Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB
[ocr errors]

the Kentish court." It is probable that Bertha, in the course of her long union with Ethelbert, had made some attempts, at least indirectly, to influence him in favour of the Gospel; perhaps, too, it may have been from her that Gregory received representations which led him to suppose that many of the Anglo-Saxons were desirous of Christian instruction, and that the Britons refused to bestow it on them." In 596, during an interval of peace with the Lombards, the pope despatched Augustine, provost of his own monastery, with a party of monks, to preach the Gospel in England; and about the same time he desired Candidus, defensor of the papal estates in Gaul, to buy up English captive youths, and to place them in monasteries, with a view to training them for the conversion of their countrymen." But the missionaries, while in the South of France, took alarm at the thought of the dangers which they were likely to incur among a barbarous and unbelieving people whose language was utterly unknown to them, and their chief returned to Rome, with a prayer that they might be allowed to relinquish the enterprise. Gregory refused his consent; he encouraged them to go on, and furnished them with letters to various princes and bishops of Gaul, whom he requested to support them by their influence, and to supply them with interpreters. In 597 Augustine, with about forty companions, landed in the Isle of Thanet. Ethelbert, on being apprised of their arrival, went to meet them; and at an interview, which was held in the open air, because he feared lest they might practise some magical arts if he ventured himself under a roof with them, he listened to their announcement of the message of salvation. The king professed himself unable at once to abandon the belief of his fathers for the new doctrines, but gave the missionaries leave to take up their abode in his capital, Durovernum, or Canterbury, and to preach freely among his subjects. They entered the city in procession, chanting litanies and displaying a silver cross with a picture of the Saviour. On a rising ground without the walls they found a church of the Roman-British period, dedicated to St. Martin, in which Luidhard had lately celebrated his

m Beda, i. 25; Inett, i. 7. As to Bertha's mother, see the Rev. R. C. Jenkins, in Archæologia Cantiana,' iii. 20-1.

n See Epp. vi. 58; xi. 29; Inett, i. 8-10; Schröckh, xvi. 269; Lingard, A. S. C. i. 23.

• Lau, 139.

P Ep. vi. 7. The commission to Candidus is placed by many writers (as Thierry, i. 49, and Lau, 213) some considerable time before the mission of

q

[blocks in formation]

worship; and to this day the spot on which it stood, overlooking the valley of the Stour, is occupied by a little church, which, after many architectural changes, exhibits a large proportion of ancient Roman materials. There Augustine and his brethren worshipped; and by the spectacle of their devout and self-denying lives, and of the miracles which are said to have accompanied their preaching, many converts were drawn to them. Ethelbert himself was baptized on Whitsunday, 597; he declared his wish that his subjects should embrace the Gospel, but professed himself resolved to put no constraint on their opinions."

Gregory had intended that Augustine, if he succeeded in making an opening among the Saxons, should receive episcopal consecration. For this purpose the missionary now repaired to Arles;" and from that city he sent some of his companions to Rome with a report of his successes. The pope's answer contains advice which may be understood as hinting at some known defects of Augustine's character, or as suggested by the tone of his report. He exhorts him not to be elated by his success or by the miracles which he had been enabled to perform; he must reckon that these were granted not for his own sake, but for that of the people to whom he was sent. Having accomplished the object of his journey into Gaul, Augustine returned to England by Christmas, 597; and Gregory was able to announce to Eulogius of Alexandria that at that festival the missionaries had baptized ten thousand persons in one day.

[ocr errors]

In the summer of 601 the pope despatched a reinforcement to the English mission. The new auxiliaries-among whom were Mellitus and Justus, successively archbishops of Canterbury, and Paulinus, afterwards the apostle of Northumbria-carried with them a large supply of books, including the Gospels, with church plate, vestments, relics said to be of apostles and martyrs, and the pall which was to invest Augustine with the dignity of a metropolitan. Gregory had written to Ethelbert, exhorting him to destroy the heathen temples in his dominions; but, on further consideration, he took a different view of the matter, and sent after Mellitus a letter for the guidance of Augustine, desiring him not

That Luidhard was then dead, see Inett, i. 20; Lingard, A. S. C. i. 64, Pagi, x. 619.

See Martineau, 45, seqq.
Beda, i. 26; Pagi, x. 620.

* Beda, i. 23.

That his consecration was after his first success, not (as some have thought) on his way to Britain-see Pagi, x. 619;

368.

Ep. xi. 28; Beda i. 31. (See Smith in Patrol. xcv. 316.)

[blocks in formation]

to destroy the temples, but, if they were well built, to purify them with holy water, and convert them to the worship of the true God; thus, it was hoped, the people might be the more readily attracted to the new religion, if its rites were celebrated in places where they had been accustomed to worship. By a more questionable accommodation of the same sort-for which, however, the authority of Scripture was alleged-it was directed that, instead of the heathen sacrifices and of the banquets which followed them, the festivals of the saints whose relics were deposited in any church should be celebrated by making booths of boughs, slaying animals, and feasting on them with religious thankfulness.d

About the same time Gregory returned an elaborate set of answers to some questions which Augustine had proposed as to difficulties which had occurred or might be expected to occur to him. As to the division of ecclesiastical funds, he states the Roman principle-that a fourth part should be assigned to the bishop and his household for purposes of hospitality; a fourth to the clergy; another to the poor; and the remaining quarter to the maintenance of churches. But he says that Augustine, as having been trained in the monastic rule, is to live in the society of his clergy; and that it is needless to lay down any precise regulations as to the duties of hospitality and charity where all things are held in common, and all that can be spared is to be devoted to pious and religious uses. Such of the clerks not in holy orders as might wish to marry might be permitted to do so, and a maintenance was to be allowed them. In reply to a question whether a variety of religious usages were allowable where the faith was the samea question probably suggested by the circumstance of Luidhard's having officiated at Canterbury according to the Gallican rite,the pope's answer was in a spirit no less unlike to that of his predecessors, Innocent and Leo, than to that of the prevalent party in the Latin Church of our own day. He desired Augustine to select from the usages of any churches such "right, religious, and pious" things as might seem suitable for the new church

[blocks in formation]

Excerptions of Egbert (No. 160, in Wilkins, i. 112, or Thorpe, 34). The subdiaconate began to be included among the holy orders about the twelfth century. (Martene, ii. 2; Walter, 435; Augusti, xi. 224.) Beleth, in the end of that century, speaks of it as sometimes reckoned with the holy orders, and sometimes not. Rationale, 72 (Patrol. ccii.).

8 Johnson's Canons, i. 68.

[ocr errors]

of the English; "for," it was said, "we must not love things on account of places, but places on account of good things." With respect to the degrees within which marriage was to be forbidden, Gregory, while laying down a law for the baptized, under pain of exclusion from the holy Eucharist, did not insist on the separation of those who from ignorance had contracted marriages contrary to it: "for," he said, "the Church in this time corrects some sins out of zeal, bears with some out of lenity, connives at some out of consideration, and so bears and connives as by this means often to restrain the evil which she opposes." In answer to another inquiry, Augustine was told that he must not interfere with the bishops of Gaul beyond gently hinting to them such things as might seem to require amendment; "but," it was added, "we commit to your brotherhood the care of all the British bishops, that the ignorant may be instructed, the weak may be strengthened by your counsel, the perverse may be corrected by your authority."

It was Gregory's design that Augustine should make London his metropolitical see, and should have twelve bishops under him; that another metropolitan, with a like number of suffragans, should, when circumstances permitted, be established at York; and that, after the death of Augustine, the archbishops of London and York should take precedence according to the date of their consecration. But this scheme, arranged in ignorance of the political divisions which had been introduced into Britain since the withdrawal of the Romans, was never carried out. Augustine fixed himself in the Kentish capital, as London was in another kingdom; and his successors in the see of Canterbury have, although not without disputes during one period, continued to be primates of all England.'

The bishops of the ancient British Church were not disposed to acknowledge the jurisdiction which Gregory had professed to confer on his emissary. In 603, Augustine, through the influence of Ethelbert, obtained a conference with some of them at a place which from him was called Augustine's Oak-probably Aust Clive, on the Severn. He exhorted them to adopt the Roman usages as to certain points in which the churches differed, and proposed an appeal to the Divine judgment by way of deciding between the

k

I have combined the reading of Beda, bonis, with that of Gregory's epistles, nobis.

Beda, i. 29; Johnson, i. 74; Kemble, ii. 359. See the letter of Archbishop Ralph to Calixtus II., A.D. 1121; Wil

kins, i. 393; W. Malmesb. Gesta Pont. iii. 7; Stubbs, Chron. Pontif. Eborac. ap. Twysd. 1686.

k Stevenson, Note on Bed. ii. 2. Others place it in Worcestershire. (Joyce, England's Sacred Synods,' 111.)

rival traditions. A blind Saxon was brought forward; the Britons were unable to cure him; but when Augustine prayed that the gift of bodily light to one might be the means of illuminating the minds of many, it is said that the man forthwith received his sight. The Britons, although compelled by this miracle to acknowledge the superiority of the Roman cause, said that they could not alter their customs without the consent of their countrymen; and a second conference was appointed, at which seven British bishops appeared, with Dinoth, abbot of the great monastery of Bangor Iscoed, in Flintshire. A hermit, whom they had consulted as to the manner in which they should act, had directed them to submit to Augustine if he were a man of God, and, on being asked how they should know this, had told them to observe whether Augustine rose up to greet them on their arrival at the place of meeting." As the archbishop omitted this courtesy, the Britons concluded that he was proud and domineering; they refused to listen to his proposal that their other differences of observance should be borne with if they would comply with the Roman usages as to the time of keeping Easter, and as to the manner of administering baptism," and would join with him in preaching to the English; whereupon Augustine is said to have told them in anger that, if they would not have peace with their brethren, they would have war with their enemies, and suffer death at the hands of those to whom they refused to preach the way of life. In judging of this affair, we shall do well to guard against the partiality which has led many writers to cast the blame on the Romans or on the Britons exclusively. We may respect in the Britons their desire to adhere to old ways and to resist foreign assumption; in the missionaries, their anxiety to establish unity in external matters with a view to the great object of spreading the Gospel: but the benefits which might have been expected were lost through the arrogant demeanour of the one party and the narrow and stubborn jealousy of the other.P

m See Collier, i. 177, against Baronius.

"Ut ministerium baptizandi, quo Deo renascimur, juxta morem sanctæ Romane et apostolicæ ecclesiæ compleatis." Dr. Lingard (A. S. C. i. 69, 322) and Mr. Stevenson (Eng. Ch. Historians, i. 358) render compleatis, by "perfect," and suppose it to refer to confirmation, which at Rome was administered at the great festivals immediately after baptism. Archdeacon Churton (Early Eng. Ch. 44) and Mr. Martineau (56) understand it to relate to the question of one or three immer

sions. The second view seems to me
the more probable, although, if Augus-
tine insisted on the Roman practice of
trine immersion, it was contrary to the
directions given by Gregory for Spain,
where he approved the practice of the
Catholics in baptizing by single immer-
sion, because the Arians had used three
as symbolising their doctrine of the
inferiority of the Second and Third per-
sons in the Godhead. Ep. i. 43.
• Beda, ii. 2.

PAs nothing is said of any discussion about the Roman supremacy, Dr. Lin

« AnteriorContinuar »