Moralia in Job 23

Argument. — 1. Augustine is ordained bishop. — 2. He baptizes ten thousand of the English. He sends to Rome and consults the pope. — 3. From whom he receives new reinforcement of preachers. And many other things. — 4. The letters of Saint Gregory to the king. To the queen. And to Augustine. — 5. Concerning a monastery founded near Canterbury. And the monastic life instituted in the Church of Canterbury. Bede's luminous testimony on the matter. — 6. Another irrefutable argument taken from Bede. 1. Augustine, having so happily begun the province given to him by Saint Gregory, crossed over at his command into Gaul, where he was made bishop by the bishops of the Germanies (Book VIII, letter 30).

By the Germanies Gregory understands the Gauls, then occupied by the Franks who had arisen and set out from Germany. Perhaps too he reckoned among the Germanies the province of Arles, on account of the Burgundians dwelling there, who were German in origin (Book V, letter 53). For by the same reasoning Apollinaris Sidonius calls the province subject to Lyons the Lyonese Germany. Bede relates that Augustine was ordained by the bishop of Arles (Bede, book I, chapter 27), whom by a slip of memory he names Etherius. 2. The new apostle, having returned to the island, on the very day of the Lord's Nativity washed more than ten thousand of the English in the lustral waters. Gregory testifies, writing to Eulogius, that this happened in the first indiction (Book VIII, letter

letter 30), that is, in the eighth year of his pontificate. Soon Augustine sent two of his associates, Laurence and Peter, to Rome, to make the holy pontiff more fully informed of all that had been done, and to question and consult him on certain matters, which, together with his answers to each, we read both in Bede and in the Register of Letters (Book XI, letter 64). The chief of them concern the making of the four portions of ecclesiastical revenues and offerings, the clergy who marry after receiving clerical orders, the degrees of consanguinity and affinity that impede matrimony, and the ordination of bishops.

It had indeed been provided by the canons that, when a bishop consecrates another, two other bishops should be present, at least as witnesses. But because in the Church of the English Augustine was then the only bishop, the pope granted that bishops might be ordained by him alone. 3. Since Gregory had learned from Augustine's legates that the harvest in England was great but the labourers few (though he had landed on this island with about forty companions), he added to Laurence and Peter a new reinforcement, namely very many chosen monks, for the ministry of the divine word and of the altar; of whom the chief were Mellitus, Justus, Paulinus, and Rufinianus.

To those who were to pass through Gaul he gave letters of commendation to Queen Brunhild, to the kings, and to the chief bishops of the Gauls, in all of which he calls Mellitus abbot, and the rest monks. That this reinforcement of preachers came forth from the monastery of Saint Andrew—whence the earlier ones too had been drawn—seem to be indicated by those words of the letter to Mellitus the abbot: After the departure of our congregation which is with you, etc. (Book XI, letter 76). Which is proof of how greatly this Gregorian monastery flourished.

Through them the pope sent to Augustine whatever things were necessary for divine worship and ecclesiastical ministry, namely sacred vessels, palls for vesting and adorning the altars, priestly vestments, relics of the martyrs, and very many books (Bede, book I, chapter 29). He added a pallium and a letter, in which he so congratulated the new apostle on the conversion of the English and on the miracles wrought by him, that nonetheless he stirred up his disciple to humility and to fear regarding the gifts received, setting before him the miracles wrought by the reprobate (Book XI, letter 28; Bede, book I, chapter 31). 4. He also wrote to King Ethelbert, giving thanks for the Christian faith which he had received and, like another Constantine, had propagated;

in which letter he warmly praises Augustine, because he had been learned in the rule of a monastery, filled with the knowledge of Sacred Scripture, and endowed, by God's authorship, with good works: worthy therefore that the king should hear him when he admonished, and comply with him when he persuaded (Book XI, letter 66). Before that letter written to King Ethelbert, Gregory had written to Bertha his wife, congratulating her that, like another Helena, mother of the emperor Constantine, kindled with zeal for the faith, she was labouring for the conversion of the English; yet tacitly rebuking her for her negligence, because Ethelbert had not yet been bent to the Christian faith by her care and prudence—he who a little later submitted himself to Christ (ibid., letter 29).

Besides the letter sent to Augustine, which we mentioned above (Book I, chapter 29), the venerable Bede sets forth another, in which we read that to Augustine was granted the right of the pallium, and power given to ordain twelve bishops who should be subject to his jurisdiction; on this condition, that the bishop of London should thereafter always be consecrated by his own synod and receive the pallium from the Apostolic See (Book XI, letter 65). He appointed also that the bishop of York should be ordained by Augustine, and should thenceforth possess metropolitan right and the honour of the pallium; by whom, if the neighbouring cities should receive the word of God, twelve bishops should be instituted.

After the death of Augustine—whom Gregory willed to hold the primacy of England for as long as he should live—he decreed that of the bishops of the cities of London and York, he should be held primate who had been the first ordained. From this letter one may conjecture that it had first pleased the supreme pontiff for Augustine to have his see at London rather than at Canterbury. But afterward it seemed otherwise; and the first episcopal see of England remained at Canterbury. 5. Augustine built a monastery near the same city, in which, by his authorship, the king took care to have a church built in the name of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul, and endowed it with divers gifts;

which became the burial-place of the same Augustine and of all the succeeding bishops of Canterbury, as well as of the kings of Kent. This monastery had for its first abbot Peter, a monk and presbyter, whom we have already mentioned. Concerning his holiness, his death, and the miracles wrought after his death at his tomb, the venerable writer of the English history is to be read (Bede, book I, chapter 33). In the metropolitan Church of Canterbury also, Saint Augustine observed the cenobitic life with his companions, and instituted that it should thenceforth be observed, by the counsel or precept of Gregory given in these words:

Because, he says, your Fraternity, being trained in the rules of a monastery, ought not to live apart from its clergy in the Church of the English, which by God's authorship has lately been brought to the faith, it ought to institute that manner of life which was in the beginning of the nascent Church among our fathers, in which none of them said that anything of what they possessed was his own, but they had all things in common (Book XI, letter 64). Indeed I do not deny that by these words there can equally be signified the cenobitic and common life, such as is that of the so-called canons regular, as well as the monastic.

But concerning the monastic manner of life instituted in the Church of Canterbury, such as befitted Augustine and his companion monks, the venerable Bede interprets it—one who in this matter is truly to be heard. For when that most careful and most learned writer had undertaken to weave the ecclesiastical history of his own people—being nearly a contemporary of Saint Augustine or of his disciples (for he began to flourish in the very century in which Augustine laid the foundation of the Christian religion in England, and he devoted himself unto death to so great a work)—he could not but know what kind of life the most holy man had introduced in the primary Church of the English, whether of clergy or of monks. Let us therefore hear Bede, book IV of the Ecclesiastical History, chapter 27:

Because indeed, he says, Aidan, who was the first bishop of this place (of Lindisfarne), coming thither himself as a monk with monks, instituted a monastic manner of life in it. Just as the blessed Father Augustine also is known to have done earlier in Kent, when the most blessed pope wrote to him what we set down above: But because your Fraternity, he says, being trained in the rules of a monastery, ought not to be set apart from its clergy, etc. Whence it is plain that they are less faithful interpreters of the mind of Saint Gregory who from these words hammer out that the clerical life which those commonly called canons regular follow was instituted by blessed Augustine in the primary Church of the English:

unless they are willing to admit that monks are the same as canons who follow the common life. 6. The venerable Bede explains his mind more clearly in the Life of Saint Cuthbert, chapter 16: Nor let anyone wonder, he says, that on the same island of Lindisfarne, though it be very small, we have said there is room both for a bishop and now for an abbot and monks. For in truth it is so. For one and the same dwelling of the servants of God holds both together. Nay, it holds all as monks. For Aidan, who was the first bishop of that place, was a monk, and was always accustomed to lead the monastic life with all his own.

Whence from him all the prelates of that place, even to this day, so exercise the episcopal office that, an abbot governing the monastery whom they themselves shall have elected with the counsel of the brethren, all the presbyters, deacons, cantors, lectors, and the other ecclesiastical grades keep the monastic rule in all things together with the bishop himself. That this norm of living pleased blessed Pope Gregory much, he proved when, to Augustine—whom he had sent as the first bishop to the nation of the English—inquiring by letter how bishops ought to converse with their clergy, he answered among other things:

But because your Fraternity, being trained in the rules of a monastery, ought not to be set apart from its clergy, in the Church of the English, which by God's authorship has lately, but recently, been brought to the faith, it ought to institute that manner of life which was in the beginning of the nascent Church among our fathers, etc., as above. From words so clear, of a witness almost an eyewitness and of undoubted trustworthiness, it is plain that the Church of Canterbury, equally with that of Lindisfarne, had monks alone for its clergy. Whence it comes to mind to wonder at the fabrication of a recent writer who, writing of the order of canons regular (chapter II, article I and following), sets forth Augustine and his companions as the first example of clergy living in common and canonically;

and since, faced with testimonies so open which prove more clearly than light that they were and remained monks, he could find no escape, he feigns that they were co-opted into the clergy on this condition, that they should abjure monasticism. By what reasons he tries to prop up this paradox, let us now weigh, although in this dispute we may seem to run out a little beyond the bounds of Gregorian history.