Works (excl. History) 2

Britain, an island of the Ocean, which was once called Albion, lies between the north and the west, set over against, at a great distance, Germany, Gaul, Spain, the greatest parts of Europe. It is eight hundred miles long toward the north, and has a breadth of two hundred miles, except only for the more extended tracts of various promontories, by which it comes about that its circuit reaches four thousand eight hundred and seventy-five miles.

On the south it has Gallia Belgica, whose nearest shore is disclosed to those crossing over by the city which is called Rutubi Portus, now corruptly called Reptacaestir by the English people, the sea lying between, at a crossing of fifty miles from Gessoriacum, the nearest shore of the Morini, or, as some have written, of four hundred and fifty stadia. Behind it, where it opens upon the boundless Ocean, it has the Orkney Islands. The island is rich in crops and trees, and suited for feeding sheep and beasts of burden; it also produces vines in certain places; and it is a land productive of birds of various kinds by land and sea; it is also distinguished by rivers very full of fish and by abundant copious springs, and indeed it especially abounds in salmon and eel.

There are also very often caught seals, and dolphins, as well as whales; besides various kinds of shellfish, among which are mussels, in which they often find an enclosed pearl of every colour, the very best—that is, both ruddy and purple and hyacinth-coloured and green, but most of all white. There are also cockles more than abundant, from which is made a dye of scarlet colour, whose most beautiful redness can never grow pale through any heat of the sun, nor through any injury of the rains; but the older it is, the more comely it is wont to be. It has springs of salt water; it has also hot springs, and from them streams of warm baths suited to every age and sex, in distinct places, each according to its own kind.

For water, as Saint Basil says, takes on a fiery quality when it runs through certain metals, and becomes not only warm but even burning. The land, fruitful also in veins of metals—of copper, iron, lead, and silver—produces jet too, in great quantity and of the best; it is a black gem, and burns when put to fire; when kindled it drives away serpents; warmed by rubbing it holds fast things applied to it, just as amber does. It was once adorned with twenty-eight most noble cities, besides countless fortresses, which themselves too were furnished with most stout walls, towers, gates, and bars. And because it lies almost beneath the very northern pole of the world, it has bright nights in summer;

so that often in the middle of the night a question arises among those who behold it, whether the evening twilight still lingers, or whether the morning has already come, inasmuch as the sun by night returns through the northern regions to the east, not far beneath the earth; whence too it has in summer days of very great length, just as on the contrary it has nights of very great length in winter, the sun then withdrawing into the Libyan parts—that is, of eighteen hours. Likewise it has nights of very great shortness in summer, and days in winter—that is, of only six equinoctial hours; whereas in Armenia, Macedonia, Italy, and the other regions of the same line, the longest day or night completes fifteen hours, and the shortest nine hours.

At present, after the number of the books in which the divine Law was written, it searches out and confesses one and the same knowledge of the highest truth and true sublimity in the languages of five nations—namely the English, the Britons, the Scots, the Picts, and the Latins, the last of which, through the study of the Scriptures, has become common to all the rest. Now in the beginning this island had only Britons for inhabitants, from whom it received its name; who, brought, as is reported, from the Armorican tract into Britain, claimed for themselves its southern parts.

And when, beginning from the south, they had possessed the greater part of the island, it happened that the nation of the Picts, from Scythia, as they relate, entering the Ocean in long ships, not many in number, and being carried about by the blowing of the winds, beyond all the boundaries of Britain reached Ireland, and entered its northern shores; and finding there the nation of the Scots, they asked for themselves likewise settlements in those parts, but could not obtain them. Now Ireland is, after Britain, the largest island of all, situated to the west of Britain; but just as it is shorter than Britain toward the north, so, stretching out far beyond its bounds toward the south, it extends as far as opposite the northern parts of Spain, though a great sea lies between.

Coming therefore by ship as far as this island, the Picts, as we have said, sought that settlements and a dwelling-place be granted to them there too. The Scots answered that the island could not hold them both; but, they said, we can give you wholesome counsel as to what you may be able to do. We know there is another island, not far from ours, toward the rising of the sun, which we are often wont to behold from afar on clearer days. If you wish to go to it, you can make it habitable for yourselves; or, if any resist, you may use us as helpers. And so the Picts, seeking Britain, began to dwell in the northern parts of the island, for the Britons had occupied the southern parts.

And since the Picts had no wives and asked them of the Scots, they consented to give them only on this condition: that where the matter should come into doubt, they should choose for themselves a king rather from the female royal line than from the male; which, it is agreed, has been observed among the Picts even to this day. Now, as time went on, Britain, after the Britons and the Picts, received a third nation, that of the Scots, in the part of the Picts; who, advancing from Ireland under their leader Reuda, claimed for themselves among them, either by friendship or by the sword, the settlements which they hold to this day; from which leader, indeed, they are called even to this day Dalreudini, for in their tongue 'daal' signifies 'a part.'

Ireland, moreover, far surpasses Britain in the breadth of its situation and in the wholesomeness and serenity of its air, so that there snow rarely remains more than three days; no one cuts hay there in summer on account of winter, nor builds stables for his beasts; no reptile is wont to be seen there, no serpent can live; for serpents often carried thither from Britain, as soon as the ship draws near to the land and they are touched by the smell of that air, perish; nay rather, almost all things which come from that island avail against poison.

In short, we have seen that, when certain men had been struck by a serpent, the scrapings of the leaves of books which had come from Ireland, and the very scrapings put into water and given to drink, immediately allayed and consumed for such men all the force of the spreading poison and the whole swelling of the inflamed body. The island is rich in milk and honey, nor lacking in vines, and distinguished by the hunting of fish and birds, and also of stags and roes. This, moreover, is properly the homeland of the Scots; going forth from it, as we have said, they added a third nation in Britain to the Britons and the Picts.

There is, moreover, a very great arm of the sea which in ancient times separated the nation of the Britons from the Picts, which bursts in from the west into the land over a long stretch, where there is a most strongly fortified city of the Britons, even to this day, which is called Alcluith; to the northern part of which arm the Scots whom we have mentioned, coming, made for themselves a place of homeland. Now this same Britain was inaccessible and unknown to the Romans down to the time of Gaius Julius Caesar;

who, in the six hundred and ninety-third year from the founding of the City, and in the sixtieth year before the time of the Lord's incarnation, holding the rank of consul with Lucius Bibulus, while he was waging war against the nations of the Germans and Gauls, who were separated only by the river Rhine, came to the Morini, whence there is the nearest and shortest crossing into Britain; and with about eighty transport and light vessels prepared, he was carried over into Britain, where, wearied first by a bitter battle, then seized by an adverse storm, he lost the greater part of his fleet and no small number of foot soldiers, and almost all his cavalry. Returning into Gaul, he sent his legions into winter quarters, and ordered six hundred ships of both kinds to be made;

with which, again carried over into Britain at the beginning of spring, while he himself was advancing with his army against the enemy, the ships standing at anchor were seized by a storm and either dashed against one another or driven upon the sands and broken up; of which forty perished, the rest were repaired with great difficulty. Caesar's cavalry was defeated in the first encounter by the Britons, and there the tribune Labienus was slain. In the second battle, with great peril to his own men, he put the conquered Britons to flight. Thence he set out to the river Thames. On its farther bank an immense multitude of the enemy had taken its stand under the leadership of Cassobellaunus, and had fortified the bank of the river, and almost the whole ford beneath the water, with very sharp stakes;

the traces of which stakes are to be seen there to this day, and it appears to those inspecting them that each of them was as thick as a man's thigh, and, encased in lead, was fixed immovably in the depth of the river. When this was detected and avoided by the Romans, the barbarians, not bearing the onset of the legions, hid themselves in the woods, whence by frequent sallies they grievously and often mauled the Romans. Meanwhile the most strongly fortified city of the Trinovantes, with its leader Androgius, having given forty hostages, surrendered to Caesar. Following this example, several other cities came into alliance with the Romans.

With these pointing the way, Caesar at length, by a hard-fought battle, took the stronghold of Cassobellaunus, situated between two marshes, further fortified by the cover of woods, and crammed with all manner of things. Thereupon Caesar, returning from the Britons into Gaul, after he had sent his legions into winter quarters, was surrounded and harassed on every side by sudden tumults of wars. Now in the seven hundred and ninety-eighth year from the founding of the City, the emperor Claudius, the fourth from Augustus, desiring to show himself a prince useful to the commonwealth, sought war everywhere and victory from every quarter. And so he set in motion an expedition into Britain, which seemed to have been stirred into tumult on account of deserters not handed back;

he was carried over into the island, which no one before Julius Caesar, nor anyone after him, had dared to approach, and there without any battle or bloodshed, within a very few days, he received the greater part of the island into surrender. He also added to the Roman Empire the Orkney Islands, situated in the ocean beyond Britain, and in the sixth month from his setting out he returned to Rome, and imposed upon his son the name Britannicus. He completed this war in the fourth year of his reign, which is the forty-sixth year from the incarnation of the Lord; in which year too a very grievous famine occurred throughout Syria, which is recorded in the Acts of the Apostles to have been foretold by the prophet Agabus.

By the same Claudius, Vespasian, who reigned after Nero, being sent into Britain, subjected to the dominion of the Romans the Isle of Wight also, nearest to Britain on the south; which has from east to west about thirty miles, from south to north twelve, distant from the southern shore of Britain by a sea of six miles in its eastern parts, and of three in its western. Now Nero, succeeding Claudius in the empire, dared absolutely nothing in military affairs. Whence, among countless other detriments to the Roman realm, he almost lost Britain; for under him two most noble towns there were captured and overthrown.

In the one hundred and fifty-sixth year from the incarnation of the Lord, Marcus Antoninus Verus, the fourteenth from Augustus, received the kingdom together with his brother Aurelius Commodus; in whose times, when Eleutherius, a holy man, presided over the pontificate of the Roman church, Lucius, king of the Britons, sent a letter to him, beseeching that by his mandate he might be made a Christian; and soon he obtained the effect of his pious request; and the Britons kept the faith they had received, inviolate and entire, in quiet peace, down to the times of the emperor Diocletian. In the one hundred and eighty-ninth year from the incarnation of the Lord, Severus, an African by birth, a Tripolitan from the town of Leptis, having attained the empire as the seventeenth from Augustus, held it for seventeen years.

This man, savage by nature, ever harassed by many wars, ruled the commonwealth most bravely indeed, but most laboriously. Therefore, as victor of the civil wars which had befallen him most grievously, he was drawn into the Britains by the defection of almost all his allies. There, after many heavy battles had often been fought, he judged that the part of the island he had recovered should be marked off from the other unsubdued nations, not by a wall, as some suppose, but by a rampart. For a wall is made of stones, but a rampart, by which camps are fortified to repel the force of enemies, is made of sods; these being cut out from the earth all around, a kind of wall is raised high above the ground, so that in front there is a ditch from which the sods were lifted, above which stakes of the strongest timber are fixed.

And so Severus carried a great ditch and a most stout rampart, further fortified with frequent towers, from sea to sea. And there, at the town of York, he died of disease. He left two sons, Bassianus and Geta; of whom Geta, adjudged a public enemy, perished, while Bassianus, having taken the surname Antoninus, gained possession of the kingdom. In the two hundred and eighty-sixth year of the Lord's incarnation, Diocletian, the thirty-third emperor from Augustus, chosen by the army, reigned twenty years, and made Maximian, surnamed Herculius, his colleague in the empire.

In their time a certain Carausius, of the lowest birth indeed, but ready in counsel and in hand, when he had been set to guard the shores of the Ocean, which the Franks and Saxons then infested, was acting more to the ruin than to the profit of the commonwealth, restoring to the owners no part of the booty wrested from the pirates, but claiming it for himself alone; thus kindling the suspicion that by deliberate negligence he was even allowing the very enemies to raid the borders; for which reason, being ordered by Maximian to be put to death, he took up the purple and seized the Britains; which, having most bravely claimed and held for seven years, he was at last killed by the treachery of his associate Allectus. Allectus afterwards held the island, snatched from Carausius, for three years;

whom Asclepiodotus, the praetorian prefect, crushed, and recovered Britain after ten years. Meanwhile Diocletian in the east, and Maximian Herculius in the west, ordered the churches to be laid waste, and the Christians to be afflicted and slain, in the tenth place after Nero; which persecution was longer and more savage than almost all those carried out before; for through ten years it was waged unceasingly by the burning of churches, the proscription of the innocent, and the slaughter of martyrs. Finally it exalted even Britain at that time with very great glory of confession devoted to God. For indeed in it suffered Saint Alban, of whom the priest Fortunatus, in his Praise of Virgins, when he made mention of the blessed martyrs who came to the Lord from the whole world, says:

"Fruitful Britain brings forth the excellent Alban." This same Alban, still a pagan, when the commands of impious rulers were raging against the Christians, received into his lodging a certain cleric fleeing from his persecutors; and when he observed him devoting himself to continual prayers and vigils day and night, suddenly looked upon by divine grace, he began to emulate the example of his faith and piety, and, gradually instructed by his saving exhortations, abandoning the darkness of idolatry, he became a Christian from a whole heart. And when the aforesaid cleric had lodged with him some days, it came to the ears of the wicked ruler that a confessor of Christ, to whom a place of martyrdom had not yet been appointed, lay hidden in Alban's house.

Whereupon he at once ordered soldiers to search for him more diligently. When they had come to the martyr's dwelling, immediately Saint Alban, in place of his guest and master, clad in his garb—that is, the caracalla with which he was clothed—presented himself to the soldiers, and was led bound to the judge. Now it happened that the judge, at the very hour in which Alban was being brought to him, was standing by the altars and offering sacrifices to the demons. And when he saw Alban, at once inflamed with exceeding anger, because he had presumed of his own accord to offer himself to the soldiers in place of the guest whom he had received, and to give himself up to danger, he ordered him to be dragged to the images of the demons by which he stood:

"Because you have chosen to conceal a rebel and a sacrilegious man rather than to deliver him to the soldiers, so that, as a despiser of the gods, he might pay the deserved penalty of his blasphemy, you shall have to discharge whatever punishments were due to him, if you attempt to depart from the worship of our religion." But Saint Alban, who of his own accord had disclosed himself to the persecutors of the faith to be a Christian, in no way feared the threats of the ruler; but, girded with the arms of spiritual warfare, he openly declared that he would not obey his commands. Then the judge said: "Of what family or stock are you?" Alban answered: "What does it concern you of what lineage I am born? But if you desire to hear the truth of religion, know that I am now a Christian, and am free for Christian duties." The judge said:

"I ask your name, which without delay declare to me." But he said: "By my parents I am called Alban, and I ever adore and worship the true and living God, who created all things." Then the judge, filled with wrath, said: "If you wish to enjoy the felicity of everlasting life, do not delay to sacrifice to the great gods." Alban answered: "These sacrifices, which are offered by you to demons, can neither aid those who are subject to them, nor fulfil the desires or vows of those who supplicate them. Nay rather, whoever offers sacrifices to these images shall receive as his reward the eternal punishments of hell."

On hearing these things, the judge, moved by exceeding fury, commanded the holy confessor of God to be beaten by the torturers, supposing that he might soften by blows the constancy of his heart, which he could not by words. And when he was afflicted with the most cruel torments, he bore these patiently—nay rather joyfully—for the Lord. But when the judge perceived that he could not be overcome by torments, nor recalled from the worship of the Christian religion, he ordered him to be beheaded. And as he was being led to death, he came to a river which, by a most rapid current, divided the wall from the sand where he was to be struck;

and he saw there no small multitude of people of both sexes, of different condition and age, which without doubt was being summoned by the prompting of the Godhead to attend upon the most blessed confessor and martyr, and so thronged the bridge of that very river that he could scarcely cross before evening. In short, when almost all had gone out, the judge had remained in the city without attendance. Therefore Saint Alban, in whom burned an ardent devotion of mind to come the more swiftly to martyrdom, drew near to the torrent, and, directing his eyes to heaven, the channel being at once dried up, he saw that the water had given way before him and granted a path to his steps.

And when, among the others, the executioner himself, who was to strike him, had also seen this, he hastened to meet him where he had come to the place destined for death—admonished, doubtless, by a divine prompting—and casting away the sword which he had held drawn, he threw himself at his feet, greatly desiring rather to be himself struck together with the martyr, or in place of the martyr whom he was bidden to strike. While therefore he, from a persecutor, had become a comrade of truth and faith, and while there was a just hesitation among the executioners as the sword lay on the ground, the most reverend confessor of God ascended the hill with the crowds; which hill, conveniently pleasant, with most seemly grace, was situated about five hundred paces from the sand, adorned with various flowers of plants—nay, clothed everywhere with them;

on which there was nothing suddenly steep, nothing precipitous, nothing abrupt; which, with its sides drawn out far and wide in the manner of a level plain, nature smooths flat—rendering it indeed already long since worthy, by the appearance of comeliness implanted in it, to be consecrated by the blood of the blessed martyr. On the summit of this, therefore, Saint Alban asked that water be given him by God, and immediately, the channel being enclosed, a perennial spring sprang up before his feet, so that all might recognize that even the torrent had rendered service to the martyr; for it could not be that on the lofty top of the hill the martyr should seek the water which he had not left behind in the river, unless he saw this to be fitting.

That river, indeed, having performed its service and fulfilled its act of devotion, leaving behind a testimony of its office, returned to its natural course. And so the most valiant martyr, beheaded in that very place, received the crown of life which God has promised to those who love Him. But the man who had laid impious hands upon those holy shoulders was not permitted to rejoice over the dead; for his eyes fell to the ground together with the head of the blessed martyr. There too was beheaded at that time the soldier who, seized beforehand by a heavenly impulse, had refused to strike the holy confessor of God; concerning whom it is certainly established that, although he was not washed in the font of baptism, he was nonetheless cleansed by the laver of his own blood, and made worthy of entrance into the kingdom of heaven.

Then the judge, struck by such an unprecedented display of heavenly miracles, presently ordered the persecution to cease, beginning to render honour to the slaughter of the saints, by which he had formerly supposed that they could be turned away from their devotion to the Christian faith. Now the blessed Alban suffered on the tenth day before the Kalends of July, near the city of Verulamium, which is now called by the English people Verlamacæstir or Wæclingacæstir; where afterward, when the tranquillity of Christian times returned, a church of wonderful workmanship and worthy of his martyrdom was built. In which place, indeed, the healing of the sick and the frequent working of miracles does not cease to be celebrated even to this day.

In that same storm of persecution suffered Aaron and Julius, citizens of the City of the Legions, and very many others of both sexes in various places, who, tortured with diverse torments and torn apart by an unheard-of mangling of their limbs, sent forth their souls to the joys of the heavenly city, their contest perfected. But when the whirlwind of persecution had subsided, the faithful of Christ, who in the time of danger had hidden themselves in woods and deserts and secret caves, coming forth into public, renewed the churches which had been razed to the ground; they founded, built, and completed basilicas of the holy martyrs, and everywhere displayed them like banners of victory; they celebrated feast days, and performed the sacred rites with pure heart and lips.

And this peace remained in the churches of Christ which were in Britain until the times of the Arian madness, which, when it had corrupted the whole world, infected even this island, so far removed beyond the world, with the poison of its error; and when, as it were, this road of pestilence had been opened across the ocean, without delay every plague of every heresy poured itself into the island, which ever rejoices to hear something new and holds nothing certain firmly. In these times Constantius, who while Diocletian was living governed Gaul and Spain, a man of the greatest gentleness and civility, met his death in Britain. He left as emperor of the Gauls his son Constantine, born of his concubine Helena.

Eutropius, however, writes that Constantine, made emperor in Britain, succeeded his father in the kingdom; in whose times the Arian heresy arose, and, though it was exposed and condemned in the Council of Nicaea, nonetheless, as we have said, sprinkled the deadly venom of its perfidy not only upon the churches of the whole world, but also upon those of the islands. In the year 377 from the incarnation of the Lord, Gratian, the fortieth from Augustus, held the empire for six years after the death of Valens, although already long before this he had reigned together with his uncle Valens and with his brother Valentinian.

When he saw the state of the commonwealth afflicted and almost collapsed, he, out of the necessity of restoring the commonwealth, clothed at Sirmium with the purple the Spaniard Theodosius, and set him at the same time over the empire of the East and of Thrace. At which juncture Maximus, a man indeed energetic and upright, and worthy of the office of Augustus had he not risen through tyranny against the faith of his oath, was made emperor in Britain almost against his will by the army, and crossed over into Gaul. There, by a sudden onslaught, he terrified Gratian Augustus, who was meditating a crossing into Italy, and, having encompassed him with treachery, killed him; and he drove his brother Valentinian Augustus out of Italy.

Valentinian, fleeing to the East, was received by Theodosius with fatherly affection, and presently even restored to his empire; the tyrant Maximus being shut in within the walls of Aquileia, captured, and slain by them. In the year 394 from the incarnation of the Lord, Arcadius, son of Theodosius, taking up the kingdom together with his brother Honorius, the forty-third from Augustus, held it for thirteen years. In whose times Pelagius the Briton scattered far and wide the poisons of his perfidy against the help of heavenly grace, using as his collaborator Julian of Campania, whom the unrestrained desire for the bishopric he had long since lost continually agitated;

To these men holy Augustine, as also the other orthodox fathers, replied with many thousands of catholic judgments, yet they were not able to correct their madness; but, what is more grievous, their madness, when rebuked, chose rather to grow greater by contradiction than to be cleansed by yielding to the truth. This Prosper the rhetorician beautifully suggests in heroic verses, when he says: A certain writer, whom devouring envy has long inflamed, is said to creep against Augustine. Who drove forth from the ground that wretched little snake, its head somehow covered in dark caverns, to lift itself up? Either the sea-girt Britons fed him with their own grain, or here his heart swells with Campanian herbage.

In the year 407 from the incarnation of the Lord, while Honorius Augustus, son of the younger Theodosius, held the empire, the forty-fourth in place from Augustus, two years before the breaking in upon Rome which was effected through Alaric king of the Goths—when the peoples of the Alans, Suevi, Vandals, and many others with them, having crushed the Franks and crossed the Rhine, raged throughout all Gaul—among the Britons Gratian, a townsman, was made tyrant and was slain. In his place Constantine, from the lowest rank of the soldiery, was chosen solely for the hope of his name, without any merit of worth; who, as soon as he had seized the empire, crossed over into Gaul. There, often mocked by the barbarians with uncertain treaties, he was a detriment rather to the commonwealth;

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.

For, having joined to himself Severus, a man of all holiness, who was a disciple of the most blessed father Lupus, bishop of Troyes, and at that time ordained bishop at Trier, was preaching the word to the peoples of First Germany, he embarked on the sea, and with the elements consenting, in a calm voyage made for Britain. Meanwhile evil spirits, flitting throughout the whole island, were announcing by their unwilling prophecies that Germanus was coming; to such a degree that a certain Elafius, the chief man of that region, hastened to meet the saints without any report of a manifest messenger, bringing with him his son, whom in the very flower of his youth a grievous infirmity had condemned.

For with his sinews withered and his knee drawn up, the use of his foot was denied him through the dryness of his leg. This Elafius the whole province followed; the priests came, the unknowing multitude ran to meet them, and at once a blessing and the teaching of the divine word were poured forth. They recognized the people remaining in that faith in which he had left them; they understood the fault to be of a few, they sought out the authors, and, when found, condemned them. When suddenly Elafius cast himself at the feet of the priests, offering his son, whose need the very infirmity, even without prayers, pleaded; a common grief arose in all, especially in the priests, who brought the mercy they had conceived before the divine clemency;

and at once the blessed Germanus made the young man sit down, handled the knee bent by infirmity, and the healing right hand ran over the whole extent of the affliction, and a swift restoration to health followed the wholesome touch. The dryness received its moisture, the sinews their functions, and in the sight of all soundness was restored to the son, and the son to the father. The people were filled with astonishment at the miracle, and in the breasts of all the catholic faith, deeply impressed, was strengthened. Then the preaching was turned to the people concerning the amendment of their transgression, and by the verdict of all the authors of the depravity, who had been expelled from the island, were brought before the priests to be conveyed to the inland regions, that both the country might enjoy absolution and they amendment.

And it came to pass that in those places, from that time on, the faith long endured undefiled. And so, all things being set in order, the blessed priests returned with the same prosperity with which they had come. Furthermore, Germanus, after these things, came to Ravenna to make supplication for the peace of the people of Armorica, and there, received with the utmost reverence by Valentinian and Placidia his mother, he passed over to Christ. His body, with the works of his virtues accompanying it, was borne in an honorable procession to his own city. And not long after, Valentinian was slain by the henchmen of the patrician Aetius, whom he had killed, in the sixth year of the emperor Marcian; and with him the Western kingdom fell at the same time. [22] Meanwhile in Britain there was indeed a brief respite from foreign wars, but not from civil ones.

There remained the ruins of the cities overthrown and deserted by the enemy; the citizens who had escaped the foe fought against one another. Nevertheless, while the memory of the calamity and slaughter inflicted was still fresh, the kings, priests, private men, and nobles in some fashion kept each his own rank. But when these passed away, and an age succeeded ignorant of that tempest and acquainted only with the present condition of tranquillity, all the governances of truth and justice were so shaken and overthrown that, I will not say a trace of them, but not even a memory of them appeared, except in a few and very few.

Among other deeds of unspeakable crimes, which their own historian Gildas describes in a mournful discourse, they added this also: that they never committed the word of faith by preaching to the people of the Saxons or Angles dwelling with them in Britain. But the divine mercy did not, for all that, forsake His people, whom He foreknew, but ordained for the aforesaid nation far worthier heralds of the truth, through whom it might believe. [23] For in the year 582 from the incarnation of the Lord, Maurice, receiving the empire as the fifty-fourth from Augustus, held it for twenty-one years. In the tenth year of his reign, Gregory, a man pre-eminent in learning and in action, having obtained the pontificate of the Roman and apostolic see, ruled it thirteen years, six months, and ten days.

He, admonished by divine prompting, in the fourteenth year of the same prince, and about the hundred and fiftieth year after the coming of the Angles into Britain, sent the servant of God Augustine and several other monks with him, who feared the Lord, to preach the word of God to the people of the Angles. When these, obeying the pontifical commands, had begun to undertake the aforesaid task, and had now completed some little of the journey, they were stricken with a faint-hearted fear, and began rather to think of returning home than of going to a barbarous, fierce, and unbelieving nation, whose very language they did not know; and they decided by common counsel that this was the safer course.

Without delay they sent back home Augustine, whom he had appointed to be ordained their bishop if they were received by the Angles, that by humble entreaty he might obtain from the blessed Gregory that they should not be obliged to undertake so perilous, so laborious, so uncertain a pilgrimage. To them he, sending letters of exhortation, urged them to set out upon the work of the word, trusting in the divine help. The form of these letters is, indeed, this: 'Gregory, servant of the servants of God, to the servants of our Lord. Since it had been better not to begin good things than, from those which have been begun, to turn back in thought, it behooves you, most beloved sons, with the utmost zeal to complete the good work which, with the Lord helping, you have begun.

Therefore let neither the toil of the journey nor the tongues of slanderous men deter you; but with all perseverance and all fervor accomplish, with God as author, what you have begun; knowing that a greater glory of eternal recompense follows great labor. To Augustine your provost, returning, whom we have also appointed your abbot, humbly obey in all things; knowing that whatever is fulfilled by you at his admonition will in all respects profit your souls. May Almighty God protect you by His grace, and grant me to see the fruit of your labor in the eternal fatherland; so that, although I cannot labor together with you, I may yet be found together in the joy of the recompense, because I am indeed willing to labor.

May God keep you safe, most beloved sons. Given on the tenth day before the Kalends of August, in the fourteenth year of the reign of our lord Maurice Tiberius, most pious Augustus, in the thirteenth year after the consulship of the same our lord, in the fourteenth indiction.' [24] At that time also the same venerable pontiff sent to Etherius, archbishop of Arles, letters that he should kindly receive Augustine on his way to Britain, of which this is the text: 'To the most reverend and most holy brother Etherius, fellow-bishop, Gregory, servant of the servants of God. Although among priests possessing a charity pleasing to God religious men need the commendation of none; yet, because a fitting time for writing has presented itself, we have taken care to send our writings to your fraternity;

making known that we have directed thither, for the benefit of souls, with the help of the Lord, the bearer of these presents, Augustine the servant of God, of whose zeal we are assured, together with other servants of God; whom it is necessary that your holiness with priestly zeal hasten to assist, and to afford him his comforts. To him also, that you may be the readier to give support, we have enjoined to indicate the cause to you in detail; knowing that, when it is known, you will, for God's sake, with all devotion lend yourself to the giving of comfort, since the matter demands it. Moreover, Candidus the presbyter, our common son, whom we have sent over for the governance of the little patrimony of our church, we commend in all things to your charity. May God keep you safe, most reverend brother.

Given on the tenth day before the Kalends of August, in the fourteenth year of the reign of our lord Maurice Tiberius, most pious Augustus, in the thirteenth year after the consulship of the same our lord, in the fourteenth indiction.' [25] Strengthened, therefore, by the confirmation of the blessed father Gregory, Augustine, with the servants of Christ who were with him, returned to the work of the word, and came to Britain. There was at that time in Kent the most powerful king Aethelberht, who had extended the bounds of his dominion as far as the boundary of the great river Humber, by which the southern and northern peoples of the Angles are divided.

Now toward the eastern quarter of Kent there is a not inconsiderable island, Thanet, that is, according to the usual reckoning of the Angles, of the magnitude of six hundred families, which the river Wantsum separates from the mainland—a river about three stadia in breadth, and passable in two places only; for it extends each of its ends into the sea. On this, then, the servant of the Lord Augustine landed, and his companions, men, as they say, about forty in number. They had also received, at the bidding of the blessed Pope Gregory, interpreters from the nation of the Franks;

and, sending to Aethelberht, he gave word that he had come from Rome, and was bringing the best of tidings, which promised, without any doubt, to those who obeyed it eternal joys in the heavens, and a kingdom without end with the living and true God. When he heard this, he commanded them to remain on the island which they had reached, and that necessaries be supplied to them, until he should see what to do with them. For even before this the report of the Christian religion had reached him, inasmuch as he had a Christian wife of the royal nation of the Franks, by name Bertha; whom he had received from her parents on this condition, that she should have leave to keep inviolate the rite of her faith and religion, with the bishop whom they had given her as a helper of her faith, Liudhard by name.