most gloriously held for fifty-six years, entered into the eternal joys of the heavenly kingdom; who indeed was the third among the kings of the English nation to hold sway over all their southern provinces, which are separated from the northern by the river Humber and the boundaries adjoining it; but he was the first of all to ascend the kingdoms of heaven. For the first to hold an empire of this kind was Ælle, king of the South Saxons; the second, Cælin, king of the West Saxons, who in their own tongue was called Ceawlin;
the third, as we have said, was Æthelberht, king of the men of Kent; the fourth, Rædwald, king of the East Angles, who even while Æthelberht was living was furnishing leadership to his own nation, obtained it; the fifth, Edwin, king of the nation of the Northumbrians — that is, of that nation which inhabits the region to the north of the river Humber — with greater power presided over all the peoples who inhabit Britain, both English and Britons alike, except only the men of Kent; and moreover he subjected to the empire of the English the Mevanian islands of the Britons, which are situated between Ireland and Britain; the sixth, Oswald, himself also a most Christian king of the Northumbrians, held the kingdom within these same bounds;
the seventh, Oswiu his brother, holding for some time a kingdom within almost equal bounds, also subdued for the most part the nations of the Picts and Irish, who hold the northern parts of Britain, and made them tributary. But of these things hereafter. Now king Æthelberht died on the twenty-fourth day of the month of February, after one and twenty years from his reception of the faith, and was buried in the porch of St Martin within the church of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul, where also queen Bertha was laid. He, among the other good things which he conferred upon his nation by his provident care, also established for it decrees of judgments, after the examples of the Romans, with the counsel of wise men; which, written in the speech of the English, are kept to this day and observed by it.
In which he first laid down how he ought to make amends who should by theft carry off anything belonging either to the Church, or to the bishop, or to the other orders; wishing, namely, to afford protection to those whom, and whose teaching, he had received. Now this same Æthelberht was the son of Irminric, whose father was Octa, whose father was Oeric surnamed Oisc, from whom the kings of Kent are wont to be surnamed Oiscingas. Whose father was Hengist, who together with his son Oisc, being invited by Vortigern, first entered Britain, as we have related above. But indeed after the death of Æthelberht, when his son Eadbald had taken up the helm of the kingdom, he was a great detriment to the still tender growths of the Church there.
For not only had he refused to receive the faith of Christ, but he was also defiled with such fornication as the apostle testifies was not heard of even among the heathen, so that he had his father's wife. By both which crimes he gave occasion of returning to the former vomit to those who, under the rule of his parent, whether by favour or by fear of the king, had taken upon themselves the laws of faith and chastity. Nor were the scourges of the heavenly severity wanting to chastise and correct the faithless king; for he was oppressed by frequent madness of mind and by the invasion of an unclean spirit.
Moreover the storm of this disturbance was increased also by the death of Sæberht, king of the East Saxons, who, when, seeking the everlasting kingdoms, he left as heirs of the temporal kingdom his three sons, who had remained pagan, these straightway began openly to serve idolatry, which during his lifetime they had seemed somewhat to have suspended, and to give to the subject peoples free licence of worshipping idols. And when they saw the bishop, after the solemnities of the mass had been celebrated in the church, giving the eucharist to the people, they said to him, as is commonly reported, puffed up with barbarous folly: 'Why do you not also offer to us the white bread which you used to give to our father Saba — for so they were wont to call him — and which you do not yet cease to give to the people in the church?'
To whom he answered: 'If you are willing to be washed in that saving font in which your father was washed, you may also be partakers of the holy bread, of which he was a partaker; but if you despise the laver of life, you are by no means able to receive the bread of life.' But they said: 'We will not enter that font, because we know that we have no need of it; yet nevertheless we wish to be refreshed by that bread.' And when they had been carefully and often admonished by him that it could by no means be so done, that anyone without the most sacred purification should communicate in the most sacred oblation, at last, moved by fury, they said: 'If you will not consent to us in so easy a matter as we ask, you shall no longer be able to remain in our province.'
And they drove him out, and commanded him to depart out of their kingdom with his own people. He, being driven thence, came to Kent to consult with Laurence and Justus, his fellow bishops, as to what should be done in these matters. And it was decreed by common counsel that it was better that all should return to their native land and there serve the Lord with a free mind, than to remain among the barbarians rebellious against the faith without fruit. So first Mellitus and Justus departed and withdrew to the parts of Gaul, intending there to await the issue of affairs. But not for a long time did those kings who had driven from them the herald of the truth serve the demonic cults with impunity. For going out to battle against the nation of the Gewisse, they all fell together with their soldiery;
nor, although the instigators were lost, could the populace, stirred up to wickedness, be set right again and called back to the simplicity of faith and of the love which is in Christ. But when Laurence too was about to follow Mellitus and Justus and to leave Britain, he commanded that on that very night a bed be prepared for him in the church of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul, of which we have now frequently spoken;
in which, when, after many prayers and tears poured out to the Lord for the estate of the Church, he had laid his limbs to rest and had fallen asleep, there appeared to him the most blessed chief of the apostles, and, for a long time of the secret night afflicting him with rather sharp scourges, asked him with apostolic strictness why he was forsaking the flock which he himself had entrusted to him, or to which of the shepherds he, fleeing, was leaving the sheep of Christ set in the midst of wolves. 'Have you,' he said, 'forgotten my example, who, for the little ones of Christ, whom he had commended to me as a token of his love, endured chains, stripes, prisons, afflictions, and at the last death itself, even the death of the cross, at the hands of the unbelievers and enemies of Christ, that I myself might be crowned together with Christ?'
Animated by these scourges of blessed Peter and likewise by his exhortations, Christ's servant Laurence, as soon as morning had come, went to the king, and, drawing back his garment, showed with how many stripes he had been torn. The king, marvelling greatly and inquiring who had dared to inflict such wounds upon so great a man, when he heard that for the sake of his salvation the bishop had endured such torments and stripes from the apostle of Christ, was greatly afraid; and, every cult of idolatry being anathematized and his unlawful marriage renounced, he received the faith of Christ, and, being baptized, took care, as far as he was able, to consult for and favour in all things the affairs of the Church. He also sent to Gaul and recalled Mellitus and Justus, and bade them return to govern their own churches in freedom;
who returned a year after they had departed; and Justus indeed returned to the city of Rochester, over which he had presided; but the Londoners would not receive Mellitus as bishop, rejoicing rather to serve idolatrous pontiffs. For he had not so great power of the kingdom as his father, that he could, even against the will of the pagans who gainsaid it, restore to his church its bishop. Nevertheless he himself, together with his nation, from the time he was converted to the Lord, took pains to devote himself to the divine precepts. In short, in the monastery of the most blessed chief of the apostles, he built a church of the holy Mother of God, which archbishop Mellitus consecrated.
For while this king was reigning, the blessed archbishop Laurence ascended to the heavenly kingdom, and was buried in the church and monastery of the holy apostle Peter, beside his predecessor Augustine, on the fourth day before the Nones of February; after whom Mellitus, who was bishop of London, received the see of the church of Canterbury, third from Augustine. But Justus, still surviving, governed the church of Rochester. When they were governing the Church of the English with great care and labour, they received exhortatory writings from Boniface, pontiff of the Roman and apostolic see, who presided over the Church after Deusdedit, in the year of the Lord's incarnation 619.
Now Mellitus was indeed weighed down by an infirmity of body, that is, the gout, but with the sound steps of his mind he briskly leapt over all earthly things, and ever flew up to things heavenly — to be loved, sought, and pursued. He was noble by origin of the flesh, but nobler by the eminence of his mind. In short, that I may relate one testimony of his virtue, whereby the rest may be understood: at a certain time the city of Canterbury, seized by fire through the fault of carelessness, began to be consumed by the increasing flames;
and when no one could withstand them by any pouring of water, and now no small part of the city had been laid waste, and the raging flame was spreading itself toward the bishop's residence, the bishop, trusting in divine aid where human aid was lacking, commanded himself to be carried out to meet the raging globes of fire flying hither and thither. Now in that place where the onset of the flames was pressing most heavily there was the martyr-shrine of the blessed Four Crowned Ones. Thither, then, being carried by the hands of his attendants, the bishop, infirm as he was, began by praying to drive away the danger, which the firm hand of strong men had been unable to do, even with much labour.
Without delay, the wind, which blowing from the south had scattered the conflagrations through the city, being turned back toward the south, first withdrew the force of its fury from harming those places which were opposite, and soon, by sinking utterly to rest, with the flames likewise lulled and extinguished, it was checked. And because the man of God burned strongly with the fire of divine love, because he had been wont by frequent prayers and exhortations to repel the tempests of the powers of the air from harm to himself and to his own, deservedly he was able to prevail over the winds and flames of this world, and to obtain that they should not harm himself and his own.
And so this man too, after he had ruled the church for five years, while Eadbald was reigning, departed to the heavens, and was buried with his fathers in the oft-mentioned monastery and church of the most blessed chief of the apostles, in the year from the Lord's incarnation 624, on the eighth day before the Kalends of May. Justus, who was bishop of the church of Rochester, immediately succeeded him in the pontificate. For that church he consecrated Romanus as bishop in his own place, authority to ordain bishops having been given him by pontiff Boniface, whom we have mentioned above to have been the successor of Deusdedit; of which authority this is the form: 'To the most beloved brother Justus, Boniface.'
'How devotedly and also how vigilantly your fraternity has laboured for the gospel of Christ, not only the tenor of the letter directed by you, but rather the perfection bestowed from above upon your work, has shown. For Almighty God has not forsaken either the sacrament of His own name, or the fruit of your labour, since He Himself faithfully promised to the preachers of the gospel: "Behold, I am with you all the days, even unto the consummation of the world." Which His clemency has specially demonstrated in the ministry enjoined upon you, opening the hearts of the nations to receive the singular mystery of your preaching.
For with great reward He has made bright the delightful course of your high stations by the supports of His goodness, since, bestowing upon the most faithful dealings of the talents entrusted to you a rich fruit, He has prepared for Him that which you might seal with multiplied generations. And this also has been conferred upon you by that recompense whereby, persevering continually in the ministry enjoined upon you, with praiseworthy patience you awaited the redemption of that nation, and by your merits, that they might profit, their salvation was held forth, the Lord saying: "He that shall persevere unto the end, the same shall be saved."
You have therefore been saved by the hope of patience and by the virtue of endurance, that the hearts of the unbelievers, being purged of their natural and superstitious disease, might obtain the mercy of their Saviour. For, having received the letters of our son king Eadbald, we have found with how great erudition of sacred eloquence your fraternity has led his mind to the belief of true conversion and of undoubting faith. By which thing, taking sure confidence from the long-suffering of the heavenly clemency, we believe that not only the fullest salvation of the nations subject to him, but rather of the neighbouring nations also, is to follow through the ministry of your preaching;
so that, as it is written, the reward of the work consummated may be granted you by the Lord, the rewarder of all good things, and that, the universal confession of the nations, with the sacrament of the Christian faith received, may attest that truly "their sound has gone out into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world." Moreover, by the bearer of these present letters, we have, invited by the zeal of your kindness, directed a pallium to your fraternity, which, namely, we have ordained you to have licence to use only in celebrating the most sacred mysteries; granting to you also to celebrate the ordinations of bishops, opportunity demanding it, the Lord's mercy going before; so that the gospel of Christ may be spread abroad by the proclamation of many among all the nations which are not yet converted.
Let your fraternity therefore be zealous to keep this, which it has received by the kindness of the apostolic see, with the undefiled sincerity of mind, considering by the likeness of what thing you have undertaken to bear upon your shoulders so excellent a vestment. And study so to show yourself, the Lord's clemency being implored, that you may present the rewards of the bestowed gift, not with guilt, but with profit of souls, before the tribunal of the supreme and coming Judge. May God keep you safe, most beloved brother.' At which time also the nation of the Northumbrians — that is, that nation of the English which dwelt to the north of the river Humber — together with their king Edwin, received the word of faith through the preaching of Paulinus, whom we have mentioned above.
To which king, indeed, as an auspicious beginning of receiving the faith and the heavenly kingdom, the power of earthly empire had also increased; so that — what no one of the English before him had done — he received under his sway all the bounds of Britain, wherever the provinces either of the English or of the Britons dwelt. Nay more, he subjugated to the empire of the English the Mevanian islands, as we have shown above; of which the former, which is to the south, both larger in situation and more fertile in the yield and abundance of crops, holds the measure of nine hundred and sixty families according to the reckoning of the English, the second the space of three hundred and beyond.
Now the occasion for this nation of receiving the faith was that the aforesaid king of theirs was joined in kinship to the kings of Kent, having received as wife Æthelburh, daughter of king Æthelberht, who was called by another name Tata. When he first sought her fellowship by procurers sent from her brother Eadbald, who then presided over the kingdom of Kent, answer was given that it was not lawful that a Christian virgin be given in marriage to a pagan, lest the faith and the sacraments of the heavenly King should be profaned by fellowship with a king who was utterly ignorant of the worship of the true God. When the messengers reported these words to Edwin, he promised that he would do nothing whatsoever contrary to the Christian faith which the virgin practised;
nay rather, that he would permit her to keep the faith and worship of her religion after the Christian manner, together with all who should come with her, men or women, priests or ministers. Nor did he deny that he himself would also undergo the same religion, if nevertheless, being examined by the prudent, it could be found holier and more worthy of God. And so the virgin is promised and is sent to Edwin, and, according to what had been arranged, there is ordained as bishop the man beloved of God, Paulinus, who should come with her, and should confirm her and her companions, lest they might be defiled by the society of the pagans, by daily exhortation and by the celebration of the heavenly sacraments.
Now Paulinus was ordained bishop by Archbishop Justus on the twelfth day before the Kalends of August, in the year of our Lord's incarnation 625; and so he came with the aforesaid virgin to King Edwin as a companion, so to speak, of her wedded estate. But he himself rather, intending with his whole heart, by summoning to the knowledge of the truth that people to whom he was going, that, according to the word of the Apostle, he might present them as a chaste virgin to one true bridegroom, Christ. And when he had come into the province, he labored much, both that he might, with the Lord's help, keep those who had come with him from falling away from the faith, and that he might, if perhaps he could, by preaching convert some of the heathen to the grace of faith. But, as the Apostle says, although he labored long in the word:
The god of this world hath blinded the minds of the unbelievers, that the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ should not shine unto them. Now in the following year there came into the province a certain assassin named Eumer, sent by the king of the West Saxons whose name was Cuichelm, hoping to deprive King Edwin at once of his kingdom and of his life; he carried a two-edged poisoned dagger, so that if the wound of the iron should be insufficient for the king's death, it might be aided by the venom of the poison. He came to the king on the first day of Easter beside the river Derwent, where at that time was the royal residence, and he entered as though bringing a message from his lord; and while with cunning mouth he was rehearsing his feigned embassy, he suddenly sprang up, and, drawing the dagger from beneath his garment, made an assault upon the king.
When Lilla, the king's most beloved thegn, saw this, having no shield at hand with which to defend the king from death, he at once interposed his own body before the stroke of the striker; but the enemy drove in the iron with such force that he wounded even the king through the body of the slain soldier. And when the assassin was at once assailed on all sides with swords, in that very tumult he slew with his accursed dagger another of the soldiers, whose name was Forthhere. But on that same most holy night of the Lord's Easter the queen had borne to the king a daughter, whose name was Eanfled.
And when that same king, in the presence of Bishop Paulinus, was giving thanks to his gods for the daughter born to him, the bishop on the contrary began to give thanks to the Lord Christ, and to assure the king that it was he who by his prayers had obtained from Him that the queen should bring forth her offspring safe and without grievous pain. Delighted by his words, the king promised that, renouncing his idols, he would serve Christ, if He would grant him life and victory in fighting against the king by whom that murderer who had wounded him had been sent; and as a pledge of fulfilling his promise, he assigned that same daughter of his to Bishop Paulinus to be consecrated to Christ; and she was baptized on the holy day of Pentecost, the first of the nation of the Northumbrians, together with eleven others of his household.
At which time, having been healed of the wound inflicted on him before, the king gathered an army and came against the nation of the West Saxons, and, war being joined, either slew or received into surrender all whom he had learned to have conspired in his death. And so, returning victorious to his own country, he was unwilling to receive the sacraments of the Christian faith straightway and without deliberation; though neither did he serve idols any longer, from the time he had promised that he would serve Christ. But first he took care diligently, as occasion offered, to learn the rationale of the faith from the venerable man Paulinus himself, and to confer with his chief men, whom he knew to be the wiser, as to what they thought ought to be done concerning these matters.
And he himself too, being a man by nature most shrewd, often sitting long alone with silent mouth indeed, but in the depths of his heart conversing much within himself, would ponder what he ought to do, and what religion ought to be kept. At which time he received from Boniface, pontiff of the Apostolic See, letters exhorting him to the faith, of which this is the form: A copy of the letter of the most blessed and apostolic pope of the city of Rome, of the Church Boniface, directed to the glorious man Edwin, king of the Angles. To the glorious man Edwin, king of the Angles, Boniface, bishop, servant of the servants of God.
Although the power of the most high Godhead cannot be set forth by the services of human speech, since indeed by its own greatness it subsists in an eternity so invisible and unsearchable that no acuteness of mind is sufficient to comprehend or expound how great it is; yet because His humanity, for the making of Himself known, with the doors of the heart unlocked, mercifully pours into human minds by inspiration the secrets which it will bring forth concerning itself; we have taken care to extend our priestly solicitude for the announcing to you of the fullness of the Christian faith, that, in like manner inserting into your perceptions also the gospel of Christ, which our Savior commanded to be preached to all nations, the remedies of your salvation may be furnished.
The clemency therefore of the supernal Majesty, which by the sole word of His command founded and created all things, namely heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, ordering by the counsel of His coeternal Word, and dispensing by the unity of the Holy Spirit, the ranks in which they should subsist, established man, fashioned from the slime of the earth, after His own image and likeness, and bestowed upon him so great a prerogative of reward that He set him above all things, and, the limit of His command being kept, fortified him with the subsistence of eternity.
This God therefore, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, which is an undivided Trinity, from the rising of the sun unto its setting the human race venerates and worships with the saving confession of faith, as the Creator of all things and its own Maker; to whom also the heights of empire and the powers over things are made subject, because by His disposing the pre-eminence of all kingdoms is granted. By the mercy therefore of His goodness, in extending His whole creation, He has deigned wondrously to kindle even the cold hearts of nations set at the very ends of the earth, by the fervor of the Holy Spirit, unto the knowledge also of Himself.
For what the clemency of the Redeemer has wrought in the enlightenment of our glorious son King Eadbald and of the nations subject to him, we suppose that your glory has more fully learned from the nearness of the places. His wonderful gift therefore we trust shall, in sure hope, be conferred upon you also by heavenly long-suffering; since indeed we have learned that your glorious consort, who is known to be a part of your own body, has been enlightened by the reward of eternity through the regeneration of holy baptism. Wherefore by the present writing we have taken care, with all the affection of inmost charity, to exhort you who are glorious;
that, abominating the idols and their worship, and despising the follies of the shrines and the deceitful enticements of auguries, you may believe in God the Father almighty, and in His Son Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Spirit; that, believing, being freed from the bonds of diabolical captivity by the cooperating power of the holy and undivided Trinity, you may be able to be partakers of eternal life. But by how great a guilt of culpability those are bound fast who, cherishing the most pernicious superstition of idolatries, embrace it, the examples of perdition of those whom they worship make plain; whence it is said of them by the psalmist: All the gods of the nations are demons, but the Lord made the heavens. And again: They have eyes, and see not;