Works (excl. History) 3

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;'

before we came to know them, believing that they walked according to the manner of the universal Church, we venerated both the Britons and the Irish with great reverence for their holiness; but coming to know the Britons, we thought the Irish better. The Irish, however — through bishop Dagan coming into this island which we mentioned above, and through abbot Columban coming into Gaul — we learned to differ in no way from the Britons in their manner of life. For bishop Dagan, coming to us, would not take food, not only with us, but not even in the same lodging in which we were eating. The same Laurence, together with his fellow bishops, also sent to the priests of the Britons letters befitting his rank, by which he strove to confirm them in catholic unity.

But how much he profited by doing these things, the present times even yet declare. At these times Mellitus, bishop of London, came to Rome to treat with the apostolic pope Boniface concerning the needs of the Church of the English. And when the same most reverend pope was convening a synod of the bishops of Italy, to make ordinances concerning the life and peace of monks, Mellitus himself also sat among them, in the eighth year of the reign of the emperor Phocas, in the thirteenth indiction, on the third day before the Kalends of March;

so that what things had been canonically decreed he might confirm by subscribing them with his own authority also, and, returning to Britain, might carry them with him to be enjoined upon and observed by the Churches of the English, together with the letters which the same pontiff directed to Laurence, archbishop beloved of God, and to all the clergy, and likewise to king Æthelberht and the English nation. This is that Boniface, the fourth from the blessed Gregory, bishop of the city of Rome, who obtained from the emperor Phocas that there should be granted to the Church of Christ the temple at Rome which was called by the ancients the Pantheon, as if it were the image of all the gods; in which he himself, every defilement having been cast out, made a church of the holy Mother of God and of all the martyrs of Christ;

so that, the multitude of demons being shut out, the multitude of saints might there have a memorial. In the year from the Lord's incarnation 616, which is the twenty-first year since Augustine with his companions was sent to preach to the English nation, Æthelberht, king of the men of Kent, after a temporal reign which he had most gloriously held for fifty-six years, entered into the eternal joys of the heavenly kingdom; who indeed was the third among the kings of the English nation to hold sway over all their southern provinces, which are separated from the northern by the river Humber and the boundaries adjoining it; but he was the first of all to ascend the kingdoms of heaven. For the first to hold an empire of this kind was Ælle, king of the South Saxons; the second, Cælin, king of the West Saxons, who in their own tongue was called Ceawlin;

the third, as we have said, was Æthelberht, king of the men of Kent; the fourth, Rædwald, king of the East Angles, who even while Æthelberht was living was furnishing leadership to his own nation, obtained it; the fifth, Edwin, king of the nation of the Northumbrians — that is, of that nation which inhabits the region to the north of the river Humber — with greater power presided over all the peoples who inhabit Britain, both English and Britons alike, except only the men of Kent; and moreover he subjected to the empire of the English the Mevanian islands of the Britons, which are situated between Ireland and Britain; the sixth, Oswald, himself also a most Christian king of the Northumbrians, held the kingdom within these same bounds;

the seventh, Oswiu his brother, holding for some time a kingdom within almost equal bounds, also subdued for the most part the nations of the Picts and Irish, who hold the northern parts of Britain, and made them tributary. But of these things hereafter. Now king Æthelberht died on the twenty-fourth day of the month of February, after one and twenty years from his reception of the faith, and was buried in the porch of St Martin within the church of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul, where also queen Bertha was laid. He, among the other good things which he conferred upon his nation by his provident care, also established for it decrees of judgments, after the examples of the Romans, with the counsel of wise men; which, written in the speech of the English, are kept to this day and observed by it.

In which he first laid down how he ought to make amends who should by theft carry off anything belonging either to the Church, or to the bishop, or to the other orders; wishing, namely, to afford protection to those whom, and whose teaching, he had received. Now this same Æthelberht was the son of Irminric, whose father was Octa, whose father was Oeric surnamed Oisc, from whom the kings of Kent are wont to be surnamed Oiscingas. Whose father was Hengist, who together with his son Oisc, being invited by Vortigern, first entered Britain, as we have related above. But indeed after the death of Æthelberht, when his son Eadbald had taken up the helm of the kingdom, he was a great detriment to the still tender growths of the Church there.

For not only had he refused to receive the faith of Christ, but he was also defiled with such fornication as the apostle testifies was not heard of even among the heathen, so that he had his father's wife. By both which crimes he gave occasion of returning to the former vomit to those who, under the rule of his parent, whether by favour or by fear of the king, had taken upon themselves the laws of faith and chastity. Nor were the scourges of the heavenly severity wanting to chastise and correct the faithless king; for he was oppressed by frequent madness of mind and by the invasion of an unclean spirit.

Moreover the storm of this disturbance was increased also by the death of Sæberht, king of the East Saxons, who, when, seeking the everlasting kingdoms, he left as heirs of the temporal kingdom his three sons, who had remained pagan, these straightway began openly to serve idolatry, which during his lifetime they had seemed somewhat to have suspended, and to give to the subject peoples free licence of worshipping idols. And when they saw the bishop, after the solemnities of the mass had been celebrated in the church, giving the eucharist to the people, they said to him, as is commonly reported, puffed up with barbarous folly: 'Why do you not also offer to us the white bread which you used to give to our father Saba — for so they were wont to call him — and which you do not yet cease to give to the people in the church?'

To whom he answered: 'If you are willing to be washed in that saving font in which your father was washed, you may also be partakers of the holy bread, of which he was a partaker; but if you despise the laver of life, you are by no means able to receive the bread of life.' But they said: 'We will not enter that font, because we know that we have no need of it; yet nevertheless we wish to be refreshed by that bread.' And when they had been carefully and often admonished by him that it could by no means be so done, that anyone without the most sacred purification should communicate in the most sacred oblation, at last, moved by fury, they said: 'If you will not consent to us in so easy a matter as we ask, you shall no longer be able to remain in our province.'

And they drove him out, and commanded him to depart out of their kingdom with his own people. He, being driven thence, came to Kent to consult with Laurence and Justus, his fellow bishops, as to what should be done in these matters. And it was decreed by common counsel that it was better that all should return to their native land and there serve the Lord with a free mind, than to remain among the barbarians rebellious against the faith without fruit. So first Mellitus and Justus departed and withdrew to the parts of Gaul, intending there to await the issue of affairs. But not for a long time did those kings who had driven from them the herald of the truth serve the demonic cults with impunity. For going out to battle against the nation of the Gewisse, they all fell together with their soldiery;

nor, although the instigators were lost, could the populace, stirred up to wickedness, be set right again and called back to the simplicity of faith and of the love which is in Christ. But when Laurence too was about to follow Mellitus and Justus and to leave Britain, he commanded that on that very night a bed be prepared for him in the church of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul, of which we have now frequently spoken;

in which, when, after many prayers and tears poured out to the Lord for the estate of the Church, he had laid his limbs to rest and had fallen asleep, there appeared to him the most blessed chief of the apostles, and, for a long time of the secret night afflicting him with rather sharp scourges, asked him with apostolic strictness why he was forsaking the flock which he himself had entrusted to him, or to which of the shepherds he, fleeing, was leaving the sheep of Christ set in the midst of wolves. 'Have you,' he said, 'forgotten my example, who, for the little ones of Christ, whom he had commended to me as a token of his love, endured chains, stripes, prisons, afflictions, and at the last death itself, even the death of the cross, at the hands of the unbelievers and enemies of Christ, that I myself might be crowned together with Christ?'

Animated by these scourges of blessed Peter and likewise by his exhortations, Christ's servant Laurence, as soon as morning had come, went to the king, and, drawing back his garment, showed with how many stripes he had been torn. The king, marvelling greatly and inquiring who had dared to inflict such wounds upon so great a man, when he heard that for the sake of his salvation the bishop had endured such torments and stripes from the apostle of Christ, was greatly afraid; and, every cult of idolatry being anathematized and his unlawful marriage renounced, he received the faith of Christ, and, being baptized, took care, as far as he was able, to consult for and favour in all things the affairs of the Church. He also sent to Gaul and recalled Mellitus and Justus, and bade them return to govern their own churches in freedom;

who returned a year after they had departed; and Justus indeed returned to the city of Rochester, over which he had presided; but the Londoners would not receive Mellitus as bishop, rejoicing rather to serve idolatrous pontiffs. For he had not so great power of the kingdom as his father, that he could, even against the will of the pagans who gainsaid it, restore to his church its bishop. Nevertheless he himself, together with his nation, from the time he was converted to the Lord, took pains to devote himself to the divine precepts. In short, in the monastery of the most blessed chief of the apostles, he built a church of the holy Mother of God, which archbishop Mellitus consecrated.

For while this king was reigning, the blessed archbishop Laurence ascended to the heavenly kingdom, and was buried in the church and monastery of the holy apostle Peter, beside his predecessor Augustine, on the fourth day before the Nones of February; after whom Mellitus, who was bishop of London, received the see of the church of Canterbury, third from Augustine. But Justus, still surviving, governed the church of Rochester. When they were governing the Church of the English with great care and labour, they received exhortatory writings from Boniface, pontiff of the Roman and apostolic see, who presided over the Church after Deusdedit, in the year of the Lord's incarnation 619.

Now Mellitus was indeed weighed down by an infirmity of body, that is, the gout, but with the sound steps of his mind he briskly leapt over all earthly things, and ever flew up to things heavenly — to be loved, sought, and pursued. He was noble by origin of the flesh, but nobler by the eminence of his mind. In short, that I may relate one testimony of his virtue, whereby the rest may be understood: at a certain time the city of Canterbury, seized by fire through the fault of carelessness, began to be consumed by the increasing flames;

and when no one could withstand them by any pouring of water, and now no small part of the city had been laid waste, and the raging flame was spreading itself toward the bishop's residence, the bishop, trusting in divine aid where human aid was lacking, commanded himself to be carried out to meet the raging globes of fire flying hither and thither. Now in that place where the onset of the flames was pressing most heavily there was the martyr-shrine of the blessed Four Crowned Ones. Thither, then, being carried by the hands of his attendants, the bishop, infirm as he was, began by praying to drive away the danger, which the firm hand of strong men had been unable to do, even with much labour.

Without delay, the wind, which blowing from the south had scattered the conflagrations through the city, being turned back toward the south, first withdrew the force of its fury from harming those places which were opposite, and soon, by sinking utterly to rest, with the flames likewise lulled and extinguished, it was checked. And because the man of God burned strongly with the fire of divine love, because he had been wont by frequent prayers and exhortations to repel the tempests of the powers of the air from harm to himself and to his own, deservedly he was able to prevail over the winds and flames of this world, and to obtain that they should not harm himself and his own.

And so this man too, after he had ruled the church for five years, while Eadbald was reigning, departed to the heavens, and was buried with his fathers in the oft-mentioned monastery and church of the most blessed chief of the apostles, in the year from the Lord's incarnation 624, on the eighth day before the Kalends of May. Justus, who was bishop of the church of Rochester, immediately succeeded him in the pontificate. For that church he consecrated Romanus as bishop in his own place, authority to ordain bishops having been given him by pontiff Boniface, whom we have mentioned above to have been the successor of Deusdedit; of which authority this is the form: 'To the most beloved brother Justus, Boniface.'

'How devotedly and also how vigilantly your fraternity has laboured for the gospel of Christ, not only the tenor of the letter directed by you, but rather the perfection bestowed from above upon your work, has shown. For Almighty God has not forsaken either the sacrament of His own name, or the fruit of your labour, since He Himself faithfully promised to the preachers of the gospel: "Behold, I am with you all the days, even unto the consummation of the world." Which His clemency has specially demonstrated in the ministry enjoined upon you, opening the hearts of the nations to receive the singular mystery of your preaching.

For with great reward He has made bright the delightful course of your high stations by the supports of His goodness, since, bestowing upon the most faithful dealings of the talents entrusted to you a rich fruit, He has prepared for Him that which you might seal with multiplied generations. And this also has been conferred upon you by that recompense whereby, persevering continually in the ministry enjoined upon you, with praiseworthy patience you awaited the redemption of that nation, and by your merits, that they might profit, their salvation was held forth, the Lord saying: "He that shall persevere unto the end, the same shall be saved."

You have therefore been saved by the hope of patience and by the virtue of endurance, that the hearts of the unbelievers, being purged of their natural and superstitious disease, might obtain the mercy of their Saviour. For, having received the letters of our son king Eadbald, we have found with how great erudition of sacred eloquence your fraternity has led his mind to the belief of true conversion and of undoubting faith. By which thing, taking sure confidence from the long-suffering of the heavenly clemency, we believe that not only the fullest salvation of the nations subject to him, but rather of the neighbouring nations also, is to follow through the ministry of your preaching;

so that, as it is written, the reward of the work consummated may be granted you by the Lord, the rewarder of all good things, and that, the universal confession of the nations, with the sacrament of the Christian faith received, may attest that truly "their sound has gone out into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world." Moreover, by the bearer of these present letters, we have, invited by the zeal of your kindness, directed a pallium to your fraternity, which, namely, we have ordained you to have licence to use only in celebrating the most sacred mysteries; granting to you also to celebrate the ordinations of bishops, opportunity demanding it, the Lord's mercy going before; so that the gospel of Christ may be spread abroad by the proclamation of many among all the nations which are not yet converted.

Let your fraternity therefore be zealous to keep this, which it has received by the kindness of the apostolic see, with the undefiled sincerity of mind, considering by the likeness of what thing you have undertaken to bear upon your shoulders so excellent a vestment. And study so to show yourself, the Lord's clemency being implored, that you may present the rewards of the bestowed gift, not with guilt, but with profit of souls, before the tribunal of the supreme and coming Judge. May God keep you safe, most beloved brother.' At which time also the nation of the Northumbrians — that is, that nation of the English which dwelt to the north of the river Humber — together with their king Edwin, received the word of faith through the preaching of Paulinus, whom we have mentioned above.

To which king, indeed, as an auspicious beginning of receiving the faith and the heavenly kingdom, the power of earthly empire had also increased; so that — what no one of the English before him had done — he received under his sway all the bounds of Britain, wherever the provinces either of the English or of the Britons dwelt. Nay more, he subjugated to the empire of the English the Mevanian islands, as we have shown above; of which the former, which is to the south, both larger in situation and more fertile in the yield and abundance of crops, holds the measure of nine hundred and sixty families according to the reckoning of the English, the second the space of three hundred and beyond.

Now the occasion for this nation of receiving the faith was that the aforesaid king of theirs was joined in kinship to the kings of Kent, having received as wife Æthelburh, daughter of king Æthelberht, who was called by another name Tata. When he first sought her fellowship by procurers sent from her brother Eadbald, who then presided over the kingdom of Kent, answer was given that it was not lawful that a Christian virgin be given in marriage to a pagan, lest the faith and the sacraments of the heavenly King should be profaned by fellowship with a king who was utterly ignorant of the worship of the true God. When the messengers reported these words to Edwin, he promised that he would do nothing whatsoever contrary to the Christian faith which the virgin practised;

nay rather, that he would permit her to keep the faith and worship of her religion after the Christian manner, together with all who should come with her, men or women, priests or ministers. Nor did he deny that he himself would also undergo the same religion, if nevertheless, being examined by the prudent, it could be found holier and more worthy of God. And so the virgin is promised and is sent to Edwin, and, according to what had been arranged, there is ordained as bishop the man beloved of God, Paulinus, who should come with her, and should confirm her and her companions, lest they might be defiled by the society of the pagans, by daily exhortation and by the celebration of the heavenly sacraments.

Now Paulinus was ordained bishop by Archbishop Justus on the twelfth day before the Kalends of August, in the year of our Lord's incarnation 625; and so he came with the aforesaid virgin to King Edwin as a companion, so to speak, of her wedded estate. But he himself rather, intending with his whole heart, by summoning to the knowledge of the truth that people to whom he was going, that, according to the word of the Apostle, he might present them as a chaste virgin to one true bridegroom, Christ. And when he had come into the province, he labored much, both that he might, with the Lord's help, keep those who had come with him from falling away from the faith, and that he might, if perhaps he could, by preaching convert some of the heathen to the grace of faith. But, as the Apostle says, although he labored long in the word:

The god of this world hath blinded the minds of the unbelievers, that the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ should not shine unto them. Now in the following year there came into the province a certain assassin named Eumer, sent by the king of the West Saxons whose name was Cuichelm, hoping to deprive King Edwin at once of his kingdom and of his life; he carried a two-edged poisoned dagger, so that if the wound of the iron should be insufficient for the king's death, it might be aided by the venom of the poison. He came to the king on the first day of Easter beside the river Derwent, where at that time was the royal residence, and he entered as though bringing a message from his lord; and while with cunning mouth he was rehearsing his feigned embassy, he suddenly sprang up, and, drawing the dagger from beneath his garment, made an assault upon the king.

When Lilla, the king's most beloved thegn, saw this, having no shield at hand with which to defend the king from death, he at once interposed his own body before the stroke of the striker; but the enemy drove in the iron with such force that he wounded even the king through the body of the slain soldier. And when the assassin was at once assailed on all sides with swords, in that very tumult he slew with his accursed dagger another of the soldiers, whose name was Forthhere. But on that same most holy night of the Lord's Easter the queen had borne to the king a daughter, whose name was Eanfled.

And when that same king, in the presence of Bishop Paulinus, was giving thanks to his gods for the daughter born to him, the bishop on the contrary began to give thanks to the Lord Christ, and to assure the king that it was he who by his prayers had obtained from Him that the queen should bring forth her offspring safe and without grievous pain. Delighted by his words, the king promised that, renouncing his idols, he would serve Christ, if He would grant him life and victory in fighting against the king by whom that murderer who had wounded him had been sent; and as a pledge of fulfilling his promise, he assigned that same daughter of his to Bishop Paulinus to be consecrated to Christ; and she was baptized on the holy day of Pentecost, the first of the nation of the Northumbrians, together with eleven others of his household.

At which time, having been healed of the wound inflicted on him before, the king gathered an army and came against the nation of the West Saxons, and, war being joined, either slew or received into surrender all whom he had learned to have conspired in his death. And so, returning victorious to his own country, he was unwilling to receive the sacraments of the Christian faith straightway and without deliberation; though neither did he serve idols any longer, from the time he had promised that he would serve Christ. But first he took care diligently, as occasion offered, to learn the rationale of the faith from the venerable man Paulinus himself, and to confer with his chief men, whom he knew to be the wiser, as to what they thought ought to be done concerning these matters.

And he himself too, being a man by nature most shrewd, often sitting long alone with silent mouth indeed, but in the depths of his heart conversing much within himself, would ponder what he ought to do, and what religion ought to be kept. At which time he received from Boniface, pontiff of the Apostolic See, letters exhorting him to the faith, of which this is the form: A copy of the letter of the most blessed and apostolic pope of the city of Rome, of the Church Boniface, directed to the glorious man Edwin, king of the Angles. To the glorious man Edwin, king of the Angles, Boniface, bishop, servant of the servants of God.

Although the power of the most high Godhead cannot be set forth by the services of human speech, since indeed by its own greatness it subsists in an eternity so invisible and unsearchable that no acuteness of mind is sufficient to comprehend or expound how great it is; yet because His humanity, for the making of Himself known, with the doors of the heart unlocked, mercifully pours into human minds by inspiration the secrets which it will bring forth concerning itself; we have taken care to extend our priestly solicitude for the announcing to you of the fullness of the Christian faith, that, in like manner inserting into your perceptions also the gospel of Christ, which our Savior commanded to be preached to all nations, the remedies of your salvation may be furnished.

The clemency therefore of the supernal Majesty, which by the sole word of His command founded and created all things, namely heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, ordering by the counsel of His coeternal Word, and dispensing by the unity of the Holy Spirit, the ranks in which they should subsist, established man, fashioned from the slime of the earth, after His own image and likeness, and bestowed upon him so great a prerogative of reward that He set him above all things, and, the limit of His command being kept, fortified him with the subsistence of eternity.

This God therefore, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, which is an undivided Trinity, from the rising of the sun unto its setting the human race venerates and worships with the saving confession of faith, as the Creator of all things and its own Maker; to whom also the heights of empire and the powers over things are made subject, because by His disposing the pre-eminence of all kingdoms is granted. By the mercy therefore of His goodness, in extending His whole creation, He has deigned wondrously to kindle even the cold hearts of nations set at the very ends of the earth, by the fervor of the Holy Spirit, unto the knowledge also of Himself.

For what the clemency of the Redeemer has wrought in the enlightenment of our glorious son King Eadbald and of the nations subject to him, we suppose that your glory has more fully learned from the nearness of the places. His wonderful gift therefore we trust shall, in sure hope, be conferred upon you also by heavenly long-suffering; since indeed we have learned that your glorious consort, who is known to be a part of your own body, has been enlightened by the reward of eternity through the regeneration of holy baptism. Wherefore by the present writing we have taken care, with all the affection of inmost charity, to exhort you who are glorious;

that, abominating the idols and their worship, and despising the follies of the shrines and the deceitful enticements of auguries, you may believe in God the Father almighty, and in His Son Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Spirit; that, believing, being freed from the bonds of diabolical captivity by the cooperating power of the holy and undivided Trinity, you may be able to be partakers of eternal life. But by how great a guilt of culpability those are bound fast who, cherishing the most pernicious superstition of idolatries, embrace it, the examples of perdition of those whom they worship make plain; whence it is said of them by the psalmist: All the gods of the nations are demons, but the Lord made the heavens. And again: They have eyes, and see not;

they have ears, and hear not; they have nostrils, and smell not; they have hands, and handle not; they have feet, and walk not; therefore they become like to those who put the hope of their confidence in them. For how can these have any power of helping anyone, who are constructed by the hands of things inferior and even subjected to you, from corruptible matter; to which, that is, lending human craft, you have given an inanimate likeness of limbs; which, unless they be moved by you, will not be able to walk, but, like a stone set in one place, so constructed and having no understanding, and buried in that very insensibility, have obtained no faculty either of harming or of helping?

By what deception of mind, therefore, you follow, in worshiping, those gods to whom you yourselves have handed over the image of a body, we cannot, by discerning judgment, discover. Wherefore it behooves you, having received the sign of the holy cross, by which the human race was redeemed, to cast away from your hearts that detestable supplanting of diabolical cunning—which, envious and jealous, stands opposed to the works of divine goodness—and, laying your hands upon them, take the utmost care that these whom hitherto you have fashioned for yourselves as gods out of the framework of matter be broken in pieces and reduced to nothing.

For their very dissolution and corruption—they which never had a living spirit, nor could in any way receive sensibility from their makers—should plainly suggest to you how truly nothing was that which hitherto you worshiped; since assuredly you, who have received a living spirit from the Lord, nevertheless stand better than their construction; inasmuch as Almighty God has appointed you to spring up from the kinship of the first man, whom He fashioned, through innumerable lineages drawn down across the ages.

Draw near therefore to the knowledge of Him who created you, who breathed into you the spirit of life, who for your redemption sent His only-begotten Son, that He might snatch you from original sin, and, having snatched you from the power of the wickedness of diabolical depravity, might endow you with heavenly rewards. Receive the words of the preachers, and the gospel of God which they announce to you; that, believing, as has been often said, in God the Father almighty, and in Jesus Christ His Son, and in the Holy Spirit, and in the inseparable Trinity;

so that, the perceptions of demons being put to flight, and the solicitation of the venomous and deceitful enemy being driven from you, being born again through water and the Holy Spirit unto Him in whom you shall have believed, you may, by His aiding bounty, be able to dwell together in the splendor of everlasting glory. Moreover we have directed to you the blessing of your protector, blessed Peter the prince of the apostles, that is, one shirt with ornamentation in gold, and one Ancyran cloak; which we ask that your glory receive with that kindly disposition of heart with which it is known to be sent by us. To his consort also, Ethelberga, the same pontiff sent a letter of this kind: A copy of the letter of the most blessed and apostolic Boniface, pope of the city of Rome, directed to Ethelberga, queen of King Edwin.

To the glorious lady, his daughter Ethelberga the queen, Boniface, bishop, servant of the servants of God. The benignity of our Redeemer toward the human race, which He snatched from the bonds of diabolical captivity by the shedding of His precious blood, has furnished the remedies of much providence by which it might be saved; that, making the knowledge of His name known to the nations in diverse ways, they might, having received the sacrament of the Christian faith, acknowledge their Creator. This indeed the mystical cleansing of your regeneration, conferred upon the perceptions of your glory by a heavenly gift, plainly indicates. By the great benefit therefore of the Lord's bounty our mind has exulted with joy, that He has deigned to kindle a spark of orthodox religion in your confession;

by which thing it might more easily inflame unto His love the understanding not only of your glorious consort, but indeed of the whole nation subject to you. For we have learned from the report of those who came to us announcing the praiseworthy conversion of our glorious son King Eadbald, that your glory also, having received the wonderful sacrament of the Christian faith, shines forth continually with pious works pleasing to God, diligently abstains also from the worship of idols and from the enticements of shrines and auguries, and, thus persisting with unimpaired devotion in the love of your Redeemer, keeps vigil so that you cease not unceasingly to lend your effort to the spreading of the Christian faith;

and when our paternal charity had anxiously inquired concerning your glorious consort, we have learned that, serving idols to be abominated thus far, he has deferred to show his obedience to the receiving of the voice of the preachers. From which thing no small bitterness has been heaped upon us, since a part of your own body has remained estranged from the knowledge of the supreme and undivided Trinity. Whence by paternal offices we have not deferred to confer our admonition upon your glorious Christianity; exhorting that, imbued with the supports of divine inspiration, you defer not to act in season and out of season, that he too, by the cooperating power of our Savior the Lord Jesus Christ, may be joined to the number of Christians;

so that thereby you may hold the rights of a marital partnership in an undefiled bond of fellowship. For it is written: They shall be two in one flesh. How then can a unity of conjunction be said to be in you, if he shall have remained a stranger to the splendor of your faith, with the darkness of detestable error interposed? Wherefore, persisting in continual prayer, cease not to obtain from the long-suffering of heavenly clemency the benefits of his enlightenment; that, namely, those whom the joining of carnal affection is shown to have exhibited in a manner as one body, these the unity of faith may also preserve in perpetual fellowship even after the passage of this life.

Press on therefore, glorious daughter, and with your utmost endeavors hasten greatly to soften the hardness of his heart by the religious instilling of the divine precepts; pouring into his perceptions how illustrious is the mystery which by believing you have received, and how admirable is the reward which, born again, you have merited to obtain. Kindle the coldness of his heart by the announcement of the Holy Spirit; that, the torpor of his most pernicious worship being removed, the warmth of divine faith may kindle his understanding by the frequent repetition of your exhortations, so that assuredly the testimony of sacred Scripture, fulfilled through you, may shine forth beyond doubt: The unbelieving husband shall be saved by the believing wife.

For unto this you have obtained the mercy of the Lord's lovingkindness, that you might render back to your Redeemer a manifold fruit of the faith and of the benefits entrusted to you. And that you may be able to fulfill this, with the aiding protection of His benignity, we cease not to entreat with assiduous prayers.

These things therefore being premised, showing to you the offices of paternal affection, we exhort that, an opportunity of a bearer being found, you relieve us as quickly as possible with prosperous tidings concerning those things which the supernal power shall have deigned wondrously to work through you in the conversion of your consort and of the nation subject to you; that our solicitude, which longingly and desirously awaits the things to be wished concerning the salvation of your soul and of all your people, may be relieved by your announcing it, and that, acknowledging more richly the illumination of divine propitiation diffused in you, we may with cheerful confession pay deservedly abundant thanks to God the giver of all good things, and to blessed Peter the prince of the apostles.

Moreover we have directed to you the blessing of your protector, blessed Peter the prince of the apostles, that is, a silver mirror, and an ivory comb gilded; which we ask that your glory receive with that kindly disposition of heart with which it is known to be sent by us. These things indeed the aforesaid pope Boniface treated of in his letters concerning the salvation of King Edwin and of his nation. But also a heavenly oracle, which the divine mercy had once deigned to reveal to him when in exile among Redwald, king of the Angles, aided not a little his understanding toward receiving or comprehending the admonitions of saving doctrine.

When therefore Paulinus saw that with difficulty could the loftiness of the royal mind be inclined to the humility of the way of salvation and to the receiving of the mystery of the life-giving cross, and that for the salvation both of him and of the nation over which he presided he was treating both with a word of exhortation among men and with a word of supplication before the divine mercy; at length, as seems likely, he learned in the spirit what and of what kind was the oracle once shown to the king from heaven. Nor did he thenceforth delay to admonish the king at once to fulfill the vow which, in the oracle shown to him, he had promised he would perform, if, delivered from the tribulations of that time, he should arrive at the summit of the kingdom. Now the oracle was of this kind.

When, being persecuted by Ethelfrith, who reigned before him, he wandered for a long space of years as a fugitive hidden through diverse places and kingdoms, at length he came to Redwald, beseeching that he would, by protecting his life, preserve him from the snares of so great a persecutor; who, gladly receiving him, promised that he would do what was asked. But after Ethelfrith learned that he had appeared in this province, and was dwelling familiarly with his companions at the court of that king, he sent messengers to offer Redwald much money for his death; and accomplished nothing. He sent a second time, he sent a third time, offering more abundant gifts of silver, and moreover declaring war against him if he should be despised.