By this benefit the bishop greatly turned the heart of all to love of himself, and more willingly they began to hope for heavenly things at his preaching, by whose ministry they had received temporal goods. At that time King Aethelwalh gave to the most reverend bishop Wilfrid a land of eighty-seven families, where he might receive his own men who were wandering as exiles, a place called Selsey, which in Latin means 'island of the sea-calf' (seal). For it is a place surrounded on all sides by the sea except on the west, where it has an entrance of a width about a sling's cast; such a place is wont to be called by the Latins a peninsula, by the Greeks a chersonese.
When therefore the bishop Wilfrid had received this place, he founded there a monastery, and established it in the regular life, chiefly from those brothers whom he had brought with him; which his successors are known to hold even to this day. For he himself in those parts, for five years, that is, until the death of King Ecgfrith, deservedly honourable to all, exercised the office of the episcopate both in word and in deed. And since the king, together with the aforesaid possession of the place, had given him all the resources that were there, with their fields and men, all of them being instructed in the faith of Christ, he washed them with the wave of baptism; among whom were two hundred and fifty menservants and maidservants; all of whom, as by baptizing he saved them from the servitude of the demon, so also by granting freedom he loosed them from the yoke of human servitude.
[14] In which monastery at that time several gifts of heavenly grace are reported to have been specially shown; inasmuch as it was a place where, the tyranny of the devil having lately been expelled, Christ had now begun to reign; of which we have thought it fitting to commit to memory one, which the most reverend bishop Acca was wont to relate to me rather often, and to assert that it had been related to him by most faithful brothers of the same monastery. At about the same time at which that province had received the name of Christ, a savage mortality was seizing many provinces of Britain. When this, by the nod of the divine dispensation, was reaching also the aforesaid monastery, over which the most religious priest of Christ, named Eappa, then presided to govern it;
and many, whether of those who had come with that bishop, or of those who had lately been called to the faith from the same province of the Saxons, were being carried off everywhere from this life; it seemed good to the brothers to keep a three-day fast, and humbly to entreat the divine clemency, that it might deign to bestow mercy upon them, and either deliver from present death those endangered by this disease, or preserve from the perpetual damnation of the soul those snatched from the world. There was at that time in the same monastery a certain little boy of the nation of the Saxons, lately called to the faith, who, struck by the same infirmity, lay reclining on his little bed for no short time.
When therefore the second day of the said fasting and supplications was being kept, it happened by chance that the boy himself, at about the second hour of the day, was found alone in the place where he lay sick; to whom, by divine disposition, the most blessed chiefs of the apostles suddenly deigned to appear. For the boy was of a very simple and meek spirit, keeping with sincere devotion the sacraments of the faith which he had received. Greeting him therefore with most loving words, the apostles said: 'Do not fear, son, the death about which you are anxious; for we are this very day going to lead you to the heavenly kingdoms.
But first you must wait until Masses are celebrated, and, the viaticum of the Lord's body and blood being received, so, loosed at once from infirmity and from death, you may be raised to the eternal joys in heaven. Call therefore to yourself the priest Eappa, and tell him that the Lord has heard your prayers, and has looked favourably upon your devotion and fasting; nor shall anyone more from this monastery or from the little possessions adjacent to it die from this plague; but all who anywhere among you labour with this sickness shall rise from their languor and be restored to their former health, except you alone, who are this very day to be delivered from death, and to be led up to the vision of the Lord Christ, whom you have faithfully served, into heaven;
which the divine mercy has deigned to confer upon you through the intercession of the religious king beloved of God, Oswald, who once ruled sublimely over the nation of the Northumbrians, both with the authority of a temporal kingdom and with the devotion of Christian piety, which leads to the everlasting kingdom. For on this very day that same king, bodily slain in battle by the unbelievers, was straightway taken up into heaven to the everlasting joys of souls, and was joined to the companies of the elect. Let them search in their books, in which is recorded the death of the departed, and they will find that he was, as we have said, on this day snatched from the world.
Let them therefore celebrate Masses throughout all the oratories of this monastery, whether in thanksgiving for their petition having been heard, or also in memory of the aforesaid king Oswald, who once ruled over their nation, and therefore prayed as a suppliant to the Lord for them, as for sojourners of his own nation; and, all the brothers coming together to the church, let them all communicate in the heavenly sacrifices, and so, the fast being broken, let them also refresh the body with its own food.' When the boy had narrated all these words to the priest called to him, he anxiously asked him of what habit or appearance were the men who had appeared to him. He answered:
'Of altogether splendid habit, and their faces were most joyful and most beautiful, such as I had never seen before, nor did I believe any of men could be of such great comeliness and grace. One indeed was tonsured, like a cleric, the other had a long beard; and they said that one of them was called Peter, the other Paul; and that they themselves were ministers of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, sent by Him from heaven for the protection of our monastery.' The priest therefore believed the words of the boy, and at once going out, he searched in his annal, and found that on that very same day King Oswald had been slain; and calling the brothers, he ordered a meal to be prepared, Masses to be performed, and all to communicate in the customary manner;
and at the same time he commanded that a particle from the same sacrifice of the Lord's oblation be brought to the sick boy. These things being so done, not long after, on that very same day the boy died, and by his own death proved that the words to be true which he had heard from the apostles of Christ. But this testimony also was borne to his words, that no one besides himself at that time was snatched from the world out of the same monastery. From which vision, indeed, many who could hear these things were wondrously kindled both to entreat the divine clemency in adversities, and to undergo the salutary remedies of fastings;
and from that time, not only in the same monastery, but also in very many other places, the birthday (heavenly birthday) of that same king and soldier of Christ began to be venerated annually with the celebration of Masses. [15] Meanwhile Caedwalla, a most vigorous young man of the royal stock of the Gewisse, coming with an army while he was an exile from his own country, killed King Aethelwalh, and wore down that province with savage slaughter and devastation; but soon he was driven out by the king's leaders, Berhtun and Andhun, who thereafter held the rule of the province; of whom the former was afterwards killed by the same Caedwalla, when he was king of the Gewisse, and the province was subdued to a heavier servitude.
And Ini also, who reigned after Caedwalla, subjected that province to a like affliction for a very long span of years. Whence it came to pass that throughout all that time it could not have a bishop of its own; but, Wilfrid its first bishop having been recalled home, they were made subject to the very bishop of the Gewisse, that is, of the West Saxons, who were in the city of Winchester.
[16] After therefore Caedwalla had gained possession of the kingdom of the Gewisse, he took also the Isle of Wight, which until then had been wholly given over to idolatry, and by deadly slaughter strove to exterminate all the natives and to substitute for them men of his own province, binding himself by a vow—although, as they say, not yet regenerated in Christ—that, if he should take the island, he would give the fourth part of it, together with the spoil, to the Lord. This he discharged in such a way as to offer this part to Bishop Wilfrid, who then happened to be present, coming over from his own nation, to use for the Lord. Now the measure of that island, according to the estimate of the English, is twelve hundred families; whence a possession of land of three hundred families was given to the bishop.
And he himself committed the part which he received to a certain one of his clerics, whose name was Bernwin, and who was his sister's son, giving him a priest named Hiddila, to minister the word and the laver of life to all who wished to be saved. Where I think it ought not to be passed over in silence that, among the first-fruits of those of that island who, by believing, were saved, two royal boys, namely brothers of Arwald, king of the island, were crowned by a special grace of God. For when the enemies were threatening the island, they slipped away by flight from the island, and were carried over into the nearest province of the Jutes; where, when, having been brought to a place called At the Stone (Ad Lapidem), they had believed themselves to be hidden from the face of the victorious king, they were betrayed, and ordered to be killed.
When a certain abbot and priest, called Cynibert, who had a monastery not far from there in a place which is called Hreutford, that is, the ford of reeds, had heard this, he came to the king, who was then in those parts being secretly treated for the wounds which had been inflicted on him as he fought in the Isle of Wight; and he begged of him that, if it were necessary for the boys to be killed, it might first be permitted for them to be imbued with the sacraments of the Christian faith. The king granted it, and he himself, having instructed them in the word of truth, and washed them in the font of the Saviour, made them certain of their entrance into the eternal kingdom. And soon, the executioner pressing on, they joyfully underwent temporal death, through which they did not doubt that they would pass over to the perpetual life of the soul.
In this order, therefore, after all the provinces of the Britains had received the faith of Christ, the Isle of Wight also received it, in which, however, because of the misery of foreign subjection, no one received a degree of ministry and of episcopal seat before Daniel, who is now bishop of the West Saxons. Now this island is situated over against the middle of the South Saxons and of the Gewisse, with a sea of three miles' breadth interposed, which is called the Solent; in which sea, namely, the two tides of the ocean, which break around Britain out of the boundless northern ocean, meeting one another day by day in mutual conflict, clash beyond the mouth of the river Homelea, which, through the lands of the Jutes that belong to the region of the Gewisse, enters the aforesaid sea;
and when the conflict was ended they flowed back into the ocean, returning to the place from which they had come. In these times, Theodore, hearing that the faith of the Church at Constantinople had been greatly troubled through the heresy of Eutyches, and desiring that the churches of the English over which he presided should remain free from any such taint, gathered an assembly of many venerable priests and learned men, and diligently inquired what the faith of each one was; and he found among them all a unanimous consent in the catholic faith. This he took care to commit to synodal letters, for the instruction and remembrance of those who should come after; and the beginning of those letters is this:
In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ the Saviour, while our most pious lords were reigning—Ecgfrith, king of the Northumbrians, in the tenth year of his reign, on the fifteenth day before the Kalends of October, in the eighth indiction; and Æthelred, king of the Mercians, in the sixth year of his reign; and Aldwulf, king of the East Angles, in the seventeenth year of his reign; and Hlothere, king of the men of Kent, in the seventh year of his reign—Theodore presiding, by the grace of God archbishop of the island of Britain and of the city of Canterbury, together with the other venerable bishops of the island of Britain sitting with him, the holy Gospels having been set before us, in the place which in the Saxon tongue is called Hatfield, deliberating together, we set forth the right and orthodox faith;
even as our Lord Jesus Christ, having become incarnate, delivered it to his disciples who saw him in person and heard his words, and as the creed of the holy fathers handed it down, and as all the holy and universal synods in general, and the whole choir of approved doctors of the catholic Church. Following these therefore, we, piously and orthodoxly, according to their divinely inspired teaching, profess and believe in harmony, and confess according to the holy fathers, properly and truly the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit—a Trinity consubstantial in unity and a Unity in Trinity, that is, one God in three subsistences or consubstantial persons of equal glory and honour.
And after many things of this kind which pertained to the confession of the right faith, this holy synod also adds in its letters: We receive the five holy and universal synods of the blessed fathers acceptable to God; that is, those who were gathered at Nicaea, three hundred and eighteen against the most impious Arius and his doctrines; and at Constantinople, one hundred and fifty against the madness of Macedonius and Eudoxius and their doctrines; and at Ephesus the first, two hundred against the most wicked Nestorius and his doctrines; and at Chalcedon, six hundred and thirty against Eutyches and Nestorius and their doctrines;
and again at Constantinople, where they were gathered in a fifth council in the time of Justinian the younger against Theodore and the letters of Theodoret and Ibas and their doctrines against Cyril. And a little later: And the synod which was held in the city of Rome in the time of the most blessed Pope Martin, in the eighth indiction, while the most pious Constantine was reigning in his ninth year, we receive. And we glorify our Lord Jesus as these glorified him, adding nothing and taking nothing away; and we anathematize in heart and mouth those whom they anathematized, and we receive those whom they received;
glorifying God the Father without beginning, and his only-begotten Son, generated from the Father before the ages, and the Holy Spirit proceeding ineffably from the Father and the Son, as those whom we have mentioned above proclaimed—the holy apostles and prophets and doctors. And we all subscribe, who together with Archbishop Theodore have set forth the catholic faith. There was present at this synod, and likewise confirmed the decrees of the catholic faith, the venerable man John, archcantor of the church of the holy apostle Peter and abbot of the monastery of blessed Martin, who had recently come from Rome at the command of Pope Agatho, under the guidance of the most reverend abbot Biscop, surnamed Benedict, whom we have mentioned above.
For when this same Benedict had built a monastery in Britain in honour of the most blessed prince of the apostles, near the mouth of the river Wear, he came to Rome with Ceolfrith, the fellow worker and companion of that same undertaking, who after him became abbot of that same monastery (as he had been wont to do often before), and was honourably received by Pope Agatho of blessed memory; and he sought and received from him, for the safeguarding of the liberty of the monastery he had made, a letter of privilege confirmed by apostolic authority, according to what he knew King Ecgfrith had willed and granted leave for, by whose consent and gift of the possession of the land he had built that monastery. He received also the aforesaid abbot John to be brought to Britain;
so that he might teach in his monastery the yearly course of chanting as it was performed at St Peter's in Rome; and abbot John did this, as he had received the pontiff's command, teaching the cantors of the aforesaid monastery by living voice the order and rite of chanting and reading, and also committing to writing those things which the cycle of the whole year required in the celebration of the festal days; which are preserved even to this day in that same monastery, and have already been transcribed by many in the surrounding districts. Moreover, not only did this John teach the brethren of that monastery, but those who were skilled in singing flocked from almost all the monasteries of that same province to hear him. And many took care to invite him to the places where he might teach.
But he himself, besides the office of singing and reading, had also received another charge from the apostolic pope, namely, that he should diligently learn what the faith of the English church was, and on returning to Rome should report it. For he brought with him also the synod of the blessed Pope Martin, celebrated at Rome with the consent of one hundred and five bishops not long before, chiefly against those who preached one operation and one will in Christ; and he lent it to be transcribed in the aforesaid monastery of the most religious abbot Benedict. For such men at that time greatly troubled the faith of the Church of Constantinople; but by the Lord's gift they had even then already been exposed and overcome.
Wherefore Pope Agatho, wishing to learn, as in other provinces so also in Britain, what the state of the Church was, and how pure it was from the contagions of heretics, enjoined this business upon the most reverend abbot John, sent to Britain. On account of which a synod was gathered for this purpose in Britain, as we have said, and the catholic faith was found inviolate in all things; and a copy of it was given to him to be carried to Rome. But he, returning to his own country, not long after he had crossed the ocean, was seized with sickness and died; and his body, on account of the love of St Martin, to whose monastery he presided, was carried by his friends to Tours and honourably buried.
For he had been received with the kindly hospitality of that church when he was going to Britain, and had been much entreated by the brethren that on returning to Rome he should come by that route and turn aside to that church; and there, accordingly, he received helpers for the journey and for the task enjoined on him. And although he died on the way, nonetheless the example of the catholic faith of the English was carried to Rome, and was most gladly received by the apostolic pope and by all who heard or read it. Now King Ecgfrith took to wife a woman named Æthelthryth, daughter of Anna, king of the East Angles, whom we have often mentioned, a man truly religious and in all things excellent in mind and deed;
and another man before him had had her as wife, namely Tondberht, a prince of the South Gyrwe. But he having died a short time after he took her, she was given to the aforesaid king; and although she lived in wedlock with him for twelve years, she yet remained gloriously in perpetual integrity of virginity, as Wilfrid the bishop of blessed memory related to me when I inquired (since some had come to doubt whether this were so), saying that he was a most certain witness of her integrity; insomuch that Ecgfrith promised that he would give her many lands and riches if he could persuade the queen to enjoy his marriage bed, for he knew that she loved none of men more than him.
And it is not to be doubted that even in our own age there could happen what faithful histories relate to have happened sometimes in former ages, the one and the same Lord granting it, who promises to remain with us even to the end of the world. For there is also a sign of a divine miracle, in that the buried flesh of this same woman could not be corrupted, which is a proof that she had remained uncorrupted by any man's touch. She for a long time begged the king that she might be permitted to relinquish the cares of the world, and in a monastery to serve only Christ the true King;
where at last, when she had with difficulty obtained this, she entered the monastery of the abbess Æbbe, who was the aunt of King Ecgfrith, situated in the place which they call the city of Coludi, receiving the veil of the nun's habit from the aforesaid bishop Wilfrid. But after a year she herself was made abbess in the region which is called Ely; where, a monastery of virgins consecrated to God having been built, she began to be a virgin mother of very many by the examples of a heavenly life and by her admonitions. Of her they relate that, from the time she sought the monastery, she would never use linen but only woollen garments; and that she would rarely bathe in warm baths, except on the eve of the greater solemnities, namely Easter, Pentecost, and Epiphany;
and then last of all, having first washed the rest of the handmaids of Christ who were there, with the service of herself and her attendants; and that, except on the greater solemnities or under more pressing necessity, she would rarely eat more than once a day; and that always, unless graver sickness had prevented her, she would stand intent on prayer in the church from the time of the morning office until daybreak. There are also those who say that through the spirit of prophecy she foretold both the pestilence by which she herself was to die, and also openly made known to all who were present the number of those of her own monastery who were to be snatched from this world. She was taken to the Lord in the midst of her own, seven years after she had received the rank of abbess;
and, just as she herself had commanded, she was buried nowhere else than in the midst of them, according to the order in which she had departed, in a wooden coffin. There succeeded her in the office of abbess her sister Seaxburh, whom Earconberht, king of the men of Kent, had had as wife. And when she had been buried for sixteen years, it pleased the same abbess that her bones should be raised and, placed in a new coffin, transferred into the church; and she ordered some of the brethren to seek a stone from which they might make a coffin for this. They, having boarded a boat (for the region of Ely is on every side surrounded by waters and marshes, nor has it any larger stones), came to a certain small deserted city, situated not far thence, which in the tongue of the English is called Grantchester;
and soon they found near the walls of the city a coffin most beautifully made of white marble, fittingly covered also with a lid of the same stone. Whereupon, understanding that their journey had been made prosperous by the Lord, they gave thanks and brought it back to the monastery. And when the body of the holy virgin and bride of Christ, the tomb being opened, was brought out into the light, it was found so uncorrupted as if she had died and been laid in the earth that very day; as the aforesaid bishop Wilfrid and many others who knew testify; but with more certain knowledge the physician Cynifrid, who was present both at her death and at her being raised from the tomb; who was wont to relate that, when she was sick, she had a very great swelling under her jaw;
And they bade me, he said, lance that swelling, that the noxious humour within might flow out; and while I was doing this, she seemed for two days to be somewhat easier, so that many thought she might be healed of her sickness. But on the third day, oppressed by her former pains, she was straightway snatched from the world, and exchanged all pain and death for perpetual health and life. And when after so many years her bones were to be raised from the tomb, and a tent stretched over the place, the whole congregation, the brethren on this side and the sisters on that, stood around singing psalms; while the abbess herself with a few had entered within to raise and wash the bones, suddenly we heard the abbess within proclaim with a clear voice: Glory be to the name of the Lord.
And not long after they called me within, the door of the tent being unfastened; and I saw raised from the tomb and placed upon a couch the body of the holy virgin of God, like one sleeping. And the covering also being removed from her face, they showed me even the wound of the incision which I had made, now healed; so that, in a wondrous manner, in place of the open and gaping wound with which she had been buried, there now appeared the slightest traces of a scar. And all the linen cloths in which the body had been wrapped appeared whole, and so new as though they had that very day been put about her chaste limbs. They relate moreover that, when she was oppressed by the aforesaid swelling and pain of the jaw or neck, she was much delighted with this kind of sickness, and was wont to say:
I know most certainly that I deservedly bear in my neck the weight of this sickness, in which I remember that as a young girl I bore the superfluous weight of necklaces; and I believe that the heavenly Goodness therefore willed me to be burdened with pain of the neck, that I might thus be absolved from the guilt of superfluous frivolity, while now in place of gold and pearls there stands out on my neck the redness and burning of a swelling. It also came to pass that by the touch of those same garments demons were driven away from possessed bodies, and other infirmities were sometimes cured. And they affirm too that the coffin in which she was first buried was a means of healing to several who suffered in their eyes; who, when they had laid their head against that coffin and prayed, soon had the trouble of pain or dimness removed from their eyes.
The virgins therefore washed the body, and having clothed it in new garments, carried it into the church, and placed it in the sarcophagus that had been brought, where it is held even to this day in great veneration. And in a wondrous manner the sarcophagus was found so fitted to the virgin's body as if it had been specially prepared for her; and the place for the head also, wrought apart, appeared most fittingly shaped to the measure of her head. Now Ely is, in the province of the East Angles, a region of about six hundred households, after the likeness of an island, surrounded, as we have said, either by marshes or by waters; whence also it received its name from the abundance of eels which are caught in those same marshes;
where the aforesaid handmaid of Christ desired to have a monastery, since she had drawn her bodily origin, as we have said, from the province of those same East Angles. It seems opportune to insert into this history also a hymn of virginity, which many years ago, in praise and proclamation of this same queen and bride of Christ—and therefore truly a queen, because a bride of Christ—we composed in elegiac metre; and to imitate the manner of holy Scripture, into whose history very many songs are inserted, and these are established to be composed in metre and verses. O bountiful God the Trinity, who governest all ages, favour now what is begun, O bountiful God the Trinity. Let Maro sound forth wars; let us sing the gifts of peace; the gifts of Christ for us, let Maro sound forth wars.