‘Be it made known to you, dearest sister,’ he writes, ‘regarding the advice which you asked for in your letter, that I do not presume to forbid you the pilgrim’s journey, neither would I directly advise it. I will explain why. If you gave up the charge you had of the servants of God, of his virgins (ancillae), and your own monastic life, for the purpose of securing quiet and the thought of God, in what way are you now bound to obey the words and the will of seculars with toil and wearing anxiety? Still if you cannot find peace of mind in your home in secular life among seculars it seems right that you should seek in a pilgrimage freedom for contemplation, especially since you wish it and can arrange it; just in the way our sister Wethburg did. She told me in her letter that she had found the quiet she longed for near the threshold of St Peter. In reference to your wish she sent me a message, for I had written to her about you, saying that you must wait till the attacks, hostility and menaces of the Saracens who have lately reached the Roman States have subsided, and that God willing she would then send you a letter of invitation. I too think this best. Prepare yourself for the journey, but wait for word from her, and then do as God in his grace commands. As to the collection of extracts for which you ask, be considerate to my shortcomings. Pressing work and continuous travelling prevent my furnishing you with what you desire. As soon as I can I will forward them to please you.
‘We thank you for the gifts and vestments which you have sent, and pray to God Almighty, to put aside a gift for you in return with the angels and archangels in the heights of heaven. And I beseech you in the name of God, dear sister, yea mother and sweet lady, that you diligently pray for me. For many troubles beset me through my shortcomings, and I am more distressed by uncertainty of mind than by bodily work. Rest assured that our old trust in each other will never fail us.’
Bugga carried out her intention and went to Rome, where she met Boniface, who was the Pope’s guest about the year 737. He had achieved a signal success in reconverting the Hessians, and was now appointed to constitute bishoprics in Bavaria and to hold councils of Church dignitaries at regular intervals[410]. At Rome Bugga and Boniface walked and talked together, and visited the churches of the holy apostles. A letter from Aethelberht II, king of Kent, to Boniface refers to their meeting[411]. Bugga had come back to her old monastery and had given the king a description of her visit. She attained a considerable age, for she was advanced in years before her pilgrimage, and about twenty years later Bregwin, archbishop of Canterbury (759-765), wrote to Lul informing him of her death[412].
Boniface made provision at Rome for the women in whom he was interested. A certain deacon Gemmulus writes to him from Rome to inform him[413] that ‘the sisters and maidens of God who have reached the threshold of the apostles’ are there being cared for by himself and others as Boniface has desired.
The readiness with which Anglo-Saxon nuns went abroad eventually led to a state of things which cast discredit on religion. Boniface addressed the following remarks on these pilgrimages to Cuthberht of Canterbury in the letter written after the synod of Soissons[414].
‘I will not withhold from your holiness,’ he says, ‘... that it were a good thing and besides honour and a credit to your Church and a palliation of evils, if the synod and your princes forbade women, and those who have taken the veil, to travel and stay abroad as they do, coming and going in the Roman states. They come in great numbers and few return undefiled. For there are very few districts of Lombardy in which there is not some woman of Anglian origin living a loose life among the Franks and the Gauls. This is a scandal and disgrace to your whole Church....’
The difficulty of exercising more control over those who chose to leave their settlements was only partly met by stricter rules of supervision. For there were no means of keeping back monk or nun who was tired of living the monastic life. In the 9th century Hatto bishop of Basel († 836) wrote to the bishop of Toul enjoining that no one should be suffered to undertake a pilgrimage to Rome without leave, and provisions of a much later date order that houses shall not take in and harbour inmates from other settlements.
In this connection it is interesting to find Lul, who had settled abroad with Boniface, excommunicating an abbess Suitha because she had allowed two nuns to go into a distant district for some secular purpose without previously asking permission from her bishop[415]. The women who settled in Germany under Boniface were brought under much stricter control than had till then been customary in either France or England.
§ 2. Anglo-Saxon Nuns abroad.
Among the women who came to Germany and settled there at the request of Boniface was Lioba, otherwise Leobgith, who had been educated at Wimbourne in Dorset, at no very great distance from Nutshalling where Boniface dwelt, and who left England between 739 and 748. She was related to him through her mother Aebbe, and a simple and modest little letter is extant in which she writes to Boniface and refers to her father’s death six years ago; she is her parents’ only child, she says, and would recall her mother and herself to the prelate’s memory.