Works (excl. History) 4 part 1/5

[1] But Edwin having been slain in battle, in his stead Osric received the kingdom of the Deirans, from which province he had derived the lineage of his race and the origin of his kingdom—the son of his uncle Ælfric, named Osric, who at the preaching of Paulinus had been initiated into the sacraments of the faith. Furthermore, the kingdom of the Bernicians—for into these two provinces the nation of the Northumbrians had been anciently divided—was received by the son of Æthelfrith, who had drawn the origin of his race and kingdom from that province, named Eanfrith.

For during the whole time that Edwin reigned, the sons of the aforesaid king Æthelfrith, who had reigned before him, were in exile among the Scots [Irish] or the Picts, together with a great company of noble youth, and there they were catechized in the teaching of the Scots, and renewed by the grace of baptism. When, on the death of the hostile king, they were permitted to return to their fatherland, the first of them, Eanfrith, whom we have mentioned, received the kingdom of the Bernicians. Each of these kings, when he had obtained the insignia of an earthly kingdom, betrayed by anathematizing the sacraments of the heavenly kingdom into which he had been initiated, and restored himself to the ancient defilements of idolatry, to be polluted and destroyed. And without delay, Caedwalla king of the Britons slew them both with impious hand, but by just vengeance.

And first indeed, the next summer, when Osric had rashly besieged him in a fortified town, bursting out suddenly with all his men, he destroyed him, unprepared, with his whole army. Then, when for a whole year he had laid waste the provinces of the Northumbrians, not as a victorious king possessing them, but as a tyrant raging and tearing them with tragic slaughter, at length he condemned Eanfrith to a like fate, who had come to him inconsiderately with twelve chosen soldiers for the sake of suing for peace. That ill-starred year, hateful to all good men, remains so even to this day, as much on account of the apostasy of the Anglian kings, by which they had stripped themselves of the sacraments of the faith, as on account of the insane tyranny of the British king.

Hence it was agreed by all who reckon the times of the kings that, the memory of those faithless kings being blotted out, the same year should be assigned to the reign of the following king, that is, of Oswald, a man beloved of God. In that year, after the slaying of his brother Eanfrith, Oswald came up with a small army, but one fortified by faith in Christ, and the abominable leader of the Britons was slain, together with those immense forces with which he boasted that nothing could withstand him, in the place which in the tongue of the English is called Denisesburna, that is, the brook of Denis.

To this very day there is shown, and is held in great veneration, that place where Oswald, as he was about to come to this battle, set up the sign of the holy cross, and bending his knees prayed to God that, in so great a crisis of affairs, He would succour His worshippers with heavenly aid. Indeed it is related that, when the cross had been made in haste and a hollow prepared in which it was to be set up, the king himself, fervent in faith, seized it and placed it in the hollow, and held it upright with both hands until the soldiers heaped up earth and fixed it fast; and when this was done, raising his voice on high he cried out to the whole army:

“Let us all bend our knees, and together beseech the almighty, living, and true God in His mercy to defend us from the proud and fierce enemy; for He Himself knows that we have undertaken a just war for the salvation of our nation.” They all did as he had commanded, and so, as dawn was breaking, advancing upon the enemy, they gained the victory, according to the merit of their faith. In that place of prayer countless miracles of healing are known to have been wrought, as a sign and memorial, namely, of the king's faith. For to this very day many are wont to cut splinters from that wood of the most holy cross, and when they put them into water and give it to sick men or beasts to drink, or sprinkle them with it, they are presently restored to health.

That place is called in the tongue of the English Hefenfelth, which may be rendered in Latin as 'the heavenly field,' a name it received in ancient times by a sure foretoken of things to come, signifying assuredly that there a heavenly trophy was to be raised, a heavenly victory begun, and heavenly miracles celebrated even to this day. The place lies beside that wall, toward the north, with which the Romans once girded all Britain from sea to sea to ward off the assaults of the barbarians, as we have related above.

In which place, namely, the brethren of the church of Hexham, which is not far off, had for a long time now made it their custom to come every year, on the day before that on which king Oswald was afterwards slain, to keep vigils for the salvation of his soul, and, after the singing of many psalms of praise, to offer in the morning the victim of the holy oblation for him. And as this good custom grew, they lately built a church there, and so made the place more sacred and more honourable than all others.

And not without reason, for, as we have learned, no sign of the Christian faith, no church, no altar was raised in the whole nation of the Bernicians before that new leader of the host, prompted by devotion of faith, set up this banner of the holy cross, being about to fight against a most savage enemy. Nor is it amiss to relate one out of the many miracles of power wrought at this cross. A certain one of the brethren of the same church of Hexham, named Bothelm, who survives to this day, a few years ago, while incautiously walking by night upon the ice, suddenly fell and broke his arm, and began to be tormented by the very grievous trouble of that fracture;

so much so that he could in no way bring that arm even to his mouth, the pain forbidding it. When one morning he heard that one of the brethren had resolved to go up to the place of that same holy cross, he begged him, on his return, to bring him some part of that venerable wood, saying that he believed that through it, by the Lord's gift, he might obtain healing. The man did as he was asked, and returning at evening, when the brethren were already sitting at table, offered him a little of the old moss with which the surface of the wood was covered. And since, sitting at table, he had no place at hand where he might lay the gift offered to him, he put it into his bosom. And when he went to bed, forgetting to lay it down anywhere, he let it remain in his bosom.

But in the middle of the night, when he awoke, he felt something cold lying against his side, and putting his hand to it to find out what it was, he found his arm and hand so sound, as if he had never had any such infirmity. [3] This same Oswald, then, as soon as he had received the kingdom, desiring that the whole nation over which he had begun to rule should be imbued with the grace of the Christian faith—the greatest proofs of which he had already received in vanquishing the barbarians—sent to the elders of the Scots, among whom, while in exile, he himself, together with the soldiers who were with him, had received the sacrament of baptism; asking that a bishop be sent to him, by whose teaching and ministry the nation of the English which he ruled might both learn the gifts of the Lord's faith and receive the sacraments.

Nor did he obtain what he asked any the more slowly; for he received bishop Aidan, a man of the utmost gentleness, piety, and moderation, and one who had zeal for God, though not fully according to knowledge. For he was wont to keep the Lord's Easter day, according to the manner of his nation, of which we have often made mention, from the fourteenth moon to the twentieth. For in this order the northern province of the Scots, and the whole nation of the Picts, at that time still celebrated the Lord's Easter, supposing that in this observance they followed the writings of the holy father Anatolius, worthy of praise. Whether this is true, any learned man very easily perceives.

Moreover the nations of the Scots who dwelt in the southern parts of the island of Ireland had long since learned, at the admonition of the bishop of the apostolic see, to observe Easter according to the canonical rite. To the bishop, then, on his coming to him, the king granted a place for the episcopal see on the island of Lindisfarne, where he himself desired it. Which place, indeed, as the tide flows and ebbs, is twice a day surrounded by the waves of the sea after the manner of an island, and twice, the shore being laid bare again, is rendered continuous with the land. And humbly and gladly hearkening in all things to his admonitions, the king took great care to build up and extend the church of Christ in his kingdom.

Whereupon it often came to pass, a most beautiful spectacle, that, while the bishop, who did not perfectly know the language of the English, was preaching the gospel, the king himself became the interpreter of the heavenly word to his commanders and ministers; for during so long a time of his exile he had now fully learned the language of the Scots. Thereafter more and more, day by day, began to come from the country of the Scots into Britain, and with great devotion to preach the word of faith to those provinces of the English over which Oswald reigned, and, whoever were endowed with priestly rank, to administer the grace of baptism to those who believed.

Churches therefore were built throughout the places; the peoples flocked rejoicing to hear the word; possessions and territories were bestowed by royal bounty for the founding of monasteries; the little ones of the English were imbued by Scottish teachers, together with their elders, in the pursuits and observance of the regular discipline. For they were mostly monks who had come to preach. The bishop Aidan himself was a monk, being sent, namely, from the island which is called Hii (Iona), whose monastery for no small time held the chief place among almost all the monasteries of the northern Scots and of all the Picts, and presided over the governing of their peoples;

which island, indeed, belongs by right to Britain, being separated from it by no great strait, but was long since given over to the monks of the Scots by the gift of the Picts who inhabit those parts of Britain, because through their preaching they had received the faith of Christ. [4] For in the year of the Lord's incarnation 565, at which time Justin the Younger received the helm of the Roman empire after Justinian, there came from Ireland a priest and abbot, distinguished by the habit and life of a monk, named Columba, into Britain, to preach the word of God to the provinces of the northern Picts, that is, to those who are separated from their southern regions by steep and rugged ranges of mountains.

For the southern Picts themselves, who have their seats within those same mountains, had, as men relate, long before forsaken the error of idolatry and received the faith of truth, when Ninian, a most reverend and most holy bishop, of the nation of the Britons, who had been regularly instructed at Rome in the faith and mysteries of the truth, preached the word to them; whose episcopal see, distinguished by the name and church of the holy bishop Martin, where he himself also rests in the body together with many saints, the nation of the English now holds. This place, belonging to the province of the Bernicians, is commonly called Ad Candidam Casam (the White House), because there he made a church of stone, after a manner unusual among the Britons.

Columba came to Britain when Bridius son of Meilochon, a most powerful king, was reigning over the Picts, in the ninth year of his reign, and converted that nation to the faith of Christ by word and example; whereupon he also received from them the aforesaid island for the making of a monastery. For it is not large, but about of five families, according to the reckoning of the English; which his successors hold to this day, where he himself also was buried, being seventy-seven years of age, about thirty-two years after he came to Britain to preach. He had also, before he came to Britain, built a noble monastery in Ireland, which from the abundance of oaks is surnamed in the language of the Scots Dearmach, that is, the field of oaks.

From both these monasteries very many monasteries thereafter were propagated by his disciples, both in Britain and in Ireland; among all of which the same island monastery, in which he himself rests in the body, holds the primacy. That island, moreover, is wont always to have for its ruler an abbot who is a priest, to whose authority both the whole province and even the bishops themselves, by an unusual order, must be subject, after the example of that first teacher of theirs, who was not a bishop but a priest and a monk; of whose life and words some writings are said to be held by his disciples.

But whatever manner of man he himself was, we hold this as certain concerning him, that he left successors distinguished by great continence, divine love, and observance of the rule; though, indeed, in the time of the chief festival they followed doubtful cycles, inasmuch as no one had brought to them, placed as they were far beyond the world, the synodal decrees concerning the observance of Easter; only diligently observing those works of piety and chastity which they were able to learn from the prophetic, evangelical, and apostolic writings. And this kind of paschal observance continued among them for no short time, that is, until the year of the Lord's incarnation 715, for one hundred and fifty years.

But then, when there came to them the most reverend and most holy father and priest Ecgberht, of the nation of the English, who had long lived in exile in Ireland for Christ, and was both most learned in the Scriptures and eminent for the long-continued perfection of his life, they were corrected by him and brought over to the true and canonical day of Easter; which, however, even before, they did not always celebrate on the fourteenth moon with the Jews, as some supposed, but indeed on the Lord's day, yet in another week than was fitting. For they knew, as Christians, that the Lord's resurrection, which took place on the first day of the week, must always be celebrated on the first day of the week;

but, as barbarous and unlettered men, they had by no means learned when that same first day of the week, which is now called the Lord's day, should come. Yet because they did not cease to be fervent in the grace of charity, they merited also to receive the knowledge of this matter to perfection, according to the promise of the apostle who says: 'And if in anything ye be otherwise minded, this also shall God reveal unto you.' Of which more fully must be said in its proper place hereafter. [5] From this island, then, from the company of these monks, Aidan was sent to instruct the province of the English in Christ, having received the rank of the episcopate. At which time Segeni, abbot and priest, presided over the same monastery.

Whence, among other examples of living, he left to the clergy a most wholesome pattern of abstinence and continence; and what most commended his teaching to all was that he himself taught no otherwise than as he lived with his own people. For he cared to seek nothing of this world, to love nothing. All things that were given to him by kings or rich men of the world he rejoiced to bestow at once on the poor whom he met. He was wont to traverse all places, both in town and country, borne not on the back of horses but by the going of his feet, unless perhaps a greater necessity compelled otherwise; so that wherever, as he went, he saw any, whether rich or poor, he would at once turn aside to them, and invite them, if unbelievers, to the sacrament of receiving the faith;

or, if they were believers, he would strengthen them in that very faith, and stir them up, both by words and deeds, to almsgiving and to the performance of good works. So far, moreover, did his life differ from the sloth of our time, that all who walked with him, whether tonsured or laymen, were bound to meditate, that is, either to give heed to reading the Scriptures or to learning the psalms. This was the daily work of him and of all who were with him, wherever they came. And if it perchance happened—which yet rarely happened—that he was invited to the king's banquet, he entered with one clerk or two; and when he had refreshed himself a little, he hastened the more quickly to go out with his own people to read or to pray.

Formed by his examples, all religious men and women of that time made it their custom throughout the whole year, except the relaxation of the fifty days of Easter, to prolong the fast until the ninth hour on the fourth and sixth days of the week. Never did he, for the sake of honour or fear, keep silence with the rich if they had transgressed in anything, but corrected them with sharp rebuke. He was never wont to give any money to the powerful of the world, except only food, if he had received any in hospitality; but rather those gifts of money which were bestowed on him by the rich he either, as we have said, distributed for the uses of the poor, or dispensed for the ransom of those who had been unjustly sold.

Indeed, many whom he had ransomed with a price paid, he afterwards made his disciples once redeemed, and by instructing and educating advanced them even to the priestly rank. Now it is related that, when king Oswald had asked from the province of the Scots a bishop who should minister the word of faith to himself and his nation, there was sent first another man of more austere spirit, who, when he had preached for some time to the nation of the English and profited nothing, nor was gladly heard by the people, returned to his own country, and reported in the assembly of the elders that he had been able to do no good by teaching the nation to which he had been sent, because they were untameable men, and of a hard and barbarous mind.

But they, as men relate, began to hold great deliberation in council as to what should be done; desiring indeed to be of saving help to the nation by which they were sought, but grieving over the preacher whom they had sent, who had not been received. Then said Aidan—for he too was present at the council—to the priest of whom the matter was treated: 'It seems to me, brother, that you were harsher than was just toward your unlearned hearers, and did not first offer them, according to the apostolic discipline, the milk of gentler doctrine, until, little by little nourished by the word of God, they should be able to take in the more perfect things and to perform the loftier precepts of God.'

On hearing this, the faces and eyes of all who sat there were turned to him, and they carefully examined what he said, and decreed that he himself was worthy of the episcopate, and that he himself ought to be sent to instruct the unbelieving and unlearned, since before all else he was proved to be imbued with the grace of discretion, which is the mother of the virtues; and so, ordaining him, they sent him to preach. When he received his time, just as before by the governance of discretion, so afterwards he appeared adorned also with the other virtues. [6] By the teaching, therefore, of this bishop, king Oswald, together with the nation of the English over which he presided, being instructed, learned not only to hope for the kingdoms of heaven unknown to his forefathers;

but he also obtained the kingdoms of the earth, more than any of his ancestors, from the same one God, who made heaven and earth. In fine, he received into his dominion all the nations and provinces of Britain, which are divided into four tongues, that is, of the Britons, the Picts, the Scots, and the English. Raised to such a height of power, he was nonetheless—which is wonderful to tell—always humble, kindly, and generous to the poor and to strangers.

In fine, it is related that on a certain occasion, when on the holy day of Easter he had sat down to dinner with the aforesaid bishop, and a silver dish heaped with royal viands was placed on the table before him, and they were now on the very point of putting forth their hands to bless the bread, there suddenly came in a minister of his, to whom the care of receiving the poor had been entrusted, and informed the king that a very great multitude of poor, coming from every quarter, was sitting in the streets, asking some alms of the king. The king at once commanded the dishes set before him to be carried to the poor, and the dish also to be broken in pieces and divided among them bit by bit. Seeing this, the bishop, who sat beside him, delighted by such a deed of piety, took hold of his right hand and said:

'May this hand never grow old.' And so it came to pass, according to the prayer of his blessing. For when, after he was slain in battle, his hands with the arms were cut off from the rest of the body, it came about that they have continued incorrupt until now. Indeed, in the royal city, which is named from a queen formerly called Bebba, they are kept enclosed in a silver casket in the church of saint Peter, and are venerated by all with due honour. By the industry of this king the provinces of the Deirans and the Bernicians, which until then had been at variance with one another, were joined into one peace, and as it were compacted into one people. He was, moreover, the nephew of king Edwin by his sister Acha; and it was fitting that so great a predecessor should have such an heir, both of his religion and of his kingdom, from his own kindred.

[7] At that time the nation of the West Saxons, who in ancient times were called the Gewissae, under the reign of Cynegils received the faith of Christ, the word being preached to them by bishop Birinus, who had come to Britain with the counsel of pope Honorius, promising indeed that, in his presence, he would scatter the seeds of the holy faith in the innermost parts beyond the regions of the English, where no teacher had gone before. Whence also, by command of the same pontiff, he was consecrated to the rank of the episcopate by Asterius, bishop of Genoa. But arriving in Britain, and first entering the nation of the Gewissae, when he found them all there utterly pagan, he judged it more useful to preach the word there rather, than, proceeding further, to seek out those to whom he should preach.

And so, while he was preaching the gospel in the aforesaid province, when the king himself, being catechized, was washed in the font of baptism together with his nation, it happened at that time that the most holy and most victorious king of the Northumbrians, Oswald, was present, and received him as he came forth from the laver, and, by a most beautiful alliance truly worthy of God, took him—whose daughter he was about to receive in marriage—first as his own son, now dedicated to God by a second birth. Both kings, moreover, gave to the same bishop the city which is called Dorchester, for the making there of an episcopal see;

where, having built and dedicated churches, and called many peoples to the Lord by his pious labour, he passed to the Lord, and was buried in the same city; and after many years, while Haedde held the episcopate, was translated thence into the city of Winchester, and laid in the church of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul. But the king also having died, his son Coinwalch succeeded to the kingdom, who both refused to receive the faith and sacraments of the heavenly kingdom, and not long after lost also the power of the earthly kingdom. For having repudiated the sister of Penda, king of the Mercians, whom he had married, he took another woman to wife; and therefore, attacked in war and deprived of his kingdom by him, he withdrew to the king of the East Angles, whose name was Anna;

in whose company, living in exile for three years, he came to know and received the faith of truth. For he himself also, with whom he was in exile, was a good man as king, and happy in good and holy offspring, as we shall show in what follows. But when Coinwalch had been restored to his kingdom, there came into the province from Ireland a certain bishop named Agilbert, a Gaul indeed by nation, but who had then for no small time tarried in Ireland for the sake of reading the Scriptures, and joined himself to the king, taking up of his own accord the ministry of preaching. Seeing his learning and industry, the king asked him to take an episcopal see there and remain bishop of his nation; and he, consenting to his prayers, for many years presided over that nation by priestly right.

At length the king, who knew only the Saxon tongue, weary of his barbarous speech, secretly introduced into the province another bishop of his own tongue, named Wine, who had also himself been ordained in Gaul; and dividing the province into two dioceses, he gave to this man the episcopal see in the city of Venta, which by the nation of the Saxons is called Winchester; whereupon Agilbert, gravely offended that the king did these things without consulting him, returned to Gaul, and, having received the episcopate of the city of Paris, there died, an old man and full of days. But not many years after his departure from Britain had passed, Wine too was driven from the episcopate by the same king;

who, withdrawing to Wulfhere, king of the Mercians, bought from him for a price the see of the city of London, and remained its bishop until the end of his life. And so the province of the West Saxons was without a prelate for no short time. At which time also the aforesaid king of that nation, very often afflicted by his enemies with the gravest losses to his kingdom, at length brought back to memory that, as faithlessness had formerly driven him from his kingdom, so the acknowledged faith of Christ had recalled him to his kingdom; and he understood that the province, then likewise destitute of a pontiff, had rightly been at the same time destitute of divine protection. He therefore sent envoys into Gaul to Agilbert, beseeching him with humble satisfaction to return to the episcopate of his nation.

But he, excusing himself and protesting that he could not come, because he was held bound by the episcopate of his own city and diocese, yet, lest he should bring no help to one who so earnestly entreated, sent for him in his stead the priest Leutherius, his nephew, who, if he wished, might be ordained bishop for him; saying that he himself judged him worthy of the episcopate. He being honourably received by the people and by the king, they asked Theodore, then archbishop of the church of Canterbury, to consecrate him their bishop; who, consecrated in that same city, for many years by synodal sanction alone administered the episcopate of the Gewissae with diligent governance.

[8] In the year of the Lord's incarnation 640, Eadbald, king of the men of Kent, passing out of this life, left the governance of the kingdom to his son Earconbert; which, once received, he held most nobly for twenty-four years and some months. This man, first of the kings of the English, by sovereign authority commanded that idols be forsaken and destroyed throughout his whole kingdom, and at the same time that the fast of forty days be observed. And that it might not easily be despised by anyone, he set forth worthy and fitting punishments for transgressors. His daughter Earcongota, an offspring worthy of such a parent, was a virgin of great virtues, serving the Lord in the monastery which was built in the region of the Franks by a most noble abbess named Fara, in the place which is called in Brige (Faremoutiers).