baptism; and in the same city he gave the bishopric to his prelate and sponsor Paulinus. But after his baptism he took care, by Paulinus's direction, to build a larger and finer church of stone, in the midst whereof his original chapel should be enclosed." To this day York Minster, the lineal descendant of Eadwine's wooden church, remains dedicated to St. Peter, and Archbishop Thomson sits (metaphorically) in the bishop-stool of Paulinus. Part of Eadwine's later stone cathedral was discovered under the existing choir during the repairs rendered necessary by the incendiary Martin.

As to the heathen temple, its traces still remained even in Beda's day, just as old Hawaiians still point out the sites once sacred to Pelé. "That place, formerly the abode of idols, is now pointed out not far from York to the westward, beyond the river Dornuentio, and is today called Godmundingaham [the home of the men under the gods' protection], where the priest himself, through the inspiration of the true God, polluted and destroyed the altars which he himself had consecrated." So close did Beda stand to these early heathen English times. It may not be uninteresting to compare the case of a modern Rájá of Nipál who, enraged because a beautiful wife had been disfigured by smallpox, paraded all his gods in a line and annihilated them for ever with a 66 whiff of grape shot." A somewhat similar story of a Tahitian queen is doubtless familiar to many of my readers.

Another stray passage in the same book shows the like nearness to the events commemorated. Eadwine "built a basilica at Campodonum [the field of Don,' probably Doncaster], where the royal residence then was; and this basilica was afterwards burnt with all the town by those pagans [the Mercians under Penda] who slew King Æduin; wherefore later kings made themselves a palace in the district of Loidis [Leeds]. But the altar escaped the fire because it was of stone, and is still preserved in the monastery of the reverend abbot and priest Thrydwulf, in the forest of Elmet."

Shortly after these events, Pope Honorius sent a congratulatory letter to Eadwine upon his Christian zeal, and this letter is also copied in full. Indeed, Beda is fond of incorporating such original documents in his text, and he has thus preserved us the very words of many earlier writers. The letter is superscribed "To the most excellent and noble lord, our son duin, King of the English, Honorius the bishop, servant of the servants of God, sends greeting." Last time, when Boniface wrote, Eadwine was still only a promising enquirer, and therefore he was not addressed as a son of the Church,

though Æthelburh was rightly called "our daughter." But now Eadwine had approved "the integrity of his Christianity," and was fairly entitled to the Pope's benediction. Observe, too, that Beda is quite innocent of the word Anglo-Saxon. To him Eadwine is simply "king of the English," the people are "the English race," and the language is "the English tongue." He would as soon have thought of applying that mongrel phrase to Eadwine as we should think of calling Mr. Gladstone an Anglo-Saxon statesman, or Mr. Osborne Morgan an Ancient Briton with Silurian views upon the Burials Bill.

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After the conversion of Northumbria, Beda goes on to detail the great revival in the Welsh and Irish church, and the missions of the Pictish clergy to northern and central England, which succeeded the pagan reaction under Penda. He admires Aedan, the apostle of the North, for his Christian zeal; but, says he, "quod pascha non suo tempore observabat, canonicum ejus tempus ignorans approbo nec laudo." Beda, indeed, often reminds us of Longfellow's mediæval disputant, with his cry of "May the Lord send your soul to perdition, for your treatise on the irregular verbs!" Pernicious views on Easter are to him the red rag of orthodoxy, like the question of the big or little end of eggs to the metaphysicians of Lilliput. He is tolerant enough to admire a muscular heathen who can hit hard knocks against the Welsh, but his Christian charity cannot go the length of embracing those heretical believers in the cycle of eightyfour years.

The early bishops of Lichfield, then the capital of Mercia, are commemorated in the following passage:—

"The first bishop in the province of the Mercians, and also of the Middle English and of the Lindisfaras [the inhabitants of Lindisse or Lindsey, one of the three divisions of Lincolnshire] was Diuma, as I before mentioned, who died and was buried amongst the Middle English. The second was Cellach, who abandoned his bishopric and returned during his lifetime to Scotland [Argyllshire, or perhaps Ireland]. Both of these were by birth Scots [that is, Irish]. The third was Trumhere, by race an Englishman, but educated and ordained by the Scots. He was abbot of the monastery which is called Ingetlingum [Gilling]. That is the place where King Oswin was slain. For Queen Aeanfled his relation, to avoid the retribution of his unjust death, begged from King Oswy that he should give a site to construct a monastery to the aforesaid servant of God, Trumhere, who also was a relation of the murdered king: in which monastery perpetual prayers might be offered up for the eternal salvation of both kings, the murderer and the murdered. The same King Oswy, three years after the fall of King Penda, assumed the overlordship of the Mercian people, and also of the people in the other southern provinces. He likewise subdued the race of Picts in great part to the kingdom of the English. He then gave to Peada, son of king Penda, because he was his kinsman, the kingdom of the Southern Mercians, who consist, they

say, of five thousand families, separated by the river Treant [Trent] from the Northern Mercians, whose land holds seven thousand families. But this Peada was wickedly slain in the next spring, by the treachery (as report goes) of his own wife, and that too on the very day of Easter! But at the end of three years after Penda's death, the chiefs [ealdormen] of the Mercian nation-Immin, Eafha, and Eadberci―rebelled against King Oswy, raising up as their king Wulfhere, a young son of Penda, whom they had secretly hidden away and expelling the princes of the alien king, they bravely recovered their freedom and their country;" [Well done, Beda, seeing that the oppressor was your own Northumbrian countryman! Not many Germans would congratulate a brave Frenchman on the recovery of Alsace and Lorraine]. "Thus the Mercians, now a free people, under their own king, rejoiced to serve Christ, the true king of the sempiternal heavenly kingdom."

It seems a strange idea to us at the present day that the great ecclesiastical organizers of England should have been an African Moor and a Cilician Greek; yet such is in fact the case. I shall extract the greater part of the story in which Beda narrates these

events.

"The apostolic Pope, taking counsel on this matter, carefully sought out a man whom he might send as primate of the English churches. Now there was in the monastery of Hiridanum, not far from Neapolis (Naples) in Campania, an abbot, by name Hadrian, an African by race, diligently imbued with holy literature, well instructed both in monastic and ecclesiastical literature, and equally skilled in the Greek and Latin tongues. The Pope summoned him and ordered him to accept the primacy and go to Britain." But it was no light task in those days to undertake the archbishopric of an island which seemed to the cultivated Italians a sort of Iceland or Greenland in the cheerless North. Hadrian pleaded a genuine Nolo episcopari, though he was ready to undertake the less onerous duties of coadjutor. "There was at that time in Rome a monk known to Hadrian, by name Theodore, born at Tharsus in Cilicia"-mediaval copyists, like the Arrius of Catullus and our own 'Arry, can never resist the temptation to insert an extra aspirate gratis, as in Anthonius, Tharsus, and Samuhel-"a man skilled in literature, sacred and profane, Greek and Latin, distinguished for high morality, and venerable in age—that is," explains the accurate historian in a side whisper, "being sixty-six years old. Hadrian offered this brother to the pontiff for ordination as bishop, and obtained his request, but only on condition that he should himself conduct him safely into Britain, because he had already twice visited the region of Gaul, for divers reasons, and was therefore well acquainted with the route and possessed a sufficient body of men of his own,"--much as Dr. Moffat might now offer to conduct a bishop of Zululand through the friendly

country of the Bechuanas. "Moreover, being his fellow-labourer in doctrine, he would be able to take special care that Theodore should not, after the fashion of the Greeks, introduce anything contrary to the verity of the faith into the church over which he was to preside. The archbishop designate, being ordained sub-deacon, waited four months till his hair grew, that it might be shorn into a round tonsure; for at that time he had only the tonsure of St. Paul, the blessed apostle, after the fashion of Eastern people. He was ordained by Pope Vitalian, in the year of our Lord's incarnation 668, on Sunday, the 7th of the kalends of April [March 26th]; and on the 6th of the kalends of June [May 27th] he was sent with Hadrian into Britain."

Their journey from Rome to Canterbury was not so expeditious as the modern route via Mont Cenis and Paris. "They proceeded together by sea to Massilia [Marseilles], and thence by land to Arhelas [another superfluous aspirate, Arelas being the classical form of the existing Arles]. They gave to John, archbishop of that city, letters commendatory from Pope Vitalian, and were detained by him till Ebrinus, Mayor of the Palace [to Clothair III.], granted them leave to go whither they would. Having received this permission, Theodore betook himself to Agilberct, bishop of Paris, and being kindly received by him remained with him a considerable time. Hadrian first went to Emme, bishop of the Senones [Sens], and then to Faro, bishop of the Meldi [Meaux], with whom he spent a long and pleasant visit; for the approach of winter had compelled them to remain quietly where they were. But when trustworthy messengers informed King Ecgberht [of Kent, not the famous West Saxon] that the bishop whom they had sought from the Roman pontiff was in the realm of the Franks, he at once sent Rædfrid, his prefect [gerefa or reeve, I suppose] to conduct him over. He, on his arrival, took possession of Theodore, with Ebrinus' leave, and escorted him to a harbour named Quentavic"-notice the Norse or Teutonic name; already northern pirates must have been scouring the coast of Picardie; it is now called Etaples-" where he rested for a while, worn out with fatigue, and as soon as he was convalescent, sailed for Britain. But Ebrinus detained Hadrian, since he suspected him of carrying some embassy from the Emperor [Constantius the Bearded] to the kings of Britain, contrary to the interests of the [Frankish] kingdom, whose highest administrative office he then filled. When, however, he had credibly learnt that Hadrian had no such mission, he released him and allowed him to follow Theodore. As soon as he arrived, the archbishop bestowed upon him the monastery of the

blessed apostle Peter, where the Archbishops of Canterbury are usually buried." Is not this a graphic picture of continental travel, as performed by two peaceful monks, in the end of the seventh century?

I should be giving a somewhat one-sided view of Beda's great work, however, if I confined myself to such comparatively historical quotations as these. The element of the marvellous enters largely into the "Ecclesiastical History," as into all other medieval monastic chronicles. But this peculiarity does not at all destroy the general historical credibility of the narrator. We must remember that miracles then formed part of the general mental atmosphere, and that the most trivial coincidences, or the most ordinary recoveries from illness, were easily magnified into special interpositions of the local saint. Beda relates these events in good faith as they were told him; but he is just as much an accurate historian in this as in other particulars. The true want of fidelity to nature would have been to suppress such incidents of everyday life. We want a picture of early England as it really was; and miracles formed a part of its common experience, just as they still do in Spain, in Sicily, or in India. The headings of a few chapters are sufficient to show us, in a general way, “How, in the monastery of Barking, a heavenly light pointed out where the bodies of the holy women ought to be buried;" "How, in the same monastery, a little boy called upon a maiden who was to follow him; and how a girl on the point of leaving her body, beheld some small portion of the future glory;" "How a blind woman, praying in the cemetery, was restored to sight;" "How Cuthberct, the man of God, living an anchorite's life, obtained a spring from dry ground, and raised a crop out of due season; "How the same priest, after his elevation to the bishopric, foretold his own approaching death to the anchorite Hereberct ;" "How one was cured of a palsy at his tomb;" and "How one in the province of the Northan-Hymbri rose from the dead, and related many things which he had seen, both terrible and delightful." Those who try to rationalise such accounts may explain the first case by supposing the presence of an ignis fatuus, or the second by a mere delirium; but most of them are clearly simple instances of the growth of legend. It is better to accept them frankly, as so many indications of the popular genius, than to explain them away by arbitrary suppositions. Wherever the belief in miracles exists, miracles exist in plenty; and their occurrence in Beda no more invalidates the trustworthiness of his historical facts than the portents mentioned in Livy invalidate our belief in Roman history.

VOL. CCXLVII. NO. 1795.

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