Works (excl. History) 3 part 1/4

In these times, that is, in the year 605 of the Lord's incarnation, the blessed pope Gregory, after he had most gloriously governed the see of the Roman and apostolic church for thirteen years, six months, and ten days, died, and was translated to the eternal seat of the heavenly kingdom. Concerning whom it is fitting for us, since by his diligence he converted our nation, that is, the Angles, from the power of Satan to the faith of Christ, to make a fuller discourse in our ecclesiastical history—him whom we can and ought rightly to call our apostle.

For when first he held the pontificate over the whole world, and was set over churches already long since converted to the faith of truth, he made our nation, until then enslaved to idols, a church of Christ, so that we may apply to him that apostolic saying: 'For though he is not an apostle to others, yet at least he is to us; for the seal of his apostleship are we in the Lord.' Now he was by nation a Roman, sprung from a father named Gordian, deriving his line from forefathers not only noble but also religious. Indeed Felix, once bishop of the same apostolic see, a man of great glory in Christ and the church, was his great-great-grandfather. But he himself exercised the nobility of religion with no less virtue of devotion than his parents and kinsmen.

But that nobility which he seemed to have toward the world, he wholly converted, by the bestowal of divine grace, to the gaining of the glory of supernal dignity. For, suddenly changing his secular habit, he sought a monastery, in which he began to live with such grace of perfection that, as he himself was afterward wont to attest with weeping, all transient things lay beneath his mind, so that he rose above all things that revolve, so that he was wont to think of nothing but heavenly things, so that even while still held in the body he passed beyond the very bars of the flesh by contemplation, so that he loved even death—which to almost all is a punishment—namely as the entrance of life and the reward of his labour.

But these things he was accustomed to relate about himself, not by boasting of the advancement of his virtues, but rather by lamenting the defect which he seemed to have incurred through the pastoral care. Indeed, at a certain time, conversing privately with his deacon Peter, having enumerated the ancient virtues of his soul, he presently added with grief: 'But now, by occasion of the pastoral care, it endures the affairs of secular men, and after so fair an appearance of its repose is defiled with the dust of earthly action. And when it has scattered itself outward through condescension to many, even when it seeks inward things, it returns to these without doubt the less. I weigh therefore what I endure, I weigh what I have lost; and while I behold that which I have lost, that becomes the heavier which I bear.'

These things indeed the holy man said out of the intention of great humility; but it behoves us to believe that he lost nothing of monastic perfection by occasion of the pastoral care, but rather then took on a greater advancement from the labour of converting many than he had had from the former quiet of his own way of life; especially because, having discharged the office of bishop, he took care to make his own house a monastery; and while at first, drawn from the monastery, ordained to the ministry of the altar, and sent as apocrisiarius from the apostolic see to Constantinople, he yet did not, while dwelling in an earthly palace, interrupt his purpose of heavenly living.

For some of the brethren from his own monastery, who had followed him to the royal city out of the grace of brotherly charity, he began to keep as a safeguard of regular observance; namely, that by their example always—as he himself writes—he might be drawn back, as by an anchor's cable, to the calm shore of prayer, when he was tossed by the incessant impulse of secular affairs, and might strengthen his mind, shaken by the actions of the world, through daily converse of zealous reading among them. By the fellowship of these, therefore, he was not only fortified against earthly assaults, but also kindled more and more to the exercises of the heavenly life. For they urged him to expound the book of blessed Job, wrapped in great obscurities, by a mystical interpretation;

nor could he refuse the work which brotherly love laid upon him as one that would be useful to many. But that same book—how it is to be understood according to the letter, how to be referred to the mysteries of Christ and the church, in what sense it is to be fitted to each of the faithful—he thoroughly taught through thirty-five books of exposition with admirable reasoning. This work indeed he began in the royal city as apocrisiarius, but completed at Rome when he had now been made pontiff. And while he was still placed in the royal city, he wore away, with the help of the grace of catholic truth, a new heresy springing up there concerning the state of our resurrection, at the very beginning by which it arose.

For Eutychius, bishop of that same city, was dogmatizing that our body in that glory of the resurrection would be impalpable and more subtle than the winds and air; which he, hearing it, proved both by the reason of truth and by the example of the Lord's resurrection that this dogma was in every way contrary to the orthodox faith. For the catholic faith holds that our body, exalted with that glory of immortality, is indeed subtle through the effect of spiritual power, yet palpable through the truth of its nature; according to the example of the Lord's body, of which, raised from the dead, he himself says to his disciples: 'Handle and see, for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me to have.'

In the assertion of which faith the venerable father Gregory strove to labour against the new heresy springing up to such a degree, and crushed it with such insistence—the most pious emperor Tiberius Constantine also aiding—that thereafter no one was found who might be its reviver. He also composed another excellent book, which is called the Pastoral, in which he disclosed with manifest light what kind of men are to be taken up for the rule of the church, how the rulers themselves should live, with what discretion they should instruct each several person of their hearers, and with how great consideration they ought daily to ponder their own frailty. He also composed homilies on the Gospel, forty in number, which he divided into two volumes in equal portion.

He also made four books of Dialogues, in which, at the request of his deacon Peter, he gathered together for the example of living for posterity the virtues of the saints whom he could know or hear of as more renowned in Italy; so that, as in the books of his expositions he taught by what virtues one must toil, so also, by describing the miracles of the saints, he might show what is the brightness of those same virtues. He also demonstrated, through twenty-two homilies, how much light the first and last part of the prophet Ezekiel—which seemed more obscure—hold within. Besides the little book of responses, which he wrote to the questions of holy Augustine, the first bishop of the nation of the Angles, as we have also shown above, inserting that whole little book into these histories;

likewise the synodical little book, most useful, which he composed with the bishops of Italy concerning the necessary causes of the church, and familiar letters to certain persons. Which is the more wonderful, that he could compose so many and so great volumes, because through almost the whole time of his youth, to speak in his own words, he was tormented by frequent pains of the bowels, was wearied at every hour and moment by the broken strength of his stomach, and panted with fevers slow indeed, yet continual. But amid these things, while he anxiously weighed that, as Scripture witnesses, 'Every son who is received is scourged,' by however much he was more harshly pressed down by present evils, by so much the more certainly did he breathe again in the presumption of the eternal.

These things indeed have been said concerning his immortal genius, which could not be quenched even by so great a pain of body. For while certain other pontiffs gave their labour to building and adorning churches with gold or silver, this man was wholly free for the gain of souls. Whatever money he had, he diligently took care to scatter it and give it to the poor, so that his righteousness might endure for ever and ever, and his horn might be exalted in glory; so that he might truly say that of blessed Job: 'The ear that heard blessed me, and the eye that saw bore witness to me, because I had delivered the poor man that cried out, and the orphan that had no helper. The blessing of him that was about to perish came upon me, and I comforted the heart of the widow.'

'I put on righteousness, and it clothed me; my judgment was as a robe and a diadem. I was an eye to the blind, and a foot to the lame. I was a father to the poor, and the cause which I knew not I searched out most diligently. I broke the jaws of the wicked man, and out of his teeth I plucked the prey.' And a little after: 'If I have denied,' he says, 'to the poor what they desired, and have made the eyes of the widow to wait. If I have eaten my morsel alone, and the orphan hath not eaten thereof. For from my infancy compassion grew up with me, and it came out with me from my mother's womb.' To which work of his piety and righteousness this also belongs, that, snatching our nation from the teeth of the ancient enemy through the preachers whom he sent hither, he made it a partaker of eternal liberty;

rejoicing together at its faith and salvation, and commending it with worthy praise, he himself says in the Exposition of blessed Job: 'Behold, the tongue of Britain, which knew nothing else but to gnash barbarously, has now long since begun to resound the Hebrew Alleluia in the divine praises. Behold, the ocean once swollen, now subdued, serves at the feet of the saints, and its barbarous motions, which earthly princes could not tame with the sword, these the mouths of priests bind with simple words for fear of God; and he who as an unbeliever would by no means fear the bands of fighting men, now as a believer fears the tongues of the humble.'

'Because, when the heavenly words have been received, and miracles also growing clear, the power of divine knowledge is poured into it, it is restrained by the fear of that same divinity, so that it dreads to act wickedly, and longs with all its desires to come to the grace of eternity.' By which words blessed Gregory also declares this, that holy Augustine and his companions led the nation of the Angles to the recognition of truth not by the preaching of words alone, but also by the showing of heavenly signs. Among other things blessed pope Gregory brought it about that in the churches of the holy apostles Peter and Paul masses should be celebrated over their bodies. But also in the very celebration of the masses he added three phrases full of the greatest perfection:

'And mayest thou dispose our days in thy peace, and command that we be snatched from eternal damnation, and be numbered in the flock of thine elect.' Now he ruled the church in the times of the emperors Maurice and Phocas. But in the second year of the same Phocas, passing out of this life, he migrated to the true life, which is in heaven. He was buried in body in the church of the blessed apostle Peter, before the sacristy, on the fourth day before the Ides of March, to rise again sometime in glory in that same place with the other shepherds of the holy church; and an epitaph of this kind was written on his tomb: 'Receive, O earth, the body taken from thy body, which thou mayest render back when God gives life.'

'The spirit seeks the stars; the laws of death shall do no harm to him for whom death itself is rather the way of another life. In this tomb are enclosed the limbs of the highest pontiff, who lives for ever everywhere in his countless good works. Hunger he overcame with feasts, cold with clothing, and souls he sheltered from the foe with holy counsels. And he fulfilled in deed whatever he taught by word, that he might be an example, speaking mystic words. By his teaching piety he converted the Angles to Christ, gaining for the faith hosts from a new nation. This was thy labour, this thy study, this thy care; this, O shepherd, thou didst do, that thou mightest offer to the Lord very many gains of thy flock. And being made a consul of God by these triumphs, rejoice; for now thou holdest the reward of thy works without end.'

Nor is the tradition to be passed over in silence, which concerning blessed Gregory has been handed down to us by the tradition of our elders; by what cause, namely, he was prompted to undertake so diligent a care for the salvation of our nation. They say that one day, when merchants had recently arrived, and many things for sale had been brought together into the market-place, and many had flocked together to buy, Gregory himself also came among the others, and saw among other things boys put up for sale, of fair body and comely countenance, and with notably excellent hair. When he beheld them, he asked, as they say, from what region or land they had been brought. And it was said that they were from the island of Britain, whose inhabitants were of such an appearance.

Again he asked whether those same islanders were Christians, or whether they were still entangled in pagan errors. It was said that they were pagans. And he, drawing long sighs from the depth of his heart, said: 'Alas, what grief! that the author of darkness possesses men of such bright countenance, and that with such grace of outward appearance the mind bears within it a void of inward grace!' Again therefore he asked what was the name of that nation. It was answered that they were called Angles. And he said: 'Well; for they have an angelic face too, and such ought to be coheirs of the angels in heaven. What is the name of that very province from which these have been brought?' It was answered that those provincials were called Deiri. And he said: 'Well, Deiri;

plucked out of wrath (de ira), and called to the mercy of Christ. How is the king of that province called?' It was answered that he was called Aelle. And he, playing upon the name, said: 'Alleluia, the praise of God the Creator ought to be sung in those parts.' And coming to the pontiff of the Roman and apostolic see—for he himself had not yet been made pontiff—he asked that he would send to the nation of the Angles in Britain some ministers of the word, through whom it might be converted to Christ; affirming that he himself was ready to accomplish this work with the Lord's cooperation, if only it pleased the apostolic pope that it should be done.

And when he could not accomplish this—because, although the pontiff was willing to grant him what he had asked, yet the citizens of Rome could not permit that he should withdraw so far from the city—as soon as he himself discharged the office of the pontificate, he accomplished the work long desired; sending indeed other preachers, but he himself helping the preaching to bear fruit by his exhortations and prayers. These things, according to the tradition which we have received from the ancients, we have thought it opportune to insert into our ecclesiastical history.

[2] Meanwhile Augustine, using the help of king Aethelberht, summoned to a conference with him the bishops or teachers of the nearest province of the Britons, in a place which to this day in the language of the Angles is called Augustinaes Ac, that is, Augustine's oak, on the borders of the Hwicce and the West Saxons; and he began to persuade them with brotherly admonition that, holding catholic peace with him, they should undertake the common labour of evangelizing the nations for the Lord. For they did not keep the Lord's day of Easter at its proper time, but from the fourteenth to the twentieth moon; which computation is contained in a cycle of eighty-four years. But they also did many other things contrary to the unity of the church.

Who, when, after a long disputation had been held, they would give their assent neither to the prayers, nor the exhortations, nor the rebukes of Augustine and his companions, but rather preferred their own traditions to all the churches which throughout the world agree together in Christ, the holy father Augustine put this end to the toilsome and long contest, saying: 'Let us beseech God, who makes those of one mind to dwell in the house of his Father, that he himself may deign to make known to us by heavenly signs which tradition is to be followed, by what ways we must hasten to the entrance of his kingdom. Let some sick man be brought, and by whose prayers he shall be healed, let that man's faith and working be believed to be devoted to God and to be followed by all.'

And when the adversaries, though unwilling, granted this, a certain man of the nation of the Angles was brought forward, deprived of the light of his eyes; who, when he had been presented to the British priests, received no curing or healing by their ministry; at length Augustine, compelled by just necessity, bent his knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying that he would restore to the blind man the sight which he had lost, and that through the bodily enlightenment of one man he would kindle the grace of spiritual light in the hearts of many of the faithful. Without delay the blind man is enlightened, and Augustine is proclaimed by all as the true herald of the highest light. Then the Britons confess indeed that they have understood it to be the true way of righteousness which Augustine preached;

but that they could not, without the consent and leave of their own people, abandon their ancient customs. Whence they demanded that a second synod be held, with more persons coming. When this had been decided, there came, as they report, seven bishops of the Britons and many most learned men, especially from their most noble monastery, which is called in the language of the Angles Bancornaburg (Bangor), over which at that time abbot Dinoot is related to have presided; who, being about to go to the aforesaid council, came first to a certain holy and prudent man, who was wont to lead an anchoretic life among them, consulting whether at the preaching of Augustine they ought to forsake their traditions. He answered: 'If he is a man of God, follow him.' They said: 'And whence can we prove this?' And he:

'The Lord,' he said, 'saith: Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me, for I am meek and humble of heart. If therefore that Augustine is meek and humble of heart, it is credible that he himself bears the yoke of Christ, and offers it to you to be borne; but if he is harsh and proud, it is plain that he is not of God, nor is his word to be regarded by us.' Who again said: 'And whence can we even discern this?' 'Arrange,' he said, 'that he himself come first with his men to the place of the synod, and, if at your approach he rises up, knowing that he is a servant of Christ, hear him obediently; but if he despises you, and is unwilling to rise up before you, since you are more in number, let him too be despised by you.' They did as he had said.

And it came to pass that, as they were approaching, Augustine remained seated in his chair. Seeing this, they were straightway moved to anger, and, marking him as proud, they strove to gainsay everything that he said. But he said to them that in many things indeed they acted contrary to our custom, nay, contrary to the custom of the universal Church; and yet, 'If in these three points you are willing to obey me — that you keep Easter at its proper time; that you complete the ministry of baptizing, whereby we are reborn unto God, according to the manner of the holy Roman and apostolic Church; and that together with us you preach the word of the Lord to the English nation — then all the other things which you do, though contrary to our customs, we shall bear with an even mind.'

But they answered that they would do none of these things, nor would they hold him for their archbishop; conferring among themselves that, if even now he would not rise to greet us, how much more, once we have begun to be subject to him, will he despise us as nothing. To them the man of the Lord, Augustine, is said to have foretold, with a threat, that if they would not receive peace with their brethren, they would receive war from their enemies; and that if they would not preach to the English nation the way of life, they would suffer the vengeance of death at their hands. And this, by the working of the divine judgment, was brought to pass in all things even as he had foretold.

For after these things, that very most valiant king of the English of whom we spoke, Æthelfrith, having gathered a great army, came to the City of the Legions — which by the English is called Legacæstir, but by the Britons more correctly named Carlegion — and made a very great slaughter of that perfidious nation. And when, being about to give battle, he saw their priests, who had assembled to entreat God on behalf of the soldiery engaged in war, standing apart in a safer place, he inquired who they were and for what purpose they had gathered there.

Now very many of them were from the monastery of Bangor, in which there is said to have been so great a number of monks that, when the monastery was divided into seven portions with rulers set over each, none of these portions had fewer than three hundred men, who were all wont to live by the labour of their own hands. Very many of these, then, having completed a three days' fast, had come with others to the aforesaid battle-line for the sake of prayer, having as a protector one named Brocmail, who was to guard them, intent upon their prayers, from the swords of the barbarians. When king Æthelfrith had understood the cause of their coming, he said: 'Therefore, if they cry to their God against us, then they too, although they bear no arms, are fighting against us, since they assail us with adverse imprecations.'

And so he commanded that arms first be turned against these; and thus he destroyed the remaining bands of that wicked soldiery, though not without great loss to his own army. They report that of those who had come to pray, about one thousand two hundred men were slain in that battle, and that only fifty escaped by flight. Brocmail, at the first onset of the enemy, turning his back together with his men, left those whom he ought to have defended unarmed and exposed to the smiting swords. Thus was fulfilled the prophecy of the holy bishop Augustine — although he himself had long before been taken up to the heavenly kingdom — that the faithless should feel even temporal destruction in vengeance, because they had spurned the counsels of perpetual salvation offered to them.

In the year of our Lord's incarnation 604, Augustine, archbishop of the Britains, ordained two bishops, namely Mellitus and Justus: Mellitus indeed to preach to the province of the East Saxons, who are divided from Kent by the river Thames and border upon the eastern sea, whose chief city is London, set upon the bank of the aforesaid river and itself a mart of many peoples coming by land and by sea. In which nation at that time there reigned Sæberht, nephew of Æthelberht by his sister Ricula, although placed under the power of the same Æthelberht, who, as was said above, held sway over all the nations of the English as far as the boundary of the river Humber.

And when this province too had received the word of truth through the preaching of Mellitus, king Æthelberht built in the city of London a church of the holy apostle Paul, in which both he and his successors were to have the place of the episcopal see. But Justus Augustine ordained bishop in Kent itself, in the city of Dorubrevis, which the English nation, after a certain chief man of it long ago who was called Hrof, surnames Hrofæscæstræ. It is distant from Canterbury about twenty-four miles to the west; in which city king Æthelberht built a church of the blessed apostle Andrew, who also offered many gifts to the bishops of both these churches, as also to that of Canterbury; and moreover he added lands and possessions for the use of those who were with the bishops.

Now Augustine, the father beloved of God, died, and his body was laid outside, beside the church of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul which we have mentioned above, because it was not yet finished nor consecrated. But as soon as it was consecrated, his body was carried inside and was fittingly buried in the north porch of it; in which also are entombed the bodies of all the succeeding archbishops, save two only, that is Theodore and Berhtwald, whose bodies were placed in the church itself, because the aforesaid porch could not hold more. This porch has almost in the middle of it an altar dedicated in honour of the blessed pope Gregory, at which every Sabbath the offices for them are solemnly celebrated by the presbyter of that place.

And there was written upon the tomb of the same Augustine an epitaph of this manner: 'Here rests the lord Augustine, first archbishop of Canterbury, who, once sent hither by the blessed Gregory, pontiff of the city of Rome, and upheld by God through the working of miracles, led king Æthelberht and his nation from the worship of idols to the faith of Christ; and, having completed in peace the days of his office, he died on the seventh day before the Kalends of June, the same king reigning.' Laurence succeeded Augustine in the bishopric, whom he himself, while yet living, had on that account ordained, lest, upon his own death, the estate of so new a Church, being for even an hour bereft of a shepherd, should begin to totter.

In which he also followed the example of the first shepherd of the Church, that is, of the most blessed Peter, chief of the apostles, who, having founded the Church of Christ at Rome, is reported to have consecrated Clement to be at once his helper in the work of the gospel and his successor. Laurence, having attained the rank of archbishop, took most strenuous care to enlarge the foundations of the Church, which he had seen nobly laid, and to advance them to the height of due perfection, both by the frequent voice of holy exhortation and by continual examples of pious working.

In short, he bore the care not only of the new Church which had been gathered from the English, but he also took pains to expend pastoral solicitude upon the peoples of the older inhabitants of Britain, and likewise of the Irish, who dwell in the island of Ireland nearest to Britain. For when he learned that the manner of life and profession of the Irish in their aforesaid native land, as also of the Britons in Britain itself, was in many things less than ecclesiastical — chiefly that they did not celebrate the solemnity of Easter at its proper time, but, as we have shown above, thought that the day of the Lord's resurrection should be observed from the fourteenth moon to the twentieth —

he wrote, together with his fellow bishops, an exhortatory letter to them, beseeching and adjuring them to hold the unity of peace and of catholic observance together with the Church of Christ which is spread throughout the whole world. The beginning of which letter is this: 'To our most dear lords and brethren, the bishops or abbots throughout all Ireland, Laurence, Mellitus, and Justus, bishops, servants of the servants of God. While the apostolic see, after its custom, as throughout the whole world, was directing us into these western parts to preach to the pagan nations, and it befell that we entered into this island which is called Britain;'