London Saints.—Bishop Augulus and Restitutus of London ought to be commemorated in some way in the City. We are singularly wasteful of the power there is in the antiquities of a nation when sympathetically understood. If, for instance, Patrick had been recognised for the great British personage he was—the son and grandson of Christian parents captured to be a slave in Ireland—the magnanimous missionary might have been a mediator between the Irish and ourselves, a mixed race, part English, part British and part Roman. St. Augulus is included in the Roman Catholic Menology of the British Church. “Feb. 7.—In London the Passion of St. Augulus, Bishop and Martyr (A.D. 300 c.). Named on this day in the Roman Martyrology and in all the ancient calendars as a bishop who suffered martyrdom in London. The conjecture of historians is that he suffered in the persecution of Diocletian about the same time as St. Alban.” He is given a place in the paintings of the English College, Rome. It is curious that of two contemporary martyrs, St. Alban should have been taken up by fame and the other left. Confirmation of the point made by Sir C. Oman in regard to the name Augusta applied to London has appeared in the recent identification by Sir A. Evans of a late fourth-century coin with the Mint mark AVG.
Fig. 158.
Early Christian Objects.—The earliest existing “monument” of Christian Londinium is dated only a little later than the year in which Restitutus attended the Council of Arles. This is the reverse of a coin of Constantine, recently discovered (1909) at Poltross Burn, on the great Roman Wall, and thus described: “Mint mark PLN; of the London Mint and bearing the Christian emblem; A.D. 317-324; variety of Cohen 638. Two Victories placing on an altar a shield inscribed VOT. PR.; on the face of the altar a cross within a wreath. This is a London-minted coin bearing upon its reverse the Christian emblem of such rarity that the use of Christian emblems in the London Mint has been called in question. The only recorded specimens are a coin of Constantine II. in the British Museum, one of Crispus, found in 1909 at Corstopitum, and the present example. All have the same reverse” (Fig. [158]). This is in every way a very remarkable coin; the Victories placing the shield on a Christian altar is obviously a record of the official recognition of Christianity. From this moment when the Cross appeared on what Sir C. Oman calls “the public gazette of the Roman Empire,” every one in Londinium must have known what the Cross stood for. “In an issue of money between 317 and 324, Constantine used Christian signs in such a way as to solemnly affirm his Christian faith, and thus by universal custom made known the imperial will. The coins of London hardly make the same affirmation of Christianity by the Emperor as that of Siscia, but they testify to the intentions of certain officers of the Mint” (Maurice, Numis. Constant.). On the coin of Crispus mentioned above, the Classical Year Book, 1911, remarked: “This is a novelty, as hitherto it has been supposed that Christian symbols did not occur on London coins of the Constantinian epoch.” “It is curious that the London Mint put Christian emblems on its coins before those of Trier, Lyons or Arles” (Oman).
Fig. 159.
With the coins may be associated a small silver disc mounted as the head of a pin, now in the Roach Smith collection at the British Museum. My figure is from a drawing by Fairholt, according to whom it was found in Lothbury with several other small Roman objects. It seems quite certainly to represent, as Roach Smith supposed, Constantine’s vision of the Cross in the heavens (Fig. [159]).
A small equal-armed cross forms the clasp of a Roman bronze chain-bracelet found in London, now in the British Museum, which can hardly be other than Christian (Fig. [160]). There has been some reluctance in accepting crosses of Roman date as Christian, but the evidence of the coins should modify this.
Fig. 160.