THE VENERABLE BEDE[43]
JOHN RICHARD GREEN
St. Augustine was the first archbishop of Canterbury. He was educated in Rome under Pope Gregory I, by whom he was sent to Britain with forty monks of the Benedictine order, for the purpose of converting the English to Christianity. Bertha, wife of Ethelbert, king of Kent, was a Christian. She was a daughter of Charibert, king of Paris, and had brought her chaplain with her, who held services in the ruined church of St. Martin, near Canterbury.
There seemed little prospect, however, of the faith spreading among the wild islanders until Augustine arrived on the Isle of Thanet A.D. 596. The occasion of his being sent on this missionary errand is said to have been connected with an incident which has often been related, wherein it appears that Gregory, while yet a monk, struck with the beauty of some heathen Anglo-Saxon youths exposed for sale in the slave market at Rome, inquired concerning their nationality. Being told that they were Angles, he said: "Non Angli sed angeli ['Not Angles, but angels'], and well may, for their angel-like faces it becometh such to be coheirs with the angels in heaven. In what province of England do they live?" "Deira" was the reply. "From Dei ira ['God's wrath'] are they to be freed?" answered Gregory. "How call ye the king of that country?" "Ælla." "Then Alleluia surely ought to be sung in his kingdom to the praise of that God who created all things," said the gracious and clever monk.
"The conversion of the English to Christianity," says Freeman, "at once altered their whole position in the world. Hitherto our history had been almost wholly insular; our heathen forefathers had had but little to do, either in war or peace, with any nations beyond their own four seas. We hear little of any connection being kept up between the Angles and Saxons who settled in Britain, and their kinsfolk who abode in their original country. By its conversion England was first brought, not only within the pale of the Christian Church, but within the pale of the general political society of Europe. But our insular position, combined with the events of our earlier history, was not without its effect on the peculiar character of Christianity as established in England. England was the first great territorial conquest of the spiritual power, beyond the limits of the Roman Empire, beyond the influence of Greek and Roman civilization."
The following account from the Ecclesiastical History of the Venerable Bede, the "father of English history," and foremost scholar of England in his age, is in the modern English rendering by Thomson, of King Alfred's famous translation, made for the instruction of the English people as the best work of that period on their own history.
As a contrast John Richard Green's treatment of the same episode is appended.
THE VENERABLE BEDE
When according to forthrunning time [it] was about five hundred and ninety-two years from Christ's hithercoming, Mauricius, the Emperor, took to the government, and had it two-and-twenty years. He was the fifty-fourth from Augustus. In the tenth year of that Emperor's reign, Gregory, the holy man, who was in lore and deed the highest, took to the bishophood of the Roman Church, and of the apostolic seat, and held and governed it thirteen years and six months and ten days. In the fourteenth year of the same Emperor, about a hundred and fifty years from the English nation's hithercoming into Britain, he was admonished by a divine impulse that he should send God's servant Augustine, and many other monks with him, fearing the Lord, to preach God's word to the English nation.
When they obeyed the bishop's commands, and began to go to the mentioned work, and had gone some deal of the way, then began they to fear and dread the journey, and thought that it was wiser and safer for them that they should rather return home than seek the barbarous people, and the fierce and the unbelieving, even whose speech they knew not; and in common chose this advice to themselves; and then straightway sent Augustine (whom they had chosen for their bishop if their doctrines should be received) to the Pope, that he might humbly intercede for them, that they might not need to go upon a journey so perilous and so toilsome, and a pilgrimage so unknown.
Then St. Gregory sent a letter to them, and exhorted and advised them in that letter: that they should humbly go into the work of God's word, and trust in God's help; and that they should not fear the toil of the journey, nor dread the tongues of evil-speaking men; but that, with all earnestness, and with the love of God, they should perform the good things which they by God's help had begun to do; and that they should know that the great toil would be followed by the greater glory of everlasting life; and he prayed Almighty God that he would shield them by his grace; and that he would grant to himself that he might see the fruit of their labor in the heavenly kingdom's glory, because he was ready to be in the same labor with them, if leave had been given him.
Then Augustine was strengthened by the exhortation of the blessed father Gregory, and with Christ's servants who were with him returned to the work of God's word, and came into Britain. Then was at that time Ethelbert king in Kent, and a mighty one, who had rule as far as the boundary of the river Humber, which sheds asunder the south folk of the English nation and the north folk. Then [there] is on the eastward of Kent a great island [Thanet by name], which is six hundred hides large, after the English nation's reckoning. The isle is shed away from the continuous land by the stream Wantsum, which is three furlongs broad, and in two places is fordable, and either end lies in the sea. On this isle came up Christ's servant Augustine and his fellows—he was one of forty. They likewise took with them interpreters from Frankland [France], as St. Gregory bade them; and he sent messengers to Ethelbert, and let him know that he came from Rome, and brought the best errand, and whosoever would be obedient to him, he promised him everlasting gladness in heaven, and a kingdom hereafter without end, with the true and living God.
When [he then] the King heard these words, then ordered he them to abide in the isle on which they had come up; and their necessaries to be there given them until he should see what he would do to them. Likewise before that a report of the Christian religion had come to him, for he had a Christian wife, who was given to him from the royal kin of the Franks—Bertha was her name; which woman he received from her parents on condition that she should have his leave that she might hold the manner of the Christian belief, and of her religion, unspotted, with the bishop whom they gave her for the help of that faith; whose name was Luidhard.
Then [it] was after many days that the King came to the isle, and ordered to make a seat for him out [of doors], and ordered Augustine with his fellows to come to his speech (a conference). He guarded himself lest they should go into any house to him; he used the old greeting, in case they had any magic whereby they should overcome and deceive him. But they came endowed—not with devil-craft, but with divine might. They bore Christ's rood-token—a silvern cross of Christ and a likeness of the Lord Jesus colored and delineated on a board; and were crying the names of holy men; and singing prayers together, made supplication to the Lord for the everlasting health of themselves and of those to whom they come.