The establishment, however, of Roman influence in England was partial after all, and ecclesiastical authority was not independent of the State. The Anglo-Saxon clergy, as Lappenberg observes, were not so free as their brethren on the continent, and many are the complaints that their subjection to secular power seems to have called forth, particularly as to their liability to the trinoda necessitas of fortress and bridge money, and contributions for military levies. The weaker hold maintained by the Papal power helped to promote the use of the vernacular tongue in their church service, and the diffusion of vernacular versions of Scripture, as well as other benefits of which we are still reaping the good fruits.
The permanent importance of the struggles then maintained for ecclesiastical ascendency, and the profession and pursuits of the only men by whom history could be written, have necessarily given an undue prominence to those actors on the scene who belonged to the church, and have left the laymen and even the royal personages of the period in comparative obscurity. As illustrating the workings of Roman influence on the minds of men, we may select two examples of distinguished churchmen of Northumbria, the one representing the secular, and the other the monastic portion of the clergy, and in whom the different elements entering into the spirit of the times were very variously exhibited.
“Wilfrith, though not of noble birth, was endowed with all those natural advantages, the influence of which over rugged, uncivilized people appears almost fabulous. In his thirteenth year, the period at which an Anglo-Saxon youth was considered of age, he resolved to leave his parents and renounce the world. Equipped suitably to his station, he was sent to the court of Oswiu, and, through the influence of the Queen Eanflœd, was received into the monastery of Lindisfarne by the chamberlain Cudda, who had exchanged earthly joys and sorrows for the retirement and observances of a cloister. There he was as remarkable for humility as for mental endowments. Besides other books, he had read the entire Psalter, according to the emendation of St. Jerome, as in use among the Scots. His anxious desire to behold and pray in the church of the apostle Peter must have been the more grateful to the queen and her Roman Catholic friends, from the novelty and singularity of such a wish among his countrymen. In furtherance of his object, she sent him to her brother Earconberht, King of Kent, where he made himself familiar with the doctrines of the Roman Church, including the Psalms according to the fifth edition. He was attached as travelling companion to Benedict, surnamed Biscop, a distinguished man, who, at a later period, exerted himself so beneficially in the cause of the Church, and in the civilization and instruction of the Northumbrians. Benedict died abbot of the monastery founded by him at Wearmouth, an establishment not less famed for arts and scientific treasures, than ennobled through its celebrated priest, the venerable Beda. On Wilfrith’s arrival at Lyons, Dalfinus, the Archbishop, was so struck by his judicious discourse, comely countenance, and mature understanding, that he retained him long with him, offered to adopt him for his son, to give him the hand of his brother’s daughter, and to procure for him the government of a part of Gaul.
“But Wilfrith hastened to Rome, acquired there a thorough knowledge of the four Gospels, also the Roman computation of Easter, which, as we have already seen, he afterwards so triumphantly employed, and at the same time made himself familiar with many rules of ecclesiastical discipline, and whatever else was proper for a minister of the Roman Church. On his return, he passed three years at Lyons, with his friend Dalfinus, and extended his knowledge by attending the most learned teachers. He now declared himself wholly devoted to the Church of Rome, and received from Dalfinus the tonsure of St. Peter, consisting of a circle of hair in imitation of the crown of thorns, while the Scots shaved the entire front, leaving the hair only on the hinder part of the head. Here he nearly shared the fate of his unfortunate friend, the archbishop, in the persecution raised against him by the Queen Baldhild, the widow of Clovis the Second, and the mayor of the palace, Ebruin; but the comely young stranger, through the extraordinary compassion of his persecutors, was saved from the death of a martyr. He now hastened back to his country, where he was honourably received by King Ealhfrith, consecrated abbot of the monastery of Ripon, and regarded as a prophet by high and low. After the disputation with Bishop Colman at Whitby, Oswiu and his son, with their witan, chose the abbot Wilfrith for Bishop of York, who passed over to Paris to be consecrated by Agilbreht. On his return to Northumbria, he was driven by a storm on the coast among the Pagan south Saxons, who proceeded vigorously to exercise the right of wreck on the strangers. The chief priest of the idolaters stood on an eminence for the purpose of depriving them of power by his maledictions and magic, when one of their number, with David’s courage and success, hurled a stone at him, from a sling, which struck him to the brain. At the fall of their priest, the fury of the people was excited against the little band, who succeeded however, after a conflict, four times renewed, in re-embarking with the return of the tide, and reached Sandwich in safety.”
Wilfrith in his absence had been deprived of the See of York, and on his return retired with real or affected submission to his cloister at Ripon; but the see was restored to him by the influence of Theodore. Various events hastened an outbreak of dissensions among the higher clergy, and of the jealousy of the secular towards the ecclesiastical power.
In order partly to curtail the dimensions of Wilfrith’s power, the See of York was divided into two dioceses; and the influence and remonstrances of the bishop were unavailing to avert the blow. He set out, therefore, on a journey to Rome, to appeal to the Papal authority; but he had enemies abroad as well as at home, and was only saved from their hostility by a storm, which drove his vessel to the coast of Friesland, and secured for him the honour of being the first of the numerous English missionaries who bore the tidings of the Gospel to the continental Pagans of the North.
Resuming his journey, after a year, he laid his complaints before the Roman See, and was here also the first in a less honourable path,—no previous appeal to the Papal protection having ever been attempted by Anglo-Saxon churchmen. The thunders of the Vatican sounded, as yet, but faintly in British ears; and Wilfrith, on his return, was consigned to a prison, instead of obtaining that restoration of his honours which Pope Agatho had ventured to decree.
Driven from Northumbria a homeless exile, Wilfrith fled to the shores of Sussex, the scene of his former peril and preservation, and, renewing his efforts against the remains of Pagan barbarism still lingering in that quarter, he taught the natives the lore of a better life, both in worldly and in spiritual things, and established a bishopric, to the charge of which he was himself elevated.
Again reconciled to Theodore, he was appointed to the See of Litchfield, the fourth that had fallen to him, and he afterwards had the glory of declining an offer of the archiepiscopate of Canterbury. After recovering the bishopric of York, he once more lost it by becoming involved in new disputes and contests for the superiority of the Romish discipline, and, in his seventieth year, carried another appeal to the Papal Chair, which, on this occasion, had the satisfaction of finding that both Wilfrith and his enemies pleaded to its jurisdiction. Wilfrith was exculpated by the Pope, but could only obtain from the Anglo-Saxon Prince of Northumbria the See of Hexham and the monastery of Ripon. “After a few years passed in almsgiving and the improvement of church discipline, Wilfrith died in his seventy-sixth year, a man whose fortunes and activity in the European relations of England were long without a parallel.” He completed what Augustine began, and united the English Church to that of Rome in matters of discipline. Even his influence, however, could not destroy the independence of his countrymen, who, as Lappenberg observes, “even after they were no longer Anti-Catholic, continued always Anti-Papistical.”
The two achievements which occur as episodes in this singular biography, the commencement of a Christian mission in Germany, and the conversion of the last remnants of Paganism in England, would have been enough to immortalise their author, independently of his influence on the outward discipline of the Church.
To the chequered and restless career of Wilfrith, thus divided between clerical ambition, and Christian usefulness, a striking contrast is presented in the peaceful life of one who is the honour of Saxon England, and the brightest, or the only bright name in European literature during the centuries that intervened between Theodoric and Charlemagne.