way into the presence of Constantine, and upbraided him, as a new Valens and Julian, for persecuting Christ in his members and in his images. For this audacity Peter was scourged in the hippodrome, and was afterwards strangled." Another famous sufferer was Stephen, who had lived as a monk for sixty years. He boldly defied the emperor; he remained unshaken by banishment or tortures, and, by way of illustrating the manner in which insults offered to images might be supposed to affect the holy persons whom they represent, he produced a coin stamped with the emperor's head, threw it on the ground, and trod on it. In consequence of this act he was imprisoned; but the sympathy of his admirers was displayed so warmly that Constantine was provoked to exclaim, "Am I, or is this monk, emperor of the world?" The words were caught up as a hint by some courtiers, who rushed to the prison and broke it open. Stephen was dragged through the streets, by a rope tied to one of his feet, until he was dead, and his body was then torn in pieces, which were thrown into a place appropriated to the burial of heathens and excommunicate persons, of suicides and of criminals.a A.D. 767. The patriarch Constantine, after all his compliances, was accused of having held treasonable communications with Stephen, and of having spoken disrespectfully of the emperor; and on these charges he was banished to an island, while Nicetas, an eunuch of Slavonic origin, was raised to the patriarchate in his stead. In the second year of his banishment, Constantine was brought back to the capital. After having been beaten until he could not walk, he was carried into the cathedral, where the accusations against him were read aloud, and at every count of the indictment an imperial functionary struck him on the face. He was then forced to stand in the pulpit, while Nicetas pronounced his excommunication; after which he was stripped of the pall, the ensign of his ecclesiastical dignity, and was led backwards out of the church. On the following day he was carried into the hippodrome; his hair, eyebrows, and beard were plucked out; he was set on an ass, with his face towards the tail, which he was compelled to hold with both hands, and his nephew, whose nose had been cut off, led the animal around, while the spectators hooted at and spat on the fallen patriarch. He was then thrown violently to the ground, his neck was trodden on, and he lay pros 2 1356. Theophan. 363, ed. Paris; Basnage, a Nic. Cpol. 46; see the Life of Stephen in Patrol. Gr. c.; also Theo phan. 674; Baron. 754. 26, seqq., with Pagi's notes; 762. 3; 765. 6-10; 767. 9-19; Schlosser, 228. trate, exposed to the jeers of the rabble, until the games of the day were over. A few days later, some patricians were sent to question him in prison as to the emperor's orthodoxy, and as to the decisions of the council against images. The wretched man, thinking to soothe his persecutor's rage, expressed approval of everything. "This," they said, "was all that we wished to hear further from thy impure mouth; now begone to cursing and darkness!" Constantine was immediately beheaded, and his head, after having been publicly exposed for three days, was thrown, with his body, into the same place of ignominy where Stephen had before been buried.b These details have been given as a specimen of the cruelties which are ascribed to Constantine Copronymus. To the end of his reign he was unrelenting in his enmity against the worshippers of images. In the year 775, while on a military expedition, he was seized with a burning pain in his legs, which (it is said) forced from him frequent cries that he already felt the pains of hell. He died at sea, on his way to Constantinople. CHAPTER V. ST. BONIFACE. A.D. 716-755. AMONG the missionary enterprises of the Anglo-Saxons had been some attempts to convert the nations of Northern Germany. Suidbert, one of the original companions of Willibrord, was consecrated in England during his master's first visit to Rome, and went forth to preach to the Boructuarians, who occupied a territory between the Ems and the Yssel; but the disorders of the country obliged him to withdraw from it, and he afterwards laboured on the Lower Rhine. Two brothers, named Hewald, and distinguished from each other by the epithets White and Black, are also celebrated as having penetrated into the country of the Old Saxons, and having there ended their lives by martyrdom. But no great or lasting missionary success had been achieved to the east of the Rhine in the lower part of its course until the time of Boniface.c This missionary, whose original name was Winfrid," was born at Crediton, in Devonshire, of a noble and wealthy family, about the year 680. It was intended that he should follow a secular career; but the boy was early influenced by the discourse of some monks who visited his father's house, and at the age of seven he entered a monastery at Exeter, from which he afterwards removed to that of Nutscelle (Nutshalling or Nursling) in Hampshire.' Here he became famous for his ability as a preacher and as an expositor of Scripture." He was employed in important ecclesiastical business, and had the prospect of rising to eminence in a Beda, v. 11; Vita Suidberti, ap. Leibnitz, Scriptores Rerum Brunsvic. ii. 222, seqq.; Rettberg, ii. 395, 423, 525. b Beda, v. 10. The details of the story are legendary. See Rettb. ii. 397-9. < Giesel. I. ii. 507; Rettb. i. 309. The chief authorities as to St. Boniface are his own correspondence, and the lives by his disciple Willibald, and by Othlon, a monk of Ratisbon, in the latter part of the eleventh century; all printed in the Patrologia, vol. Ixxxix. The name of Boniface is generally said to have been given to him by the pope at his consecration. 334-5. e Not later than 683. See Rettb. i. 336. f Willib. 1-2; Kemble, ii. 452. The disappearance of Nutscelle from the list of English monasteries is traced to the ravages of the Danes. M'Cabe's Catholic History of England, i. 616. g Willib. 2-3. k the church of his own country; but he was seized with an earnest desire to labour for the extension of the Gospel, and, with two companions, he crossed the sea to Frisia, in the year 716. The state of things in that country was unfavourable for his design. Charles Martel, the son of Pipin of Heristal by a concubine, had possessed himself of the mayoralty of the palace in Austrasia, and was now engaged in war with Radbod of Frisia, who had made an alliance with Ragenfrid, the mayor of the Neustrian palace.1 The pagan prince had destroyed many churches and monasteries, and, although he admitted Boniface to an interview, he refused him permission to preach in his dominions. Boniface therefore returned to Nutscelle, where the monks, on the occurrence of a vacancy in the headship of their house, were desirous to elect him abbot. But his missionary zeal induced him to withstand their importunities; by the assistance of his bishop, Daniel of Winchester, he secured the appointment of another abbot, and in the spring of 717 he set out for Rome.m A letter from Daniel procured him a kind reception from Gregory II., who held many conferences with him during the following winter; and in 718 Boniface left Rome, carrying with him a large supply of relics, with a letter" in which the pope authorised him to preach to the heathens of Germany wherever he might find an opportunity. After having surveyed Bavaria and Thuringia, he was induced by tidings of Radbod's death to go again into Frisia, where for three years he laboured under Willibrord. The aged bishop wished to appoint him his successor; but Boniface declined the honour, on the ground that, as he was not yet fifty years old, he was unfit for so high an office, and that he must betake himself to the sphere for which the pope had especially appointed him. A.D. 719. He therefore took leave of Willibrord, and passed into Hessia. A.D. 722. Two local chiefs, Detdic and Dierolf, who, although professing Christianity, were worshippers of idols, granted him leave to establish himself at Amanaburg, on the Ohm (Amana1), where in a short time he reclaimed them from their heathenish practices, and baptised many thousands of Hessians. On receiving a report of this success, Gregory summoned Boniface to Rome, and, after having exacted a formal profession of faith, ordained him as a 723. regionary bishop," at the same time binding him to the papal see by an oath, which was a novelty as imposed on a Nov. 30, missionary, although, with some necessary changes, it was the same which had long been required of bishops within the proper patriarchate of Rome. Standing at the tomb of St. Peter, to whom the oath was addressed, Boniface solemnly pledged himself to obey the apostle, and the pope as his vicar; in no wise to consent to anything against the unity of the Catholic Church; in all things to keep his faith to the apostle, and to the interests of the Roman see; to have no communion or fellowship with bishops who might act contrary to the institutions of the holy fathers; but to check such persons, if possible, or otherwise to report them faithfully to his lord the pope." t The bishop received from the pope a code of regulations for the government of his church (probably the collection of Dionysius Exiguus); and, having learnt by experience the importance of securing the countenance of princes for missionary undertakings, he carried with him a letter from Gregory to Charles Martel, who, under the name of the effete descendants of Clovis, was the virtual sovereign of their kingdom." He was also furnished by the pope with letters to the nations among which his labours were to be employed. Charles Martel received the missionary coldly; such enterprises as that of Boniface had no interest for the rude warrior,y nor were the clergy of his court likely to bespeak his favour for one whose life and thoughts widely differed from their own. Boniface, however, obtained from Charles the permission which he a Willib. 7; Othlon, i. 13-4. See the Liber Diurnus,' iii. 8 (Patrol. cv.); De Marca, vii. 6; Schröckh, xix. 173-6; Neand. v. 66; Giesel. II. i. 22. * Patrol. lxxxix. 803. t Willib. 7. "Greg. Ep. 2. To the ordinary accounts of the "do-nothing" Merovingian kings (e.g. that given by Einhard, Vita Caroli, 1.), Theophanes (619) and Cedrenus (453) add the Byzantine idea as to their long hair-that it grew along their backs, as in hogs! Gregory of Tours speaks of their " whips of hair" (flagella crinium), vi. 24; viii. 10. Greg. Epp. 3-7. y I leave this as it stood before the publication of Dr. Perry's work, in which the religion of Charles Martel is more favourably represented. In particular, it seems to me that Dr. Perry has made far too much of a passage in Othlon, where it is said that Boniface, in applying to Carloman for support, "poposcit ut Christianae religionis culturam, quam pater ejus in promptissimo animo coepit et excoluit, ipse quoque pro Dei amore, suique regni stabilitate. eodem animo excoleret" (Othl. i. 33; Perry, 284). The occasion on which such words are said to have been used will warrant us in deducting largely from their apparent meaning. On the other hand, M. Michelet (ii. 11) questions whether Charles was a Christian at all-but on no better grounds than that the epithet Martel reminds the historian of the hammer ascribed to Thor! Against this, see Martin, ii. 206. The name does not appear in any writer before the eleventh century. Ib.; Luden, iv. 469. |