While he was still tarrying in the parts beyond the sea, there was consecrated to the bishopric of York, at the command of King Oswiu, Chad, a holy man, as has been mentioned above, and governing the church loftily for three years, he afterwards withdrew to the charge of his monastery, which is at Lastingham, Wilfrid receiving the episcopate of the whole province of the Northumbrians. He then, in the reign of Ecgfrith, was driven from the bishopric, and other bishops were consecrated in his place, of whom we have made mention above;
and being about to go to Rome, and to plead his cause before the apostolic pope, when he had embarked on a ship, with the west wind blowing he was driven to Frisia, and being honourably received by the barbarians and their king Aldgisl, he preached Christ to them, and instructing many thousands of them in the word of truth, he washed them from the filth of their sins in the font of the Saviour; and that which afterwards Willibrord, the most reverend pontiff of Christ, completed in great devotion, he himself first there began the work of the gospel. There, then, happily passing the winter with the new people of God, he thus resumed his journey of coming to Rome; and when his cause had been ventilated, in the presence of Pope Agatho and many bishops, by the judgment of all he was found to have been accused without crime, and to be worthy of the episcopate.
At which time the same pope Agatho, while he was gathering a synod at Rome of one hundred and twenty-five bishops against those who dogmatized one will and operation in the Lord and Saviour, ordered Wilfrid also to be summoned, and, sitting among the bishops, to state his faith, and at the same time that of the province or island from which he had come. And when he was found, together with his own, to be catholic in faith, it pleased them that this, among other things, should be inserted into the acts of the same synod, and it was written in this manner:
Wilfrid, the bishop beloved of God of the city of York, appealing to the apostolic see concerning his cause, and absolved by this authority of things both certain and uncertain, and seated with one hundred and twenty-five fellow bishops in the synod in the seat of judgment, confessed for the whole northern part of Britain and of Ireland, and the islands which are inhabited by the nations of the English, and of the Britons, and also of the Scots and the Picts, the true and catholic faith, and confirmed it with his subscription. After these things, having returned to Britain, he converted the province of the South Saxons from the rites of idolatry to the faith of Christ. To the Isle of Wight also he sent ministers of the word;
and in the second year of Aldfrith, who reigned after Ecgfrith, he received his see and bishopric, the king himself inviting him. But after five years, being accused anew, he was driven from his prelacy by that very same king and very many bishops; and coming to Rome, when in the presence of his accusers he received an opportunity of defending himself, with many bishops sitting together with the apostolic pope John, it was proved by the judgment of all that his accusers had in no small part contrived false calumnies against him; and it was written by the aforesaid pope to the kings of the English, Aethelred and Aldfrith, that they should cause him to be received into his bishopric, because he had been unjustly condemned.
Now the cause of his absolution was aided by the reading of the synod of pope Agatho of blessed memory, which was once enacted, as we have said before, in his very presence and while he sat among the bishops in the same council. When, therefore, the cause requiring it, the same synod was being read, at the command of the apostolic pope, for several days before the nobles and a throng of the people, they came to the place where it was written: Wilfrid, the bishop beloved of God of the city of York, appealing to the apostolic see concerning his cause, and absolved by this authority of things both certain and uncertain, and the rest, which we have set down above. When this was read, astonishment seized the hearers; and, the reader being silent, they began to ask one another who that bishop Wilfrid was.
Then Boniface, the counsellor of the apostolic pope, and very many others who had seen him there in the times of pope Agatho, said that this was the very bishop who had recently come to Rome, accused by his own people, and to be judged by the apostolic see: who, they say, coming hither long ago, likewise accused, soon when his cause had been heard and the controversy of both parties adjudicated, was proved by the pope Agatho of blessed memory to have been driven from his episcopate against right; and was held in such great esteem by him, that he ordered him to sit in the council which he had assembled of bishops, as a man of incorrupt faith and upright mind.
Having heard these things, all said, together with the pontiff himself, that a man of such great authority, who had exercised the episcopate for nearly forty years, ought by no means to be condemned, but, being entirely absolved of the faults of the accusations, should return to his homeland with honour. When, journeying back to Britain, he had come into the parts of Gaul, he was struck by a sudden infirmity, and, as it increased, so oppressed that he could neither be carried by horse, but was borne on a litter by the hands of his attendants. Thus carried into Meaux, a city of Gaul, he lay as though dead for four days and nights, showing only by a very faint breath that he was alive.
And when he persisted thus for four days without food and drink, without voice and hearing, at last, on the fifth day dawning, as though awakened from a deep sleep, rising up he sat back; and with his eyes opened he saw around him choirs of brethren singing psalms and at the same time weeping; and sighing a little, he asked where Acca the presbyter was; who, being immediately summoned, entered, and seeing him better and now able to speak, with bended knees gave thanks to God together with all the brethren who were present. And when they had sat down a little, and, trembling, had begun to confer something concerning the heavenly judgments, the pontiff bade the rest to go out for an hour, and began thus to speak to Acca the presbyter:
A fearful vision has just now appeared to me, which I wish you to hear and to cover with silence, until I know what God wills to be done concerning me. For there stood by me a certain one resplendent in white attire, saying that he was Michael the archangel: and for this reason, he said, I have been sent, that I may recall you from death; for the Lord has granted you life through the prayers and tears of your disciples and brethren, and through the intercession of his blessed mother and ever-virgin Mary. Wherefore I say to you, that now indeed you shall be healed of this infirmity; but be prepared, for after four years, returning, I will visit you; and arriving in your homeland, you shall receive the greatest portion of your possessions which have been taken from you, and you shall end your life in tranquil peace.
The bishop therefore recovered, all rejoicing and giving thanks to God, and the journey having been begun, he came to Britain. When the letters which he had brought from the apostolic pope had been read, Archbishop Berhtwald, and Aethelred formerly king but then abbot, most gladly favoured him; which Aethelred, indeed, calling to himself Coenred, whom he had made king in his stead, asked and obtained that he should become a friend to the bishop. But Aldfrith, king of the Northumbrians, scorned to receive him, nor did he survive a long time; whence it came to pass that, in the reign of his son Osred, a synod was soon held beside the river Nidd, and after some conflict of both parties, at last, all favouring, he was received into the prelacy of his church.
And thus for four years, that is, up to the day of his death, he led his life in peace. He died, moreover, in his own monastery, which he had in the province of Oundle under the rule of abbot Cuthbald; and, borne by the ministry of the brethren into his first monastery, which is called Ripon, he was placed in the church of the blessed apostle Peter beside the altar to the south, as we have also taught above; and this epitaph was written above him: Here Wilfrid, the great bishop, rests in body, who, led by love of piety, made this hall for the Lord, and consecrated it with the surpassing name of Peter, to whom Christ, the judge of the world, gave the keys of heaven; and devout he clothed it with gold and with Tyrian purple.
Moreover he set up here on high a trophy of the cross, gleaming with metal, and he commanded that the four books of the Gospel be written out in order in gold; and he fashioned for them a case worthy of them, of ruddy gold. He it was, too, who corrected the solemn seasons of the Paschal cycle to the right teaching of the Catholic canon which the Fathers had established, and, removing all doubtful error, showed his nation a sure rule of observance. In those places he gathered frequent companies of monks, and guarded by his admonitions the things which the rule of the Fathers had diligently appointed. Buffeted exceedingly amid many perils both at home and abroad over a long span of time, after he had governed as bishop for thrice fifteen years, he passed away and rejoicing sought the heavenly kingdom. Grant, O Jesus, that the flock may follow the shepherd's path.
In the year next after the death of the aforesaid father, that is, in the fifth year of King Osred, the most reverend father Hadrian, abbot and fellow-labourer in the word of God with Theodore the bishop of blessed memory, died, and was buried in his own monastery in the church of the blessed Mother of God. This was the forty-first year since he had been sent by Pope Vitalian together with Theodore, and the thirty-ninth since he had come to Britain. To his teaching, and likewise to Theodore's, among other proofs this bears witness: that his disciple Albinus, who succeeded him in the governance of his monastery, was so deeply grounded in the study of the Scriptures that he had a not inconsiderable command of the Greek tongue, and knew Latin no less well than English, which was natural to him.
In place of Wilfrid the priest Acca, his own clergyman, received the bishopric of the church of Hexham; he too was a man most energetic, and magnificent both before God and before men. He also enlarged the building of his own church, which was consecrated in honour of the blessed Apostle Andrew, with manifold ornament and with wonderful works.
For he took pains—as he does to this day—that, having acquired from every quarter relics of the blessed Apostles and martyrs of Christ, he might set up altars in their veneration, with distinct porticoes for this very purpose within the walls of that same church; and also, gathering together with utmost industry the histories of their passion along with other ecclesiastical volumes, he made there a most ample and most noble library; he likewise most studiously provided sacred vessels, lamps, and other things of this kind that pertain to the adornment of the house of God.
He also summoned to instruct himself and his people an excellent singer named Maban, who had been taught the modes of chanting in Kent by the successors of the disciples of the blessed Pope Gregory, and kept him for twelve years; so that he might both teach those ecclesiastical chants which they did not know, and that those which, once known, had through long use or negligence begun to grow corrupt, might by his teaching be restored to their pristine state. For Bishop Acca himself was a most skilled singer, just as he was also most learned in the holy Scriptures, most pure in the confession of the Catholic faith, and most expert in the rules of ecclesiastical observance; and until he receives the rewards of his pious devotion, he does not cease to be such;
inasmuch as he was nurtured and educated from boyhood among the clergy of the most holy and God-beloved Bosa, bishop of York; then, coming to Bishop Wilfrid in hope of a better purpose, he spent all the rest of his life in his service until that bishop's death; and coming with him also to Rome he there learned many things useful for the institutions of the holy Church which he had been unable to learn in his own country. [21] At that time Nechtan, king of the Picts who inhabit the northern parts of Britain, being admonished by frequent meditation upon the ecclesiastical Scriptures, renounced the error by which until then he and his nation had been held in the observance of Easter, and brought himself and all his people to celebrate the Catholic time of the Lord's resurrection.
And that he might accomplish this the more easily and with the greater authority, he sought help from the nation of the English, whom he knew to have long since established their religion after the example of the holy Roman and Apostolic Church. For he sent envoys to the venerable man Ceolfrid, abbot of the monastery of the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, which is at the mouth of the river Wear and near the river Tyne, in the place called Jarrow, over which Ceolfrid himself, after Benedict of whom we spoke above, presided most gloriously; asking that he would send him letters of exhortation, by which he might the more powerfully confute those who presumed to observe Easter at the wrong time; and likewise concerning the manner or rationale of the tonsure with which clerics ought to be marked;
except that he himself too was in no small part instructed in these matters. He also asked that architects be sent to him, who might build a church of stone among his nation after the manner of the Romans, promising that it should be dedicated in honour of the blessed prince of the Apostles; and that he himself, with all his people, would ever imitate the custom of the holy Roman and Apostolic Church, so far at least as men so far separated from the speech and nation of the Romans could learn it. Favouring his religious vows and prayers, the most reverend abbot Ceolfrid sent the architects he was asked for, and sent him also a letter written in this manner: To the most excellent and most glorious King Nechtan, Abbot Ceolfrid sends greeting in the Lord.
The Catholic observance of holy Easter, which you, O king devoted to God, have sought from us with religious zeal, we strive most readily and most willingly, according to your desire, to set forth to you, as we have learned it from the Apostolic See. For we know that it is granted from heaven to the holy Church whenever the very lords of affairs spend their labour upon the truth that is to be learned, taught, and kept. For one of the secular writers, too, said most truly that the world would be governed in a most happy state if either kings were philosophers or philosophers reigned. But if a man of this world could rightly understand concerning the philosophy of this world, and deservedly esteem it concerning the state of this world,
how much more is it to be desired by the citizens of the heavenly fatherland who are sojourning in this world, and to be entreated with all the powers of the soul, that the more any here have power in the world, the more earnestly they should strive to hearken to the commandments of that Judge who is above all things, and to direct toward observing these, by example as well as by authority, those also who are committed to them? There are, then, three rules laid down in the sacred Scriptures, by which the time of celebrating Easter has been prescribed for us, and may by no human authority whatsoever be changed: of which two were divinely established in the Law of Moses, and the third has been added in the Gospel through the effect of the Lord's passion and resurrection.
For the Law commanded that the Passover ought to be kept in the first month of the year and in the third week of that same month, that is, from the fourteenth day to the twenty-first; and there has been added through Apostolic institution out of the Gospel, that in that same third week we ought to await the Lord's Day, and on it to hold the beginning of the Paschal season. And whoever shall duly observe this threefold rule will never err in the reckoning of the Paschal feast. But if you desire to hear of these several points more clearly and at greater length, it is written in Exodus, where the people of Israel, who were to be freed from Egypt, are first commanded to keep the Passover, that the Lord said to Moses and Aaron: This month shall be unto you the beginning of months: it shall be the first among the months of the year.
Speak to all the assembly of the children of Israel and say to them: On the tenth day of this month let each one take a lamb according to their families and their houses. And a little later: And you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month; and the whole multitude of the children of Israel shall sacrifice it at evening. By which words it is most manifestly established that in the Paschal observance mention is indeed made of the fourteenth day, yet not so that the Passover is commanded to be made on that very fourteenth day; but rather, when at length the evening of the fourteenth day comes—that is, the fifteenth moon, which makes the beginning of the third week—when it comes forth into the face of heaven, the lamb is commanded to be sacrificed; and that this is the night of the fifteenth moon, on which, the Egyptians being smitten, Israel was redeemed from its long servitude.
Seven days, he says, shall you eat unleavened bread. By which words, likewise, the whole third week of that same first month is decreed to be solemn. But lest we should suppose those same seven days to be reckoned from the fourteenth up to the twentieth, he straightway subjoined: On the first day there shall be no leaven in your houses. Whosoever shall eat leaven, that soul shall perish from Israel, from the first day until the seventh day, and so on, until he says: For on this very same day I will lead forth your host out of the land of Egypt. He calls, then, that the first day of unleavened bread on which he was to lead forth their host out of Egypt. Now it is certain that it was not on the fourteenth day, on whose evening the lamb was sacrificed, and which is properly called Passover or phase,
but they were led out of Egypt on the fifteenth, as is most plainly written in the Book of Numbers: Setting out therefore from Rameses on the fifteenth day of the first month, on the day after the Passover, the children of Israel went forth with a high hand. The seven days of unleavened bread, then, on the first of which the people of the Lord was led out of Egypt, ought to be reckoned, as we have said, from the beginning of the third week, that is, from the fifteenth day of the first month up to the completed twenty-first day of the same month. Further, the fourteenth day is noted separately outside this number under the title of Passover, as the words following in Exodus plainly teach; where, after it had been said: For on this very same day I will lead forth your host out of the land of Egypt, it was immediately added: And you shall keep this day in your generations by a perpetual rite.
In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month, you shall eat unleavened bread, until the twenty-first day of the same month at evening. For seven days no leaven shall be found in your houses. For who does not see that from the fourteenth to the twenty-first there are not only seven, but rather eight days, if the fourteenth itself be also counted? But if, as the truth of Scripture more diligently examined teaches, we reckon from the evening of the fourteenth day to the evening of the twenty-first, we shall assuredly see that the fourteenth day so prolongs its evening into the beginning of the Paschal feast, that the whole sacred solemnity comprises no more than seven nights with as many days;
whence our definition is proved to be true, by which we said that the Paschal season is to be celebrated in the first month of the year and in its third week. For it is truly kept as the third week, which begins from the evening of the fourteenth day and is completed in the evening of the twenty-first. But after Christ our Passover was sacrificed, and made the Lord's Day—which among the ancients is called the one or the first of the Sabbath, or of the Sabbaths—to be solemn with the joy of His resurrection, Apostolic tradition so inserted this into the Paschal feasts that it decreed that nothing whatsoever of the time of the legal Passover should be anticipated, and nothing diminished.
Nay rather it ordained that, according to the precept of the Law, the same first month of the year should be awaited, that the fourteenth day of it should be awaited, that the evening of that same day should be awaited. And when this day should chance to fall on the Sabbath, each one should take a lamb according to his families and his houses, and sacrifice it at evening—that is, all the churches throughout the world which make up the one Catholic Church should prepare bread and wine for the mystery of the flesh and blood of the immaculate Lamb who took away the sins of the world; and, the fitting solemnity of the Paschal readings, prayers, and ceremonies going before, they should offer these to the Lord in hope of their future redemption. For this is the very same night on which the people of Israel was snatched out of Egypt through the blood of the lamb;
that same night on which, through the resurrection of Christ, all the people of God was delivered from eternal death. But in the morning, when the Lord's Day grew light, they should celebrate the first day of the Paschal feast. For this is the very day on which the Lord disclosed to His disciples the glory of His resurrection, with manifold joy of His holy revelation. This is the first day of unleavened bread, of which it is written very distinctly in Leviticus: In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at evening, is the Passover of the Lord; and on the fifteenth day of this month is the solemnity of the unleavened bread of the Lord. Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. The first day shall be most renowned and holy.
If, then, it could be brought about that the Lord's Day should always fall on the fifteenth day of the first month, that is, on the fifteenth moon, we should be able to celebrate Easter always at one and the same time with the ancient people of God—although distinguished by the kind of sacraments, yet just as by one and the same faith. But because the day of the week does not run in an equal course with the moon, Apostolic tradition—which was preached at Rome by the blessed Peter, and confirmed at Alexandria by Mark the evangelist and his interpreter—decreed that, the first month being come, the evening of the fourteenth day in it being come, the Lord's Day should also be awaited, from the fifteenth up to the twenty-first day of the same month. For on whichever of these it shall be found, Easter shall fittingly be celebrated on it;
because indeed this belongs to the number of those seven days on which unleavened bread is commanded to be celebrated. And so it comes about that our Easter never deviates to either side from the third week of the first month, but holds either the whole of it, that is, all seven days of the legal unleavened bread, or at least some of them. For even if it lay hold of but one of them—that is, the seventh itself, which Scripture so excellently commends, saying: But the seventh day shall be more renowned and holy, and no servile work shall be done therein—no one will be able to reproach us as not rightly celebrating the Lord's Paschal day, which we have received from the Gospel, in that very third week of the first month which the Law appointed.
This observance having been made plain by Catholic reasoning, there appears on the contrary the irrational error of those who presume, with no compelling necessity, either to anticipate or to overstep the bounds fixed in the Law. For those anticipate, without the reason of any necessity, the time prescribed in the Law, who think that the Lord's Paschal day is to be kept from the fourteenth moon of the first month to the twentieth. For when they begin to celebrate the vigils of the holy night from the evening of the thirteenth day, it is clear that they set up as the beginning of their Easter that day of which they find no mention at all in the decree of the Law.
And when they shrink from celebrating the Lord's Passover on the twenty-first day of the month, it is plainly evident that they wholly sever from their solemnity that day which the Law many times commends as memorable with a greater festivity than the rest; and thus, in a perverse order, they sometimes complete the whole Paschal day in the second week, and never set it on the seventh day of the third week. And again, those who rather maintain that Easter is to be celebrated from the sixteenth day of the oft-mentioned month up to the twenty-second, err by no smaller error—though they turn aside from the right path of truth on the other side—and, as though fleeing the shipwrecks of Scylla, they fall to be engulfed in the whirlpool of Charybdis.
For when they teach that Easter is to be begun from the sixteenth moon of the first month rising, that is, from the evening of the fifteenth day, it certainly stands fast that they shut out from their solemnity altogether the fourteenth day of that same month, which the Law primarily and chiefly commends; so that they scarcely touch the evening of the fifteenth—on which the people of God was redeemed from Egyptian servitude, and on which the Lord delivered the world by His own blood from the darkness of sins, and on which also, being buried, He granted us the hope of blessed rest after death.
And these same persons, taking back upon themselves the penalty of their error, when they appoint the Lord's Paschal day on the twenty-second day of the month, do certainly violate the lawful bounds of the Passover by open transgression, inasmuch as they begin Easter from the evening of that day on which the Law decreed it ought to be consummated and completed, and assign as the first day in their Easter that day of which no mention whatever is anywhere found in the Law—that is, the first day of the fourth week. Both these parties are deceived, not only in the definition and computation of the moon's age, but also sometimes in the finding of the first month. But this discussion is greater than this letter either can or ought to comprise.
This much only will I say, that through the vernal equinox it can always be found without error which month, according to the computation of the moon, is the first of the year, and which ought to be the last. Now the equinox, according to the opinion of all the Orientals and especially of the Egyptians—who beyond other teachers hold the palm of calculation—is wont to come about on the twelfth day before the Kalends of April, as we ourselves also prove by inspection of the sundial. Whatever moon, therefore, is full before the equinox—being, namely, the fourteenth or fifteenth—this belongs to the last month of the preceding year, and is therefore not suitable for celebrating Easter.
But that moon which has its full moon after the equinox, or on the equinox itself, on this—without any doubt, since it belongs to the first month—it is to be known both that the ancients were wont to celebrate Easter, and that we, when the Lord's Day shall come, ought to celebrate it. And that it ought so to be done, that reasoning certainly compels, because it is written in Genesis that God made two great lights: the greater light, to rule the day; and the lesser light, to rule the night; or, as another edition has it, the greater light unto the beginning of the day, and the lesser light unto the beginning of the night. As, therefore, the sun, first proceeding from the middle of the east, fixed the vernal equinox by its rising;
then the moon, the sun setting at evening, itself also full, followed from the middle of the east; so in all years that same first month of the moon must necessarily be observed in the same order, so that it ought to have its full moon not before the equinox, but either on the equinox day itself, as was done in the beginning, or after it has been passed. But if by even one day the time of the full moon precede the equinox, that moon is to be ascribed not to the first month of the beginning year, but rather to the last month of the past one; and therefore the aforesaid reasoning proves it unsuitable for the Paschal feasts. But if it delights you to hear also the mystical reason in these matters: we are bidden to keep the Passover in the first month of the year, which is also called the month of new things;