speaking valiantly indeed, as it seemed to himself, but wretchedly, as afterward became plain, being seduced by demonic deceit. And when, the disease growing worse, the king again went in to visit and to instruct him, he straightway cried out with a wretched voice: 'What do you want now? Why have you come hither? For you can no longer confer on me any usefulness or salvation.' But he said: 'Do not speak thus; see that you be of sound mind.' 'I am not mad,' he said, 'but I have, assured, before my eyes a most evil knowledge.' 'And what,' he said, 'is this?' 'A little while ago,' he said, 'there entered this house two most beautiful young men, and sat down about me, one at my head, and one at my feet; and one brought out a most beautiful little book, but exceedingly small, and gave it me to read;
in which, gazing, I found written all the good things I had ever done, and these were exceedingly few and small. They took back the book, and said nothing to me. Then suddenly there came an army of malign and horrid-faced spirits, and they both beset this house from without, and, settling down within for the most part, filled it. Then that one who, both by the obscurity of his shadowy face and by the primacy of his seat, seemed to be the greater of them, bringing forth a book of dreadful aspect, and of enormous size, and of a weight almost unbearable, commanded one of his attendants to bring it me to read.
Which when I had read, I found all my crimes, not only those by which I had sinned in deed or in word, but even those by the most slight thought, most manifestly described in it in grim letters. And he said to those white-robed and resplendent men who had sat by me: "Why do you sit here, knowing most certainly that this man is ours?" They answered: "You speak truly; take him and lead him into the heap of your damnation." Which said, they straightway vanished; and two most wicked spirits, rising up, having in their hands ploughshares, struck me, one in the head and the other in the foot:
which, namely, now with great torment are creeping into the inner parts of my body, and as soon as they meet one another, I shall die, and, with the demons made ready to snatch me, I shall be dragged into the prisons of hell.' Thus spoke the wretched man in despair, and not long after, having died, he now performs without fruit, subjected to punishments for ever, the penance which for a short time, with the fruit of pardon, he refrained from doing. Concerning whom it is certain that, as the blessed Pope Gregory writes of certain men, he saw these things not for himself, to whom they profited nothing, but for others, who, knowing his ruin, might fear to put off the time of penance while it is free, lest, forestalled by the unforeseen article of death, they should perish impenitent.
But that he saw diverse books offered to him by the good or the evil spirits, was done by heavenly dispensation for this end, that we might remember that our deeds and thoughts do not flow away into the wind, but are all kept for the examination of the supreme Judge; and are to be shown to us at the end either by friendly angels or by foes. But that the angels first brought forth a white book, then the demons a black one; they a very small one, these an enormous one; it is to be observed that in his early age he did some good things, all of which, however, he obscured by living wickedly as a young man. Who, if on the contrary he had taken care to correct the errors of childhood in his youth, and by doing well to hide them from the eyes of God, might have been associated with the number of those of whom the psalm says:
'Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered.' This history, just as I learned it from the venerable bishop Pecthelm, I have thought should be related simply for the salvation of those who read or hear it. [14] But I myself knew a brother (whom would that I had not known!), whose name even, if this would profit anything, I could tell; placed in a noble monastery, but himself living ignobly. He was indeed diligently rebuked by the brethren and elders of the place, and admonished to turn to a more chastened life. And although he had been unwilling to hear them, yet he was tolerated by them with long-suffering on account of the need of his outward works; for he was singular in the smith's craft.
But he was much given to drunkenness and to the other allurements of a more relaxed life; and he was wont rather to abide in his workshop day and night than to run together with the brethren to chant and to pray in church, and to hear the word of life. Whence it befell him, as some are wont to say, that he who will not of his own accord enter humbled the door of the church, must needs be brought in, condemned against his will, into the door of hell. For, being struck with sickness, and brought to the last extremity, he called the brethren, and, much mourning and like one condemned, began to relate that he saw hell open, and Satan plunged in the depths of Tartarus, and Caiphas with the rest who slew the Lord, near him, delivered over to avenging flames:
'in whose neighbourhood,' he said, 'alas, for wretched me, I behold a place of eternal perdition prepared.' The brethren, hearing these things, began diligently to exhort him that even then, while still placed in the body, he should do penance. But he answered in despair: 'There is now for me no time of changing my life, since I myself have seen that my judgement is already completed.' Speaking such things, he died without the viaticum of salvation, and his body was buried in the farthest parts of the monastery, nor did anyone presume either to celebrate Masses for him, or to sing psalms, or even to pray. O with how great a distance has God divided between the light and the darkness!
The blessed protomartyr Stephen, about to suffer death for the truth, saw the heavens opened, saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God; and where he himself was to be after death, thither, that he might fall the more joyful, he sent the eyes of his mind before death. But on the contrary, this smith of dark mind and action, with death imminent, saw Tartarus open, saw the damnation of the devil and his followers; he saw also his own unhappy prison among such, that he himself might perish the more wretchedly with salvation despaired of, but might leave to the living who should learn these things, by his own perdition, a cause of salvation. This happened lately in the province of the Bernicians; and, being spread abroad far and wide, it provoked many to perform, and not to defer, repentance for their crimes.
And would that henceforth this might come to pass even by the reading of our writings! [15] At which time a very great part of the Scots in Ireland, and also not a few of the Britons in Britain, by the Lord's gift took up the rational and ecclesiastical time of the observance of Easter. For Adamnan, priest and abbot of the monks who were in the island of Iona, when, sent by his people for the sake of an embassy, he had come to Aldfrith, king of the English, and, tarrying for some time in that province, beheld the canonical rites of the church;
but was also skilfully admonished by several who were more learned, lest, against the universal custom of the church, he should presume to live, whether in the observance of Easter or in any other decrees, with his very few followers placed in the uttermost corner of the world, he was changed in mind; so that he most willingly preferred those things which he had seen and heard in the churches of the English to the custom of himself and of his own people. For he was a good and wise man, and most nobly instructed in the knowledge of the Scriptures. Who, when he had returned home, took care to lead his own people, who were in Iona, or who were subject to that same monastery, to the path of truth which he had come to know and had himself received with his whole heart; but he was not able.
He sailed to Ireland, and preaching to them, and by gentle exhortation setting forth the lawful time of Easter, he brought back very many of them, indeed nearly all who were free from the dominion of the men of Iona, from their ancestral error, having corrected them, to Catholic unity, and thoroughly taught them to observe the lawful time of Easter. And when, the canonical Easter having been celebrated in Ireland, he had returned to his own island and was most urgently preaching to his own monastery the Catholic observance of the paschal season, yet could not accomplish what he was attempting, it came to pass that he departed from this world before the circle of the year was completed.
By the disposing of divine grace, no doubt, so that this man, most zealous for unity and peace, might be caught up to eternal life before the paschal season should come round again and he should be forced to have a graver discord with those who would not follow him to the truth. This same man wrote a book about the holy places, most useful to many readers; the source of whose teaching and dictation was Arculf, a bishop of Gaul, who had come to Jerusalem for the sake of the holy places, and having traversed all the land of promise, had also gone to Damascus, Constantinople, Alexandria, and many islands of the sea; and returning to his homeland by ship, was driven by the force of a tempest onto the western shores of Britain;
and after many wanderings, coming to the aforementioned servant of Christ, Adamnan, where he was found to be learned in the Scriptures and acquainted with the holy places, he was most gladly received by him and yet more gladly heard; so much so that whatever he testified he had seen worthy of mention in the holy places, all of it Adamnan soon took care to commit to writing. And he made a work, as I have said, useful to many, and especially to those who, being far removed from those places in which the patriarchs or the apostles lived, know of these things only what they have learned by reading. Adamnan presented this book to King Aldfrith, and through his bounty it was given also to lesser persons to read. The writer himself too, endowed with many gifts by him, was sent back to his homeland.
I think it would be profitable to readers to cull some things from his writings and to insert them into this our history. [16] He wrote, then, concerning the place of the Lord's nativity in this manner: Bethlehem, the city of David, is situated on a narrow ridge surrounded on every side by valleys, a thousand paces long from west to east, with a low wall without towers built along the edge of the flat summit; in whose eastern corner there is a kind of natural half-cave, the outer part of which is said to have been the place of the Lord's nativity; the inner part is named the Manger of the Lord. This whole grotto, lined within with precious marble, bears above the place where the Lord is more particularly said to have been born a great church of holy Mary.
He likewise wrote in this manner concerning the place of His passion and resurrection: For those who enter the city of Jerusalem from the northern side, the first of the holy places, according to the layout of the streets, to which one must turn aside, is the Constantinian church, which is called the Martyrium. The emperor Constantine built this with magnificent and royal splendour, because there the cross of the Lord was found by his mother Helena. Next, toward the west, the church of Golgotha is seen, in which there also appears that rock which once bore the very cross with the Lord's body fastened upon it, now supporting a very large silver cross, with a great bronze wheel hung above it bearing lamps.
But below the very place of the Lord's cross, there has been hewn in the rock a crypt, in which upon an altar a sacrifice is wont to be offered for honoured departed ones, the bodies being meanwhile placed in the open court. To the west of this church also, the Anastasis, that is the round church of the Lord's resurrection, girt with three walls, is upheld by twelve columns, having between each of the walls a broad space of passage, which contains three altars in three places of the middle wall, that is, the southern, the northern, and the western. This has twice four doors, that is entrances, through three walls set over against one another, of which four look toward the north-northeast and four toward the southeast.
In the middle of this, the round tomb of the Lord has been hewn out of the rock, the top of which a man standing within can touch with his hand, having its entrance from the east, to which that great stone was set; which to this present day shows within the marks of the tools. For without, up to the very summit of the roof, it is wholly covered with marble. And the topmost summit, adorned with gold, bears a great golden cross. In the northern part, then, of this monument, the sepulchre of the Lord, hewn out of the same rock, seven feet in length, rises a measure of three palms higher than the pavement; having its entrance from the southern side, where day and night twelve lamps burn, four within the sepulchre and eight above on the right-hand edge.
The stone which had been placed at the door of the monument is now split; the smaller part of it nonetheless stands as a square altar before the door of the same monument; but the larger part stands in the eastern place of the same church as another four-cornered altar beneath linen cloths. The colour, moreover, of this same monument and sepulchre appears mingled of white and red. [17] Concerning the place of the Lord's ascension also the aforesaid author relates in this manner: The Mount of Olives is equal in height to Mount Sion, but surpasses it in breadth and length; except for vines and olives, it produces few trees, and is fruitful also in wheat and barley. For the quality of its soil is not scrub-covered, but grassy and flowering;
On whose topmost summit, where the Lord ascended to the heavens, there is a great round church, having all around three vaulted porticoes roofed over above. For the inner house could not be vaulted and roofed, on account of the passage of the Lord's body; having an altar toward the east covered with a narrow roof, in the midst of which the last footprints of the Lord are seen, with the sky open above, where He ascended. And though daily the earth is taken away by the faithful, nonetheless it remains, and still keeps the same appearance as though sealed with the impressed footprints. Around this lies a bronze wheel, as high as a man's neck, having its entrance from the west, with a great lamp hung above on pulleys, shining all day and night.
In the western part of this same church are eight windows, and as many lamps hanging on cords opposite to them shine through the glass as far as Jerusalem; whose light is said to strike the hearts of those who behold it with a certain eagerness and compunction, filling them with awe. On the day of the Lord's ascension, every single year, when Mass has been completed, a storm of mighty blast is wont to come down from above and to cast to the ground all who are present in the church. Concerning the site also of Hebron and the monuments of the patriarchs he writes thus: Hebron, once a city and the metropolis of David's kingdom, now by its ruins alone shows what it once was.
One stadium to the east it has a double cave in a valley, where the sepulchres of the patriarchs are surrounded by a square wall, with their heads turned toward the north; and these each one is roofed with single stones hewn after the manner of a basilica; those of the three patriarchs of white stone, that of Adam of darker and meaner workmanship, who rests not far from them at the northern and outermost part of that wall. The meaner and smaller memorials of three women also are seen. Mamre is a hill a thousand paces to the north from these monuments, very grassy and flowering, having on its summit a level plain; in the northern part of which the oak of Abraham, a trunk of the height of two men, is encompassed by a church.
These things, excerpted from the little works of the aforesaid writer, indeed according to the sense of his words but comprised in briefer and more compressed phrases, I have thought fit to insert into our histories for the benefit of readers. Let anyone who delights to know more of that volume seek it either in that very volume, or in the epitome which we long ago briefly excerpted from it. [18] In the year of the Lord's incarnation 705, Aldfrith, king of the Northumbrians, died, the twentieth year of his reign not yet completed; succeeding him in the kingdom, his son Osred, a boy of about eight years, reigned eleven years. At the beginning of this reign Haeddi, bishop of the West Saxons, passed to the heavenly life.
For he was a good and just man, and he exercised an episcopal life and teaching, instructed more by an inborn love of the virtues than by reading. Indeed the most reverend bishop Pehthelm, of whom we must speak in due place hereafter, who was for a long time deacon or monk with his successor Aldhelm, was wont to relate that in the place where he died, on account of the merit of his sanctity, many miracles of healings were wrought, and that the people of that province were accustomed to put dust carried away from there into water for the sake of the sick, and that the tasting or sprinkling of this conferred health upon many ailing folk, both men and beasts;
on account of which, by frequent removal of the holy dust, a no small pit has been made in that very place. After his death, the episcopate of that province was divided into two dioceses. One was given to Daniel, which he governs to this day; the other to Aldhelm, over which he most vigorously presided for four years; both being sufficiently instructed both in ecclesiastical matters and in the knowledge of the Scriptures.
Finally Aldhelm, while he was still a presbyter and abbot of the monastery which they call the city of Maildulf, wrote, at the command of a synod of his own nation, an excellent book against the error of the Britons, by which they either celebrate Easter not at its proper time, or do very many other things contrary to ecclesiastical purity and peace; and by the reading of it he brought many of those Britons who were subject to the West Saxons to the Catholic celebration of the Lord's Easter. He also wrote an outstanding book on virginity, which, after the example of Sedulius, he composed in a twofold work, both in hexameter verses and in prose. He wrote also several other things, being a man most learned in every respect;
for he was both polished in speech, and, as I have said, admirable in his erudition in studies both liberal and ecclesiastical. After his death Forthhere received the bishopric in his stead, who survives to this day; himself a man much erudite in the holy Scriptures. While these were administering the episcopate, it was decreed by a synodal decree that the province of the South Saxons, which until then had belonged to the diocese of the city of Winchester, over which Daniel then presided, should itself also have an episcopal see and its own bishop; and there was consecrated for them as their first bishop Eadberht, who was abbot of the monastery of Wilfrid, bishop of blessed memory, which is called Selsey; after whose death Eolla received the office of the episcopate.
But he too having been taken from this light some years ago, the bishopric has remained vacant to this day. [19] In the fourth year of the reign of Osred, Coenred, who had most nobly presided over the kingdom of the Mercians for some time, far more nobly relinquished the sceptre of the kingdom. For he came to Rome, and there, being tonsured while Constantine held the pontificate, and being made a monk, he remained at the thresholds of the apostles in prayers, fasts, and almsgivings until his last day; Ceolred, son of Aethelred, who before Coenred himself had held the same kingdom, succeeding to the realm.
There came with him also the son of Sigehere, king of the East Saxons, of whom we made mention above, by name Offa, a youth of most lovable age and comeliness, and most longed-for by his whole nation for holding and keeping the sceptres of the kingdom. He, led by an equal devotion of mind, left wife, lands, kinsmen, and homeland for Christ and for the gospel, that in this life he might receive a hundredfold, and in the world to come life eternal. And so he too, when they had come to the holy places at Rome, being tonsured and completing his life in the monastic habit, attained to the long-desired vision of the blessed apostles in the heavens.
In the same year, indeed, in which these left Britain, the distinguished bishop Wilfrid, after forty-five years of his accepted episcopate, closed his last day in the province which is called Oundle; and his body, placed in a coffin, was carried to his own monastery, which is called Ripon, and was buried with honour befitting so great a bishop in the church of the blessed apostle Peter. Concerning the course of his life, so that, returning to earlier matters, we may recall in a few words the things that were done: when he was a boy of good disposition, and surpassing his age in character, he so conducted himself modestly and circumspectly in all things, that he was deservedly loved, revered, and embraced by his elders as one of themselves, until, when he reached the fourteenth year of his age, he preferred the monastic life to the secular.
When he had told this to his father—for his mother had by then died—he gladly assented to his vows and heavenly desires, and bade him to persist in the salutary undertakings he had begun. He came, therefore, to the island of Lindisfarne, and there, giving himself to the service of the monks, he diligently took care both to learn and to practise those things which belonged to monastic purity and piety. And because he was of keen intellect, he very quickly learned the psalms and several books; not yet indeed tonsured, but marked not slightly with those virtues which are greater than the tonsure, namely of humility and obedience; on account of which he was cherished with just affection both by his elders and by his contemporaries.
Now while he was serving God in that monastery for some years, the young man of sagacious mind gradually observed that the way of virtue which was handed down by the Scots was by no means perfect, and he resolved in his mind to come to Rome, and to see what ecclesiastical or monastic rites were observed at the apostolic see. When he reported this to the brethren, they praised his purpose and urged him to accomplish what he had determined in his mind. But he, coming at once to Queen Eanflaed, because he was known to her, and by her counsel and support had been associated with the aforesaid monastery, made known to her that there was within him a desire of visiting the thresholds of the blessed apostles;
and she, delighted by the young man's good purpose, sent him to Kent to King Earconberht, who was the son of her uncle, requesting that he should send him honourably to Rome. At that time Honorius, one of the disciples of the blessed pope Gregory, a man loftily instructed in ecclesiastical matters, held there the rank of archbishop. When the young man of lively mind had tarried there for some while, diligently giving his effort to learning the things which he observed, there came thither another young man, by name Biscop, surnamed Benedict, of the nobles of the English, himself also desiring to come to Rome; of whom we have made mention above. To his company, therefore, the king joined Wilfrid, and bade him to conduct him with himself to Rome.
When they had come to Lyon, Wilfrid was detained there by Dalfinus, bishop of the city, while Benedict diligently completed the journey he had begun all the way to Rome. For the bishop was delighted by the young man's prudence of words, the grace of his comely countenance, the briskness of his action, and the constancy and maturity of his thought. Whence also he bestowed abundantly upon him with his companions all things they needed, as long as they were with him; and moreover he offered, that, if he wished, he would commit to him no small part of Gaul to govern, and would give him his brother's virgin daughter as a wife, and would himself always hold him in the place of an adopted son.
But he, giving thanks for the kindness which he deigned to show toward him while he was a stranger, replied that he had rather the purpose of another manner of life, and that for this reason, having left his homeland, he had begun to make the journey to Rome. Having heard these things, the bishop sent him to Rome, giving him a guide for the journey, and all things at once which the necessity of the journey demanded being liberally supplied; earnestly beseeching him that, when he should return to his homeland, he would remember to make his journey by way of him. Coming, then, to Rome, and given over with daily diligence to prayers and to the meditation of ecclesiastical matters, as he had purposed in his mind, he attained to the friendship of a most holy and most learned man, namely Boniface the archdeacon, who was also the counsellor of the apostolic pope;
under whose tutelage he learned in order the books of the four gospels, and the reckoning of Easter according to reason, and many other things suited to ecclesiastical disciplines, which he had not been able to learn in his homeland, the same master imparting them; and when he had spent there some months occupied in happy studies, he returned to Dalfinus in Gaul, and tarrying with him for three years, he was tonsured by him, and held in such great affection that he had thought to make him his heir. But that this might not come to pass, the bishop was snatched away by a cruel death, and Wilfrid was rather reserved for the episcopate of his own nation, that is, of the English. For Queen Balthild, sending soldiers, ordered the bishop to be killed;
to the very place where he was to be beheaded his cleric Wilfrid followed him, desiring to fall together with him, though he himself greatly forbade it. But when the executioners recognized him to be a stranger and sprung from the nation of the English, they spared him, and would not slay him with his bishop. Then he, coming to Britain, was joined in friendship with King Alchfrith, who had ever learned to follow and to love the catholic rules of the Church. Whence also that king, because he found him to be catholic, soon gave him land of ten families in the place which is called Stamford, and not long after a monastery of thirty families in the place which is called Ripon;
which place, indeed, he had previously given for the building of a monastery there to those who followed the Scots. But because they afterwards, the choice being given them, preferred to yield the place rather than to receive the catholic Easter and the other canonical rites according to the custom of the Roman and apostolic Church, he gave this to the one whom he saw imbued with better disciplines and morals. At which time, at the command of the aforesaid king, he was ordained presbyter in the same monastery by Agilbert, bishop of the Gewisse, of whom we have made mention above, the king desiring that a man of such great erudition and religion should be his priest and teacher specially in an inseparable retinue.
Him, not long after, when the sect of the Scots had been detected and removed, as we have also taught above, sending him to Gaul, with the counsel and consent of his father Oswiu, the king asked that a bishop be ordained for him, when he was about thirty years of age, the same Agilbert then holding the episcopate of the city of Paris; with whom also eleven other bishops, assembling for the consecration of the bishop, very honourably fulfilled the ministry.