and when he had presided over that province with episcopal rule for seventeen years, he there ended his life in peace. [16] Paulinus moreover preached the word also to the province of Lindsey, which is the first on the southern bank of the river Humber, reaching even to the sea, and he first converted to the Lord the reeve of the city of Lincoln, whose name was Blæcca, with his household. In which city indeed he built a church of remarkable workmanship in stone; the roof of which, whether cast down by long neglect or by hostile hand, the walls are seen to stand even now, and every year some miracles of healing are wont to be shown in that same place for the benefit of those who faithfully seek them.
In which church Paulinus, when Justus had passed to Christ, consecrated Honorius bishop in his stead, as we shall tell in due place hereafter. Concerning the faith of this province, a certain priest and abbot, a most truthful man, from the monastery of Partney, named Deda, told me that an old man had related to him that he himself had been baptized at midday by bishop Paulinus, in the presence of king Edwin, and a great multitude of the people, in the river Trent, near the city which in the tongue of the Angles is called Tiowulfingacæstir; and that he was wont also to describe the appearance of the same Paulinus, that he was a man of tall stature, a little stooping, with black hair, a thin face, a slender aquiline nose, of an aspect at once venerable and awe-inspiring.
He had with him also in his ministry James the deacon, a man assuredly industrious and noble in Christ and in the church, who remained even down to our own times. So great peace, moreover, is reported to have been at that time in Britain, wherever the rule of king Edwin had reached, that, as is said even to this day in a proverb, even if a woman with her newborn babe had wished to walk through the whole island from sea to sea, she could do so with none to hurt her.
So greatly did this same king take thought for the welfare of his people, that in very many places, where he saw clear springs beside the public passages of the roads, there, for the refreshment of travellers, he ordered stakes to be set up and bronze cups to be hung; and no one dared to touch these, except for necessary use, either out of the greatness of fear of him, or would wish to, out of love. So great excellence too did he have in his kingdom, that not only were banners borne before him in battle, but even in time of peace, as he rode among his cities or townships or provinces with his attendants, the standard-bearer was ever wont to go before him; and likewise, when he went anywhere through the streets, that kind of banner which the Romans call tufa, and the Angles thuuf, was wont to be carried before him.
[17] At which time Honorius, the successor of Boniface, held the presidency of the apostolic see; and when he learned that the nation of the Northumbrians, with their king, had been converted to the faith and confession of Christ by the preaching of Paulinus, he sent to the same Paulinus the pallium; and he sent also to king Edwin letters of exhortation, kindling him with fatherly love, that they should take care ever to persist and to make progress in the faith of the truth which they had received. The tenor of which letters indeed is this: 'To the most excellent and most surpassing lord and son, Edwin king of the Angles, Honorius bishop, servant of the servants of God, greeting.
So thoroughly has the integrity of your Christianity been kindled with the ardour of faith concerning the worship of its Creator, that it shines forth far and wide, and, proclaimed throughout the whole world, brings back the manifold fruit of your work. For thus do you know yourselves to be kings, while, taught by orthodox preaching, you believe in your King and Creator by venerating God, and render to Him the sincere devotion of your mind, as the human condition is able. For what else shall we be able to offer to our God, save that, persisting in good deeds and confessing Him the author of the human race, we should hasten to worship Him and to pay Him our vows?
And therefore, most excellent son, we exhort you with the fatherly love which is fitting, that you should by every means make haste, with careful intent and assiduous prayers, to preserve this—that the divine mercy has deigned to call you to His grace; so that He who has deigned to lead you, in the present world freed from all error, to the knowledge of His name, may also prepare for you a mansion in the heavenly country. Being therefore frequently occupied in the reading of your preacher, my lord Gregory of apostolic memory, keep before your eyes the affection of his teaching, which he gladly exercised for your souls; that his prayer may both increase your kingdom and people, and present you blameless before almighty God.
But those things which you hoped to be ordained by us for your priests, these, on account of the sincerity of your faith—which has been laudably made known to us by the manifold report through the bearers of the present letter—we make provision to grant with a willing mind and without any delay; and we have sent two pallia for both metropolitans, that is for Honorius and Paulinus, so that, when either of them shall be summoned from this world to his Author, the other may, by this our authority, appoint a bishop in his stead.
This indeed we have been moved to grant, both for the affection of your charity and for the great extent of the provinces which are known to lie between us and you, that in all things we might afford our concurrence to your devotion, and according to your desires. May the heavenly grace keep your excellency unharmed.' [18] Meanwhile Justus the archbishop, raised to the heavenly kingdom on the fourth day before the Ides of November, and Honorius was elected in his stead to the presidency; who, coming to Paulinus to be ordained, and Paulinus meeting him at Lincoln, was consecrated the fifth bishop of the church of Canterbury from Augustine.
To him also the aforesaid pope Honorius sent the pallium and letters, in which he decrees this very thing which he had decreed in the epistle sent to king Edwin; namely, that when the bishop of Canterbury or of York shall depart from this life, he who survives, being of partner rank, shall have power to ordain another priest in the place of him who had departed; lest it be necessary ever to be wearied, for the ordaining of an archbishop, all the way to the city of Rome over such long expanses of lands and sea. The text of which letters also we have thought it convenient to set down in this our history. 'To the most beloved brother Honorius, Honorius.
Among the very many gifts of good things which the mercy of our Redeemer deigns to bestow upon His servants, this also He has mercifully granted by the bestowed bounty of His goodness, that as often as through brotherly converse He represents to mutual gazes, by a certain contemplation, a love that is one in soul. For which gifts we render thanks unceasingly to His majesty, and with suppliant vows we beseech Him, that He may confirm with perpetual stability your love, labouring and bearing fruit in the preaching of the Gospel, and following the rule of your master and head, the holy Gregory, and may rouse up through you, for the increase of His church, more powerful growth;
that by faith and work, in the fear of God and in charity, your acquisition and that of your predecessors, which sprouts forth from the beginnings made by lord Gregory, may, growing stronger, be the more widely extended; so that those very promises of the Lord's word may regard you in the time to come, and that voice may summon you to the eternal festival: 'Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you'; and again: 'Well done, thou good and faithful servant; because thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will set thee over many things; enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.' And we indeed, most dear brethren, sending before you these words of exhortation out of eternal charity, do not cease to impart what we perceive can again be suitable for the privileges of your churches.
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Ettamiuxtauestrampetitionem, quamfiliorumnostrorumregumuobisperpraesentemnostrampraeceptionem, uicebeatiPetriapostolorumprincipis, auctoritatemtribuimus, utquandounumexuobisdiuinaadseiusseritgratiaeuocari, is, quisuperstesfuerit, alteruminlocodefunctidebeatepiscopumordinare. Proquaetiamresingulauestraedilectionipalliaproeademordinationecelebrandadireximus, utpernostraepraeceptionisauctoritatempossitisDeoplacitamordinationemefficere;
And both according to your petition, and that of our sons the kings, we grant to you, by this our present command, in the stead of the blessed Peter the chief of the apostles, the authority that when the divine grace shall have commanded one of you to be called to itself, he who survives shall ordain the other as bishop in the place of the deceased. For which matter also we have sent to your love single pallia for the celebrating of the same ordination, that by the authority of our command you may be able to effect an ordination pleasing to God;
because, in order that we might grant these things to you, the long intervals of lands and sea which stand between us and you compelled us to condescend to this, that no loss of your churches might in any way come about through the pretext of any occasion whatsoever; but rather that the devotion of the people committed to you might be more fully propagated. May God keep you unharmed, most beloved brother. Given on the third day before the Ides of June, in the reign of our lords the Augusti, Heraclius in his twenty-fourth year, after the consulship of the same in his twenty-third year, and Constantine his son in his twenty-third year, and in the third year of his consulship; and also Heraclius the most fortunate Caesar, that is his son, in his third year; in the seventh indiction, that is in the year of our Lord's incarnation 634.'
[19] The same pope Honorius sent letters also to the nation of the Scots [Irish], whom he had found to have erred in the observance of the holy Easter, according to what we have shown above; earnestly exhorting them that they should not deem their own fewness, set in the uttermost ends of the earth, wiser than the ancient or modern churches of Christ which were throughout the world; nor, contrary to the paschal computations and the decrees of the synodal bishops of the whole world, celebrate another Easter. But also John, who succeeded Severinus the successor of the same Honorius, while he was still bishop-elect, sent them, for the correcting of the same error, letters full of great authority and erudition;
evidently establishing that the Lord's Easter day ought to be sought from the fourteenth moon to the twenty-first, which was approved in the Nicene synod. Moreover, for the avoiding and repelling of the Pelagian heresy, which he had learned to be reviving among them, he took care to admonish them in the same epistle; the beginning of which epistle is: 'To the most beloved and most holy bishops Tomianus, Columbanus, Cromanus, Dinnaus, and Baithanus; to the priests Cromanus, Ernianus, Laistranus, Scellanus, and Segenus; to Saranus and the rest of the doctors or abbots of the Scots—Hilarus the archpriest and keeping the place of the holy apostolic see, John the deacon and elect in the name of God;
likewise John the chief notary and keeping the place of the holy apostolic see, and John the servant of God, counsellor of the same apostolic see. The writings which the bearers brought to pope Severinus of holy memory, on his departing from this light, kept silent the reciprocal answers to those things which had been requested. When these were unsealed, lest the darkness of so great a question should long remain undiscussed, we found that certain men of your province were attempting, contrary to the orthodox faith, to renew a new heresy out of an old one, refuting with a misty darkness our Passover, in which Christ was sacrificed, and striving to celebrate it on the fourteenth moon with the Hebrews.
By which beginning of the epistle it is plainly declared, both that this heresy had arisen among them only very recently in those times, and that not their whole nation, but only some among them, had been involved in it. Then, having set forth the reason of the paschal observance, they add thus concerning the Pelagians in the same epistle: 'This too we have learned, that the poison of the Pelagian heresy is reviving anew among you; which we altogether exhort to be removed from your minds, this venomous crime of superstition. For how that accursed heresy itself was also condemned ought not to be hidden from you; because it has not only been abolished through these two hundred years, but is also daily damned, buried by us with perpetual anathema;
and we exhort, that the ashes of those whose weapons have been burned be not stirred up among you. For who would not execrate their proud and impious endeavour, who say that a man can exist without sin of his own will, and not by the grace of God? And in the first place indeed it is the foolish talk of blasphemy to say that a man is without sin; which is altogether impossible, except for the one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who was conceived and born without sin. For the rest of men, being born with original sin, are known to bear the testimony of Adam's transgression, even while existing without actual sin, according to the prophet who says: "Behold, for I was conceived in iniquities, and in sins did my mother bring me forth."
[20] But now, when Edwin had most gloriously ruled over the nations both of the Angles and of the Britons for seventeen years—of which years he himself also, as we have said, served for six in the kingdom of Christ—Caedwalla king of the Britons rebelled against him, with the aid afforded him by Penda, a most vigorous man of the royal race of the Mercians, who himself also from that time presided over the kingdom of that same nation for twenty-two years with varying fortune; and when a grievous battle had been joined on the plain which is called Hatfield, Edwin was slain on the fourth day before the Ides of October, in the year of our Lord's incarnation 633, when he was forty-eight years old; and his whole army was either destroyed or scattered.
In which battle also, before him, one of his sons, Osfrid, a warlike youth, fell; the other, Eadfrid, compelled by necessity, fled over to king Penda, and was afterwards by him, during Oswald's reign, put to death contrary to the faith of his oath. At which time the greatest slaughter was made in the church or nation of the Northumbrians, especially because one of the commanders by whom it was done was a heathen, the other, because he was a barbarian, more savage than a heathen. For Penda, with all the Mercian nation, was given over to idols, and ignorant of the Christian name;
but Caedwalla, although he bore the name and profession of a Christian, was nevertheless so barbarous in mind and manners, that he spared not even the female sex, nor the harmless age of little children, but with beastly cruelty delivered them all to death through torments, ranging far and wide for a long time in his raving through all their provinces, and resolving to wipe out the whole race of the Angles from the borders of Britain. Nor did he pay any honour to the Christian religion which had arisen among them. Indeed, as it is the custom of the Britons even to this day, to hold the faith and religion of the Angles as nothing, and to have no more communion with them than with pagans.
The head of king Edwin was moreover brought to York, and afterwards carried into the church of the blessed apostle Peter, which he himself had begun, but his successor Oswald completed, as we have shown above, and was laid in the chapel of the holy pope Gregory, from whose disciples he himself had received the word of life. The affairs of the Northumbrians being thus thrown into confusion at the crisis of this disaster, when no protection seemed to be anywhere except in flight, Paulinus, taking with him queen Æthelburh, whom he had long before brought thither, returned by ship to Kent, and was received with much honour by Honorius the archbishop and king Eadbald.
He came thither under the conduct of Bass, a most valiant soldier of king Edwin, having with him Eanfled, Edwin's daughter, and Wuscfrea his son, as also Yffi the son of his son Osfrid, whom afterwards their mother, for fear of kings Eadbald and Oswald, sent into Gaul to be reared by king Dagobert, who was her friend; and there both died in infancy, and were buried in the church with the honour befitting either royal children or innocents of Christ. He brought with him also very many precious vessels of king Edwin, among which were both a great cross of gold, and a golden chalice consecrated for the ministry of the altar, which are shown preserved to this day in the church of Kent.
At which time the church of Rochester had no shepherd at all, because Romanus its bishop, sent as legate by Justus the archbishop to pope Honorius, had been swallowed up by the waves of the Italian sea; and on this account the aforesaid Paulinus, at the invitation of bishop Honorius and king Eadbald, took up and held the care of it, until he too in his own time ascended to the heavenly kingdom with the glorious fruit of his labour. In which church, dying, he also left the pallium which he had received from the Roman pope. He had left, however, in his own church at York James the deacon, a man assuredly ecclesiastical and holy, who, remaining many years thereafter in the church, snatched great spoils from the ancient enemy by teaching and baptizing;
by whose name the village, in which he was especially wont to dwell, near Catterick, is surnamed even to this day. He, since he was most skilled in singing in the church, when peace was afterwards recovered in the province and the number of the faithful increased, began also to be a master of ecclesiastical chant to many, according to the manner of the Romans or of the men of Kent; and he himself, old and full of days, according to the Scriptures, followed the way of the fathers.