Works (excl. History) 4 part 4/5

He, having received the rank of the episcopate, returned to the province, and, fulfilling the begun work with greater authority, made churches in various places, ordained presbyters and deacons who might assist him in the word of the faith and the ministry of baptizing, especially in the city which in the tongue of the Saxons is called Ythancaestir, and also in that which is surnamed Tilbury; of which the former place is on the bank of the river Pant, the second on the bank of the Thames. In these, having gathered a body of the servants of Christ, he taught the discipline of the regular life to be observed, in so far as those still untaught were able to receive it.

And when for no short time in the aforesaid province, with the king rejoicing and all the people rejoicing together, the institution of the heavenly life took daily increase, it came to pass that the king himself, at the instigation of the enemy of all good men, was killed by the hand of his own kinsmen. Now there were two brothers german who perpetrated this crime; who, when they were asked why they did it, could answer nothing else, save that they had been angry with the king and his enemies for this, that he was wont too much to spare his enemies, and to dismiss with a placid mind the injuries done by them as soon as they besought him. Such was the fault of the king for which he should be killed, that he kept the Gospel precepts with a devoted heart.

In which his innocent death, nevertheless, according to the foretelling of the man of God, his true fault was punished. For one of those who killed him, among his companions, had had an unlawful marriage; which, when the bishop could neither forbid nor correct, he excommunicated him, and commanded all who would hear him not to enter his house, nor to receive of his food. But the king despised the command, and, being invited by the count, entered his house to feast. As he was departing thence, the bishop met him. But the king, looking upon him, soon trembling leapt down from his horse, and fell before his feet, asking pardon for his guilt. For the bishop likewise leapt down; for he too had been sitting on a horse.

But, angry, he touched the king as he lay with the staff which he held in his hand, and with pontifical authority declared: I tell you, said he, that since you would not restrain yourself from the house of that lost and damned man, in that very house you shall have to die. But it must be believed that such a death of a religious man not only washed away such a fault, but even increased his merit; because without doubt it befell him for the cause of piety, because on account of the observance of the commandments of Christ. Now there succeeded Sigberct in the kingdom Swithhelm, son of Seaxbald, who was baptized by Cedd himself in the province of the East Angles, in the royal village which is called Rendlaesham, that is, the mansion of Rendil;

and Aethelwald, king of that same nation of the East Angles, brother of Anna their king, received him as he ascended from the holy font. [23] Now the same man of the Lord, while he was discharging the office of the episcopate among the East Saxons, was wont also rather often to revisit his own province, that is, of the Northumbrians, for the sake of exhortation; and when Oethelwald, son of King Oswald, who had his kingdom in the parts of Deira, saw that he was a holy and wise man, and upright in his ways, he begged him to accept some possession of land from him for building a monastery, in which the king himself might both more frequently come to pray to the Lord and to hear the word, and, when dead, ought to be buried.

For he faithfully believed that he too would be much helped by the daily prayers of those who should serve the Lord in that place. Now the same king had had with him a brother german of the same bishop, named Caelin, a man equally devoted to God, who was wont to minister the word and the sacraments of the faith to him and to his household—for he was a presbyter—and through whose acquaintance he came chiefly to love and know the bishop. Therefore the bishop, favouring the king's wishes, chose for himself a place for building a monastery in steep and remote mountains, in which there seemed to have been rather the lurking-places of robbers and the lairs of wild beasts than dwellings of men;

so that, according to the prophecy of Isaiah, in the lairs where dragons had formerly dwelt there might spring up the greenness of reed and rush — that is, that the fruits of good works might be born there where formerly either wild beasts had been wont to lodge, or men to live like beasts. Now the man of the Lord, eager first to cleanse by prayers and fastings the site he had received for the monastery from its old defilement of crimes, and so to lay in it the foundations of the monastery, asked the king that he would grant him for the whole season of Lent, which was at hand, the means and leave to remain there for the sake of prayer.

During all those days, except the Lord's Day, he prolonged his fast until evening according to custom; and not even then did he take anything but a very little bread, and one hen's egg with a little milk mixed with water. For he said that this was the custom of those from whom he had learned the rule of regular discipline: that places newly received for the making of a monastery or church should first be consecrated to the Lord with prayers and fastings. And when ten days of Lent remained, there came one to summon him to the king. But he, lest the religious work should be interrupted on account of the king's affairs, asked his priest Cynibill — who was indeed his own brother — to complete the pious undertaking.

And when the latter willingly consented to this, after the exercise of fastings and prayer was finished, he there made a monastery, which is now called Laestingaeu, and established it in religious customs according to the rites of Lindisfarne, where he had been brought up. And when for many years he both administered the bishopric in the aforesaid province and also bore the care of this monastery under fixed regulations, it chanced that, coming to that same monastery at a time of pestilence and being there seized by bodily sickness, he died. He was indeed at first buried out of doors; but as time went on, a church was built of stone in that same monastery in honour of the blessed Mother of God, and in it his body was laid to rest on the right of the altar.

Now the bishop gave the monastery to be governed after him by his brother Ceadda, who afterwards became a bishop, as we shall tell hereafter. For these four, whom we have named, were brothers by blood — Cedd, and Cynibill, and Caelin, and Ceadda — and (a thing rarely found) all were distinguished priests of the Lord, and two of them even held the rank of the highest priesthood. When therefore the brethren who were in his monastery in the province of the East Saxons heard that the bishop had died and been buried in the province of the Northumbrians, there came thither from their monastery about thirty men, desiring either to live beside the body of their father, if so it should please God, or, dying, to be buried there.

They were gladly received by their brethren and fellow-soldiers, but, the aforesaid plague's destruction coming upon them, all there died, save one little boy, who is known to have been preserved from death by the prayers of his father. For when he lived a long time after this, and gave his diligence to reading the Scriptures, he at length learned that he had not been regenerated by the water of baptism; and being soon washed in the font of the saving laver, he was afterwards even promoted to the order of the priesthood, and was useful to many in the Church;

of whom I would not have it doubted that, by the intercessions, as I said, of his father — to whose body he had come for the love of him — he was held back from the very point of death, both that he himself might thus escape eternal death, and that he might by his teaching afford to other brethren also the ministry of life and salvation. [24] In these times King Oswiu, since he was suffering the bitter and intolerable inroads of the oft-named king of the Mercians, who had slain his brother, at last, compelled by necessity, promised to bestow upon him countless and greater royal ornaments and gifts than can be believed, as the price of peace, provided only that he would return home and cease to lay waste the provinces of his kingdom to utter destruction.

And when the perfidious king would by no means lend his assent to his entreaties — he who had resolved to destroy and exterminate his whole nation from the least to the greatest — Oswiu looked to the help of the divine mercy, by which he might be delivered from the barbarian impiety; and binding himself by a vow, he said: 'If the pagan knows not how to accept our gifts, let us offer them to one who does know — to the Lord our God.' He vowed therefore that, if he should prove victorious, he would offer his daughter to the Lord to be dedicated in holy virginity, and at the same time would give twelve estates of land for building monasteries; and so with a very small army he gave himself to the battle. Indeed it is reported that the pagans had an army thirty times greater;

for they had in the war thirty legions, marshalled under most noble commanders; against whom King Oswiu with his son Alchfrid, having, as I said, a very small army, but trusting in Christ as his leader, marched out. For his other son Ecgfrid was at that time held as a hostage in the province of the Mercians at the court of Queen Cynuise; while Oidiluald, son of King Oswald, who ought to have been an aid to them, was on the side of the adversaries, and had stood forth as a leader to those about to fight against their own fatherland and his own uncle — although at the very time of the fighting he withdrew himself from the battle, and awaited the outcome of the crisis in a safe place. When therefore the battle was joined, the pagans were put to flight and cut down; the thirty royal commanders who had come to the aid were almost all slain;

among whom Aedilheri, brother of Anna king of the East Angles, who reigned after him, being himself the instigator of the war, was slain with the loss of his soldiers and auxiliaries. And because the fighting took place near the river Winwaed, which then, owing to the flooding of the rains, had widely overflowed its channel, nay all its banks, it came to pass that the water destroyed many more of those fleeing than the sword did of those fighting. Then King Oswiu, according to what he had vowed to the Lord, giving thanks to God for the victory granted him, gave his daughter Aelffled, who had scarcely completed one year of age, to be consecrated to Him in perpetual virginity;

besides bestowing twelve small estates of land, in which, the pursuit of earthly warfare being laid aside, there might be furnished a place and means for the assiduous devotion of monks to exercise the heavenly warfare, and to make supplication for the eternal peace of his nation. Of these small estates, namely, he gave six in the province of the Deirans, six among the Bernicians. And each estate was of ten families, that is, all together one hundred and twenty. Now the aforesaid daughter of King Oswiu entered, to be dedicated to God, the monastery which is called Heruteu, that is, the island of the hart, over which Hild was then abbess. She, two years later, having acquired an estate of ten families in the place which is called Streanaeshalch, there built a monastery;

in which the said daughter of the king became first a disciple of the regular life, and afterwards also a mistress of it, until, having completed the number of fifty-nine years, the blessed virgin entered into the embrace and nuptials of her heavenly Spouse. In which monastery both she herself, and her father Oswiu, and her mother Eanfled, and her mother's father Edwin, and many other nobles, were buried in the church of the holy apostle Peter. Now this war King Oswiu brought to an end in the region of Loidis, in the thirteenth year of his reign, on the seventeenth day before the Kalends of December, with great profit to both peoples.

For he both freed his own nation from the hostile devastation of the pagans, and converted the very nation of the Mercians and of the neighbouring provinces, its perfidious head being cut off, to the grace of the Christian faith. Now the first bishop in the province of the Mercians, and at the same time of the people of Lindsey and of the Middle Angles, was Diuma, as we said above, who died and was buried among the Middle Angles; the second was Cellach, who, leaving the office of the bishopric while still living, returned to Ireland — both of these were of the Irish race; the third was Trumhere, of the English nation indeed, but instructed and ordained by the Irish, who was abbot in the monastery which is called Ingetlingum. That is the place where King Oswini was slain, as we have recorded above.

For Queen Eanfled, his kinswoman, by way of expiation for his unjust murder, asked of King Oswiu that he would grant there a place to the aforesaid servant of God, Trumhere, for the building of a monastery, because he too was a kinsman of the slain king; in which monastery, namely, continual prayers should be made for the eternal salvation of both kings, that is, both of him who was slain and of him who commanded that he be slain. Now this same King Oswiu ruled over the Mercian nation, and also over the other peoples of the southern provinces, for three years after the slaying of King Penda; and he also subjected the nation of the Picts for the greatest part to the kingdom of the English.

At which time he gave to the aforesaid Peada, son of King Penda, because he was his kinsman, the kingdom of the Southern Mercians, who are, as they say, of five thousand families, separated by the river Trent from the Northern Mercians, whose land is of seven thousand families. But this same Peada, in the next spring, was most wickedly put to death, by the treachery, as they say, of his wife, at the very time of the Paschal feast.

Now when three years had been completed after the killing of King Penda, the leaders of the Mercian nation — Immin, and Eafa, and Eadberct — rebelled against King Oswiu, raising up as king the youth Wulfhere, son of the same Penda, whom they had kept in hiding; and casting out the chieftains of the king who was not their own, they bravely recovered at once both their borders and their liberty; and so, free with their own king, they rejoiced to serve Christ, the true King, for an everlasting kingdom in the heavens. Now this same king ruled the Mercian nation for seventeen years, and had as his first bishop Trumhere, of whom we spoke above, the second Iaruman, the third Ceadda, the fourth Wynfrith. All these, succeeding one another in order under King Wulfhere, held the bishopric of the Mercian nation.

[25] Meanwhile, Bishop Aidan being taken from this life, Finan had received in his stead the rank of the bishopric, having been ordained and sent by the Irish. He made in the island of Lindisfarne a church suited to an episcopal see; which, however, after the manner of the Irish, he constructed wholly not of stone but of hewn oak, and roofed it with reeds; which at a later time the most reverend Archbishop Theodore dedicated in honour of the blessed apostle Peter. But Eadberct also, the bishop of that place, removing the reeds, took care to cover the whole of it — that is, both the roof and its very walls — with sheets of lead.

In these times a frequent and great question arose concerning the observance of Easter, those who had come from Kent or from Gaul affirming that the Irish kept the Lord's day of Easter contrary to the custom of the universal Church. There was among these a most keen defender of the true Easter, by name Ronan, of the Irish nation indeed, but instructed in the rule of ecclesiastical truth in the regions of Gaul or Italy. He, contending with Finan, corrected many indeed, or kindled them to a more careful investigation of the truth; yet he could by no means amend Finan, but rather — since he was a man of fierce temper — rendered him the harsher by his rebuke, and an open adversary of the truth.

Now James the deacon — formerly, as we have shown above, of the venerable Archbishop Paulinus — observed the true and catholic Easter together with all whom he was able to instruct in the more correct way. Queen Eanfled also observed it with her people, according to what she had seen done in Kent, having with her from Kent a priest of catholic observance, by name Romanus. Whence it is reported to have sometimes happened in those times that Easter was celebrated twice in one year, and that when the king, his fasts being ended, kept the Lord's Easter, then the queen, persisting still in fasting with her people, was keeping Palm Sunday.

Now this discord of paschal observance was patiently borne by all while Aidan was living, who had plainly understood that, even though he could not keep Easter contrary to the custom of those who had sent him, yet he took diligent care to follow out the works of faith, piety, and love, according to the manner customary to all the saints. Whence he was deservedly loved by all, even by those who thought differently about Easter; and he was held in veneration not only by men of middling station, but even by the bishops themselves — Honorius of the people of Canterbury, and Felix of the East Angles.

But after Finan died, when Colman, who came after him — he too sent from Ireland — succeeded to the bishopric, a graver controversy arose concerning the observance of Easter, and also concerning other matters of ecclesiastical life. Whence this question deservedly moved the minds and hearts of many, who feared lest perhaps, having received the name of Christianity, they were running, or had run, in vain. It reached even to the ears of the princes themselves — namely of King Oswiu and of his son Alchfrid. For Oswiu, indeed, having been instructed and baptized by the Irish, and being also most fully imbued with their language, reckoned that nothing was better than what they had taught;

but Alchfrid, on the other hand, having as his master of Christian learning Wilfrid, a most learned man (for he had earlier gone to Rome for the sake of ecclesiastical doctrine, and had spent much time at Lyons with Dalfinus, archbishop of the Gauls, from whom indeed he had received the crown of the ecclesiastical tonsure), knew that this man's teaching was rightly to be preferred to all the traditions of the Irish; whence he had even given him a monastery of forty families in the place which is called Ripon. Which place, namely, he had a little before given into the possession of a monastery to those who followed the Irish. But because they afterwards, an option being given them, preferred to depart from the place rather than to change their custom, he gave it to him who had both teaching and a life worthy of the place.

At that time Agilberct, bishop of the West Saxons, of whom we made mention above, a friend of King Alchfrid and of Abbot Wilfrid, had come to the province of the Northumbrians, and stayed among them for some while; he also, at Alchfrid's request, made Wilfrid a priest in his aforesaid monastery. Now he had with him a priest by name Agatho. A question therefore being stirred up there concerning Easter, or the tonsure, or other ecclesiastical matters, it was arranged that in the monastery which is called Streanaeshalch — which is interpreted 'the bay of the lighthouse' — over which Hild, a woman devoted to God, was then abbess, a synod should be held and this question should be settled. And there came thither both kings, that is, the father and the son;

the bishops, Colman with his clergy from Ireland, and Agilberct with the priests Agatho and Wilfrid. James and Romanus were on their side; Hild the abbess with her people on the side of the Irish, on which side was also the venerable bishop Cedd, long since ordained by the Irish, as we have shown above, who also was a most vigilant interpreter for both parties in that council. And first King Oswiu, having premised a preface — that it behoved those who served one God to hold one rule of life, and not to differ in the celebration of the heavenly sacraments, seeing that they all looked for one kingdom in the heavens; that rather it should be inquired which was the truer tradition, and that this should be followed by all in common —

he ordered his own bishop Colman first to speak — what was the rite, and whence deriving its origin, which he himself followed. Then Colman said: 'This Easter which I am wont to keep I received from my elders, who sent me hither as bishop, which all our fathers, men beloved of God, are known to have celebrated in the same manner. And lest it should seem to anyone a thing to be despised and condemned, it is the very one which the blessed evangelist John, the disciple specially beloved of the Lord, is read to have celebrated with all the churches over which he presided.' When he had said this and things like these, the king bade Agilberct also put forward in the midst the manner of his own observance — whence it had its beginning, or by what authority he followed it. Agilberct answered:

'Let my disciple Wilfrid the priest, I pray, speak in my stead, since we both think one thing, together with the other cultivators of ecclesiastical tradition who sit here; and he can explain better and more plainly, in the very language of the English, than I through an interpreter, what we hold.' Then Wilfrid, the king bidding him speak, thus began: 'The Easter which we keep,' said he, 'we saw celebrated by all at Rome, where the blessed apostles Peter and Paul lived, taught, suffered, and were buried; this in Italy, this in Gaul — which we passed through for the sake of learning or of prayer — we beheld observed by all;

this in Africa, Asia, Egypt, Greece, and the whole world, wheresoever the Church of Christ is spread abroad, through diverse nations and tongues, we have found kept in one and not a diverse order of time; except only these and their accomplices in obstinacy — I mean the Picts and the Britons — with whom, from the two remotest islands of the ocean, and not the whole of these even, they fight against the whole world with foolish labour.' To him as he said this Colman answered: 'It is a wonder why you should be willing to call our labour foolish, in which we follow the examples of so great an apostle, who was deemed worthy to recline upon the Lord's breast; since the whole world knows that he lived most wisely.' But Wilfrid:

'Far be it,' he said, 'that we should reproach John with folly, since he kept the precepts of the Mosaic law according to the letter, while the Church still in many things judaized, and while the apostles were not able suddenly to renounce all observance of the law which had been instituted by God (just as it is necessary for all who come to the faith to repudiate the idols which were invented by demons) — namely, lest they should give offence to those among the Gentiles who were Jews. For this is the reason that Paul circumcised Timothy, that he sacrificed victims in the temple, that with Aquila and Priscilla he shaved his head at Corinth; for nothing useful at all, save to avoid the offence of the Jews. For this reason James said to the same Paul:

'You see, brother, how many thousands there are among the Jews who have believed; and all these are zealous for the law.' Yet today, the Gospel growing clear throughout the world, it is not necessary — nay, it is not even lawful — for the faithful either to be circumcised, or to offer to God sacrifices of carnal victims. Thus John, according to the custom of the law, began the celebration of the paschal feast on the fourteenth day of the first month, towards evening, caring nothing whether this fell on the Sabbath or on any other day of the week.

But Peter, when he preached at Rome, mindful that the Lord rose from the dead on the first day of the week, and bestowed upon the world the hope of resurrection, understood that Easter was so to be kept that, according to the custom and precepts of the law, he always awaited the rising of the fourteenth moon of the first month towards evening, just as John did; and when this had risen, if the Lord's day, which was then called the first of the Sabbath, was to come on the morrow, in that very evening he began to celebrate the Lord's Easter — just as we all are wont to do today.

But if the Lord's day was to come not on the morning next after the fourteenth moon, but on the sixteenth, or the seventeenth, or any other moon up to the twenty-first, he waited for it, and on the preceding Sabbath, in the evening, he began the most sacred solemnities of Easter; and so it came about that the Lord's day of Easter was kept only from the fifteenth moon up to the twenty-first. Nor does this evangelical and apostolic tradition loose the law, but rather fulfils it, in which it is commanded that Easter be observed from the fourteenth moon of the first month towards evening up to the twenty-first moon of the same month towards evening; into the imitation of which observance all the successors of blessed John in Asia after his death, and the whole Church throughout the world, has been turned.

And that this is the true Easter, and that this alone is to be celebrated by the faithful, was not newly decreed by the Council of Nicaea, but confirmed, as ecclesiastical history teaches. Whence it is evident, Colman, that you neither follow the examples of John, as you suppose, nor of Peter, whose tradition you knowingly contradict, nor agree with the law, nor with the Gospel in the observance of your Easter. For John, keeping the paschal time according to the decrees of the Mosaic law, cared nothing about the first of the Sabbath; which you do not do, who celebrate Easter only on the first of the Sabbath. Peter celebrated the Lord's Easter from the fifteenth moon up to the twenty-first day; which you do not do, who keep the Lord's day of Easter from the fourteenth up to the twentieth moon;

so that you very often begin Easter on the thirteenth moon towards evening, of which neither did the law make any mention, nor did the Lord, the author and giver of the Gospel, on that day — but on the fourteenth either ate the old Passover towards evening, or handed over to the Church the sacraments of the New Testament to be celebrated in commemoration of His passion. Likewise the twenty-first moon, which the law most especially commended to be celebrated, you utterly eliminate from the celebration of your Easter; and so, as I said, in the celebration of the highest festival you agree neither with John, nor with Peter, nor with the law, nor with the Gospel.' Against these things Colman:

'Did then,' he said, 'Anatolius, a holy man, and much praised in the aforesaid ecclesiastical history, judge things contrary to the law or the Gospel, who wrote that Easter was to be celebrated from the fourteenth up to the twentieth? Is it to be believed that our most reverend father Columba and his successors, men beloved of God, who kept Easter in the same manner, judged or did things contrary to the divine pages? — when there were very many among them to whose holiness heavenly signs, and the miracles of the virtues which they wrought, bore witness; whom, not doubting that they were holy, I never cease to follow in their life, manners, and discipline.' But Wilfrid: 'It is certain,' said he, 'that Anatolius was a most holy, most learned man, and most worthy of praise;