ON S. LAURENTIUS, ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY IN ENGLAND.
Year of Christ 619.
HISTORICAL COMMENTARY.
S. Laurentius, Archbishop of Canterbury in England.
BHL Number: 0000, 4742
By G. H.
§ I. The sacred cult of S. Laurentius. His Life written.
[1] The most holy King Ethelbertus of the Cantians, a celebrated province among the Britons, converted to the faith of Christ by S. Augustine and his companions in the Anglo-Saxon heptarchy, we celebrate on the twenty-fourth of February, Of the Cantians, where we also discuss certain matters concerning the antiquity of the Cantians and the kingdom of the Saxons established among them. A principal companion of S. Augustine was S. Laurentius, the city of Durovernum, and his successor in the Archiepiscopate of Durovernum. Durovernum was, in Ptolemy's rendering Darvernum, in Bede's Dorouernia, in others Dorobernia, the capital of the kingdom of Kent and the royal seat: or Canterbury, soon called by the Saxons Cant-wara-byrig, that is, the city of the people of Kent, and by the English then Canterbury, in Latin Cantuaria. We shall treat of the Archiepiscopal See established there on the twenty-sixth of May in the Life of S. Augustine, the first Archbishop, where many things will be related that are to be shared with S. Laurentius, the most faithful companion of his journeys and labors.
[2] The birthday of S. Laurentius is celebrated on the second of February by the manuscript Martyrology of the basilica of S. Mary at Aachen, under the name of Bede: S. Laurentius is venerated on the second of February, The Deposition of S. Laurentius the Bishop. The Benedictine manuscript Calendar of S. Salvator at Antwerp: S. Laurentius, second Archbishop of Canterbury, monk of S. Gregory's at Rome. Galesinius: At Canterbury in Britain, S. Laurentius the Archbishop, who succeeded the Blessed Augustine as Prelate of that same city. The Carthusians of Cologne and Molanus in his Supplement to Usuardus and Canisius in the German Martyrology report similar entries. In the Roman Martyrology and the Benedictine one of Menardus, the following is recorded: At Canterbury in England, the birthday of S. Laurentius the Bishop, who governed that Church after S. Augustine, and converted the King himself to the faith. Dorganius in his Benedictine Calendar: S. Laurentius the Bishop, companion of S. Augustine for preaching the Gospel of Christ in England. Wion writes at greater length in his monastic Martyrology: At Canterbury in England, the birthday of S. Laurentius the Bishop, who governed that Church after S. Augustine, and who, deserting it out of fear of the King, was reproved by S. Peter and compelled to return, and converted the King himself to the faith; and with peace restored to the Church, fell asleep in the Lord. Felicius reports nearly the same. With this eulogy in Trithemius. Trithemius adorns him with this eulogy in book 3 On the Illustrious Men of the Order of S. Benedict: Laurentius, a monk of the monastery of S. Gregory at Rome, sent by him to England for the conversion of that nation, labored with all his strength: who, upon the death of the Blessed Augustine, was ordained Archbishop of Durovernum in his place, whom Augustine himself while still living had ordained, lest the state of the Church, still so young, should begin to waver even for a moment, deprived of a Pastor upon his death. He flourished in the year of the Lord 620, whose feast is celebrated on the fourth day before the Nones of February. The same Trithemius in book 4, chapter 49: Laurentius, Archbishop of Durovernum after Augustine, ordained from a monk of the Blessed Pope Gregory, acquired a great fruit of faith among the English people, both by teaching and exhorting. For he was a good and learned man, nobly instructed from infancy in monastic disciplines. Whence, while Augustine was still alive, he was appointed Pastor in his place by Augustine himself. He flourished in the year of the Lord 620. Thus Trithemius, from whom Baronius in his Notes on the Roman Martyrology, Wion in his additions to the Benedictine Martyrology, and Constantinus Ghinius, who lists him among the Canonical Saints and adorns him with a long encomium, write that S. Laurentius flourished in the year 620. But we shall say below that he did not reach that year. In Molanus's Notes on Usuardus it is written that he flourished in the year 1110, an enormous typographical error, for which we believe should be read 610. And on the twelfth of November. In the manuscript Florarium Sanctorum, on the day before the Ides of November, it is reported: At Canterbury in England, S. Laurentius, Bishop and Confessor, in the year of salvation 619. The following Prayer with its Antiphon is taken from an ancient manuscript Breviary of Salisbury. Antiphon: Antiphons. At the passing of the illustrious Father Laurentius, the heavens are ennobled with joys, and let us follow with praises: Hail, friend of God, obtain for us our King, who provided you for us as a loving Father. Verse: Behold a great Priest. Prayer: O God, who sent the Blessed Laurentius the Pontiff to Your people as a preacher of eternal salvation, and proper Prayer. grant, we beseech You, that we who honor his commemoration may merit to be absolved from the bonds of our sins by his merits and prayers. Through our Lord, etc.
[3] S. Gregory the Pope in book 9 of his Register, Epistles 52, 55, and 56, and the Venerable Bede in books 1 and 2 of his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, which he completed in the year of Christ 731, Life from various sources, especially Bede; also treat of S. Laurentius; from which we shall here provide many details. Then in the following century, in the times of the Emperors Louis the Younger and Charles the Bald, there flourished the Deacon John, who in book 2 of his Life of S. Gregory the Pope treats at greater length of this mission to the English, and specifically mentions S. Laurentius having been sent back to Rome. Florentius of Branou, a monk of Worcester, extended his chronicle up to the year 1118, having died the following year. This Chronicle, in which S. Laurentius is treated, is to be esteemed all the more highly because ancient Anglo-Saxon annals are inserted into it: which exist in Latin and Saxon, recently published with Bede's History by Abraham Wheloc, written under S. Edward the King, killed in the year 978, then continued to the year of Christ 1070: and in Latin continued to the year 1093; in which also S. Laurentius is mentioned. With the said Florentius at the beginning of the twelfth century, Goscelin, or Gotzelin, flourished, another written by Goscelin, a Benedictine monk of S. Bertin near Audomaropolis, a city of Artois, whom, as Molanus testifies in his Birthdays of the Saints of Belgium, the eighth of July under S. Grimoaldus, S. Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, and many others called into England, where he first dwelt at Ramsey and then at Canterbury at S. Augustine's: in which places he wrote various Lives of Saints, and among others that of this S. Laurentius, which begins: To the dearest lords and paternal, etc., as Molanus at Usuardus on the second of February and Valerius Andreas in the Belgian Library observe. This Goscelin is held by William of Malmesbury in book 4 On the Deeds of the Kings of England, chapter 1 near the end, to be of remarkable learning in letters and chants: who, visiting many bishoprics and abbeys for a long time, gave monuments of his distinguished knowledge in many places, second after Bede in the praises of the Saints of England: and who raised up in his style the Lives of innumerable recent Saints, and renewed more elegantly those of the ancients that had been lost through enemy action or inelegantly published. And in book 1 On the Deeds of the Pontiffs of England he writes thus about S. Laurentius and Goscelin: Augustine was succeeded by Laurentius for five years, whose virtues, and those of the others (about whom Bede in his narrative touches on everything briefly, evidently fearing the offense of tedium), a certain Goscelin, insofar as he could learn from the accounts of the ancients, wrote — truly wonderful and praiseworthy — adding new ones which he had witnessed with his own eyes. Thus Malmesbury, who, somewhat younger than Goscelin, continued his chronicle on the Kings to the year 1142, not yet found, in which he also lived with Henry of Huntingdon, the Archdeacon, who in book 3 of his Histories inserts some acts of S. Laurentius. Would that someone had also published the works of Goscelin for public use alongside the histories of these authors; whether they survive anywhere in manuscript, protected from the moths, we still do not know. John Capgrave, who survived to the year 1464, in his Legend of the Saints of England fashioned a Life of S. Laurentius partly from Bede, Was it abridged by Capgrave? partly from elsewhere — perhaps, as is his custom, from Goscelin — and attached wonderful virtues of his, which do not deserve the same credence as Bede's history, as the reader will easily judge. Nearly a full century older than Capgrave, Matthew of Westminster and Ranulph of Chester commemorate the virtues of S. Laurentius, the former in his Flowers of History, the latter in his Polychronicon. It would be lengthy to enumerate the more recent writers, among whom are prominent Polydore Vergil in book 4 of his English History, Nicholas Harpsfield in century 7 of his Ecclesiastical History of England, chapter 7, Baronius in the Annals at the years 604 and 614, Edward Maihew in the Trophies of the Saints of the English Congregation of the Order of S. Benedict, Jerome Porter in his Flowers of the Saints of England, Francis Haraeus, Zacharias Lippeloo, and others on the second of February, on which day a Life of his collected from Bede is also found in Surius.
§ II. The private life of S. Laurentius: departure for Britain.
[4] S. Laurentius was Roman. Laurentius was Roman by birth according to the Westminster chronicler at the year 608; nobly instructed from infancy, according to Trithemius cited above, in monastic disciplines, and indeed a monk of the monastery of S. Gregory at Rome: about which the older authorities are silent. S. Gregory the Pope in book 7 of the Register, Indiction 1, Epistle 30 to Eulogius, Bishop of Alexandria, calls S. Augustine a monk of his monastery; a monk, but in Epistle 114, Indiction II, to Siagrius, Bishop of Autun, he calls the same Augustine the Provost of his monastery: whom in other epistles to Kings and Bishops of the Franks he calls a servant of God, whose zeal and devotion were well known to him: but his companions on the journey he everywhere calls other servants of God; whom Bede, who is soon to be cited, writes were monks. However, because S. Gregory in book 5, Epistle 59 to Brunhild, Queen of the Franks, and Epistle 58 to Kings Theoderic and Theodebert of the Franks, a Presbyter, asserts that he had enjoined these servants of God to take with them certain Presbyters from the neighboring region, with whom they might learn the minds of the English and assist their wills with their admonition, as God should grant; perhaps Laurentius, who is always called a Presbyter by both S. Gregory and Bede, could be thought to have been drawn from the neighboring Frankish kingdom. But since Bede relates that these were accepted from the Frankish nation at the command of the blessed Pope Gregory as interpreters, it sufficiently implies that Laurentius is to be numbered among the other companions of S. Augustine, whom he writes were about forty men. Franciscus Godwin in his Archbishops of Canterbury considers him to be that Cardinal Presbyter who, in Ciaconius's Lives of the Pontiffs, is named first among the Cardinals living under S. Gregory the Great in the year 600: Laurentius, Cardinal Presbyter, at the title of S. Silvester on the Esquiline, by the title of the Holy Roman Church, Archpriest. Was he a Cardinal? Which we do not immediately endorse amid the silence of the ancients. For certainly, just as S. Gregory repeatedly names this Laurentius the Presbyter, sent back to England later with Mellitus the Abbot and other monks, so he would not have permitted a Cardinal to lurk unknown in the first journey among the other servants of God, unless he elevated him to that dignity after the legation, in the year 600.
[5] Bede describes the departure of all from Rome in book 1, chapter 25, as follows: Gregory, a man preeminent in learning and action, SS. Augustine, Laurentius, and others depart from Rome in the year 596: having obtained the Pontificate of the Roman and Apostolic See, inspired by divine instinct, in the fourteenth year of the Emperor Mauritius (this is the year of Christ 596), sent the servant of God Augustine, and many other monks with him who feared the Lord, to preach the word of God to the English nation. When they, obeying the Pontifical commands, had begun to undertake the said work and had already completed a certain part of the journey, stricken with sluggish fear, they thought of returning home rather than approaching a barbarous, fierce, and unbelieving nation whose very language they did not know, and they determined by common counsel that this was the safer course. Without delay, they sent Augustine home, to obtain humbly from the Blessed Gregory that they should not have to embark upon so perilous, so laborious, and so uncertain a pilgrimage. To them he sent exhortatory letters and bade them set out for the work of the word, trusting in divine aid. They visit the bishops of Gaul, Thus Gregory, who sent many epistles to various Bishops of Gaul commending to them S. Augustine and his companions, whose route can be somewhat traced from those epistles. The first of these is S. Serenus of Marseilles, to whom the second of August is sacred. The next is the Archbishop Protasius of Aix, whose goodness and gentleness S. Gregory had learned from Augustine's report, and therefore we think Augustine was sent back to Rome from here by his companions. Near to him was Virgilius, made Archbishop of Arles in the thirteenth year of King Childebert of Austrasia, the year of Christ 588: as Gregory of Tours testifies concerning him in book 9 of the Ecclesiastical History, chapter 23. The fourth in the same letters is S. Desiderius, Archbishop of Vienne and Martyr, of whom we shall treat below on the eleventh of February. From there they would have gone to Lyons to the Archbishop Etherius; who in the thirtieth year of Guntram, the year of Christ 591, together with S. Siagrius, as reported by Gregory of Tours in book 10, chapter 28, attended the baptism of Chlothar II — so that it is surprising that Bede and the Deacon John assign this Etherius to the See of Arles, when we have already shown that Virgilius had long presided over it; especially since Lyons was also called Araria on account of the Arar (Saone) river flowing into the Rhone at that point, as Claudius Robert notes from Savaron on Sidonius; so that the word Arariensis could easily have been deflected into Arelatensis. S. Gregory also writes in his epistle to Eulogius of Alexandria that, with his permission, Augustine was made a Bishop by the Bishops of the Germanies: which Bede attributes to this Etherius. Thus Sidonius Apollinaris in book 5, Epistle 7, calls the province of Lyons Germania because the Burgundians, Germanic by origin, held dominion in that region. The next among the Bishops was S. Syagrius of Autun, to whom Gregory sent a second letter of thanks for the charity he had shown to S. Augustine. S. Syagrius is venerated on the twenty-seventh of August. And the kings of the Franks. From there they would have visited the Kings: Theoderic of the Burgundians at Orleans, and Theodebert of the Austrasians at Metz, who had succeeded their father Childebert, who died that year; to whom, as to their grandmother Brunhild, they would have presented the commendatory letters of S. Gregory; and having received Presbyters or interpreters, continued their journey. It is doubtful, however, whether the same epistle was inscribed to many only so that, if the occasion required such a route, it might be handed over at the opportune time. Such perhaps was the one addressed to Pelagius, Archbishop of Tours, successor of S. Gregory the writer, and to S. Palladius, who had long been Bishop of Saintes since the twenty-fourth year of Guntram, the year of Christ 585, as is read in Gregory of Tours, book 8, chapter 2. These epistles are contained in book 5 of the Register, numbers 50 and following. We append one sent to Palladius, Pelagius, and Serenus in Gregory's collection, chapter 52, and to Etherius in Bede, book 1, chapter 24:
Although, he says, before Priests who have the charity pleasing to God, men of religion need no commendation; with commendatory letters of S. Gregory. nevertheless, because a suitable time for writing has presented itself, we have taken care to send our letters to your fraternity, informing you that the bearer of the present letter, Augustine, a servant of God, of whose devotion we are certain, together with other servants of God, has been directed there by us, the Lord assisting, for the benefit of souls. Whom it is necessary that your holiness hasten to aid with priestly zeal, and to furnish him with its support. And that you may be readier to assist him, we have directed him to indicate to you the matter in detail, knowing that once it is known, you will devote yourselves entirely, for God's sake and because the matter requires it, to providing assistance, etc.
[6] Thus Gregory to those Bishops, supported by whose charity they sailed from Gaul to Britain, and as Bede testifies in chapter 25, they landed on the eastern coast of Kent on the island of Thanet — Augustine the servant of the Lord and his companions, some forty men in all: They sail to Britain: and having been ordered by King Ethelbertus to remain on that island, with necessities supplied, after some days the King came to the island, and sitting in the open air ordered Augustine and his companions to come to his assembly: who, endowed with divine power, came, They address the King: bearing a silver cross as a standard, and an image of the Lord and Savior painted on a panel; and singing Litanies, they prayed to the Lord for the eternal salvation both of themselves and of those for whose sake they had come. And when at the King's command they had sat down and preached to him the word of life, together with all his attendants who were present, the King gave them a dwelling in the city of Durovernum; They live holily: and together with the provision of temporal sustenance, he also granted them license to preach. But when, as Bede continues in chapter 26, they had entered the dwelling given them, they began to imitate the Apostolic life of the primitive Church: namely, serving with constant prayers, vigils, and fasts, preaching the word of life, despising all worldly things as alien, accepting only what was necessary for sustenance; living in all things according to what they taught; and having a spirit ready to suffer any adversity whatsoever, or even to die for the truth they preached. In the church built of old in honor of S. Martin near the city to the east, they first began to assemble, to sing psalms, to pray, to celebrate Masses, to preach and baptize. They convert many. Some believed and were baptized, marveling at the simplicity of their innocent life and the sweetness of their heavenly doctrine. But when the King too, among others, delighted by the most pure life of the Saints and by their most sweet promises, which they confirmed by the display of many miracles as well, believed and was baptized, more began daily to flock to hear the word, and the King in the year 597. and abandoning the rites of paganism, to join themselves in faith to the unity of the holy Church of Christ. Then they received greater license both to preach everywhere and to build or restore churches. Nor did the King delay to give his teachers a place of residence suited to their rank in Durovernum, his metropolis, and at the same time to confer the necessary possessions of various kinds. These are Bede's words, though sometimes abridged. We shall prove at the King's Life that he was converted to the faith of Christ in the year 597.
§ III. The legation of S. Laurentius to Rome. His return to Britain. His age.
[7] Meanwhile, as Bede continues in chapter 26, when the man of the Lord Augustine, S. Laurentius is sent to Rome in the year 598: having been ordained Archbishop for the English nation by Etherius, about whom we treated above, had returned to Britain, he immediately sent Laurentius the Presbyter and Peter the monk to Rome, to report to the blessed Pontiff Gregory that the English nation had accepted the faith of Christ and that he himself had been made a Bishop. At the same time he also sought answers to various questions. Without delay, he received suitable responses to his questions, which Bede sets forth at length. We think it was on the basis of S. Laurentius's report that S. Gregory wrote to Eulogius of Alexandria how Augustine the Bishop, or those who were sent with him, shine with such great miracles among the English people that they seem to imitate the powers of the Apostles in the signs they display. Moreover, in the solemnity of the Lord's Nativity, which had passed in the first Indiction in which he writes, more than ten thousand English were reported to have been baptized by the same brother and co-Bishop of ours. This first Indiction falls partly in the year of Christ 597 and partly in the following year 598, in which this epistle was written, requiring that in the prior year, by S. Augustine, already a Bishop, so many thousands had been baptized at the Nativity of Christ.
Moreover, the same Pope Gregory, as Bede writes in chapter 29, sent with the aforesaid legates Laurentius the Presbyter and Peter the monk to Bishop Augustine many co-workers, He receives new laborers, among whom the first and chief were Mellitus, Justus, Paulinus, and Ruffinianus, and through them generally all things necessary for the worship and ministry of the Church: gifts, namely sacred vessels and vestments for the altars, ornaments for the churches as well, and priestly or clerical garments, and also relics of the holy Apostles and Martyrs: and also many books. He also sent with the pallium letters informing how Bishops should be appointed in Britain. The pallium for S. Augustine. Thus Bede. Of these companions, two succeeded S. Laurentius in the Archiepiscopate of Canterbury: first S. Mellitus, then S. Justus: the former is venerated on the twenty-fourth of April, the latter on the tenth of November. S. Paulinus, the first Archbishop of York, on the tenth of October.
[8] S. Gregory dismissed them from Rome, furnished with various epistles, in Indiction IV, the nineteenth year of Mauritius, the year of Christ 601, He departs Rome in the year 601 with commendatory letters of S. Gregory, as the epistles themselves show their date. One addressed to several Bishops of Gaul is reported as follows in book 9, Epistle 52: Although the care of the office you have undertaken should move your fraternity to assist by every effort men of religion, and especially those laboring for the cause of souls, nevertheless it is not out of place if the words of our letters stir your solicitude: because just as a fire becomes greater when fanned by a breeze, so the efforts of a good mind advance through commendation. Since therefore, with the grace of our Redeemer cooperating, so great a multitude of the English nation has been converted to the grace of the Christian faith that the most reverend, our common brother and co-Bishop Augustine, asserts that those who followed him for the execution of this work cannot suffice in the various places; we have taken care to send some monks to him, together with our most beloved and common sons Laurentius the Presbyter and Mellitus the Abbot. And therefore let your fraternity show them the charity that is fitting; and let it hasten to assist them wherever needed: so that while, with your help, they have no reason for delay there, they may both rejoice that they have been relieved by your consolation, and you, through the provision of your services, may be found to share in the cause for which they have been sent. To the Bishops of Gaul. Thus Pope Gregory to the Bishops of Gaul: of whom, if they visited all of them, the first on their route was S. Serenus of Marseilles; then perhaps, but addressed in Epistle 49, Virgilius, Archbishop of Arles; afterward Mennas, Archbishop of Toulouse, and S. Lupus of Chalon, whose Acts we gave on the twenty-seventh of January; and finally Agilius, otherwise called Aygulfus or Agiulfus, of Metz. Meanwhile, when the occasion presented itself, another epistle was presented to Queen Brunhild, which is number 56 of book 9, in which, after giving thanks for the benefits formerly bestowed on S. Augustine and his companions, he adds: Queen Brunhild, But that the fruit of your reward may be ever more abundant, we ask that you more generously provide the aid of your patronage to the monks who carry this present letter, whom we are sending together with our most beloved sons Laurentius the Presbyter and Mellitus the Abbot, to the aforesaid most reverend brother and co-Bishop of ours, because he says that those who are with him cannot suffice: and deign to be present to them in all things, so that as better things succeed to the good beginnings of your excellency, and they find there no delays or difficulties, you may all the more provoke the mercy of our God toward you and your most sweet grandchildren, the more mercifully you show yourselves in such causes for His love. Thus Gregory, whose another epistle of the same argument, number 55, addressed to Chlothar II, then King of the Neustrian Franks, is also extant: And Chlothar II, King. in which he again names in the same order the most beloved sons Laurentius the Presbyter and Mellitus the Abbot. In his kingdom at that time were the Bishops Simplicius at Paris, Melantius at Rouen, and S. Licinius at Angers (whom we celebrate below on the thirteenth of February), all known from the inscription of S. Gregory's earlier epistle.
[9] Having returned to Britain with his companions, S. Laurentius was received with the greatest rejoicing of all for having expedited the legation to the Supreme Pontiff according to the wishes and expectations of everyone. His welcome return to Britain. The assistance of the co-workers brought along testified to this, as did the illustrious gifts brought, the pallium sent to S. Augustine established as Primate of all Britain and Archbishop, the faculty granted to erect various bishoprics, and finally the epistles of S. Gregory to Augustine, to King Ethelbertus, and to his wife the Queen, in the last of which an honorable mention of S. Laurentius is found. For, says S. Gregory, our most beloved son Laurentius the Presbyter and Peter the monk, returning, have related what the glory of your reverence has been toward the most reverend brother and co-Bishop Augustine, and what comforts or what charity you have bestowed upon them. We shall treat more fully of that Queen on the twenty-fourth of February. We treated S. Peter the monk, afterward the first Abbot of the monastery of SS. Peter and Paul, on the sixth of January: the aforementioned Ruffinianus was the third Abbot of this monastery. Having soon resumed their former way of life, they labored strenuously, not only so that the Anglo-Saxons might either be drawn away from the ancestral worship of idols and joined to the true religion of Christ, or that those already baptized might be imbued with the most sacred laws and Catholic doctrine; but also so that the ancient Britons and Scots might be induced by fraternal admonition They labored in vain with the Britons and Scots. to keep the Catholic peace with them and to undertake the common labor of evangelizing the Gentiles for the Lord: whom Augustine, having convened them to a Synod, found opposed to his petition, as Bede relates at greater length in book 2, chapter 2.
[10] Wherefore SS. Augustine, Laurentius, and other companions, judging that they must redouble their labor in cultivating the English and Saxons, divided the provinces among themselves. Bishops are ordained in the year 604: Mellitus. Then indeed, as Bede relates in chapter 3, in the year of the Lord's Incarnation 604, Archbishop Augustine ordained two Bishops, namely Mellitus and Justus; Mellitus for preaching to the province of the East Saxons. When this province had received the word of truth, King Ethelbertus built in the city of London a church of S. Paul the Apostle, in which both he and his successors might have the seat of their episcopal dignity. Justus, however, he ordained Bishop in Kent itself, Justus, in the western part, in the city of Rochester; in which the King built a church of the Blessed Apostle Andrew. S. Augustine judged that Laurentius, who was strenuously laboring for the salvation of souls beyond the rest, was a man fit to bring the youthful Church to a state of maturity: therefore, as Bede testifies in chapter 4, Laurentius. lest upon his own death the state of the Church, still so young, should begin to waver even for a moment without a Pastor, while still living he ordained Laurentius as Bishop to succeed him in the Church of Durovernum. The episcopal see, moreover, as is read in book 1, chapter 33, Augustine had placed in a church of ancient Roman workmanship; consecrated by him in the name of the holy Savior, God and Lord Jesus Christ. He had also built a monastery not far from the city to the east, in which at his urging Ethelbertus built from the foundations a church of the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, Here he consecrates the church of SS. Peter and Paul: which, however, not Augustine himself but his successor Laurentius consecrated; and soon, as is said in book 2, chapter 3, the body of S. Augustine, which had been placed beside the church, was brought inside and decently buried in the northern porch of it. S. Augustine died on the seventh day before the Kalends of June, He succeeds S. Augustine in 608: and, as the Worcester chronicler adds, on a Tuesday: which characteristics agree with the bissextile year 608 with the Dominical Letter G F, to which year the Westminster chronicler and Sigebert also assign his death. From the death of S. Augustine, therefore, S. Laurentius presided over the Church of Durovernum for ten years, eight months, and seven days, having died on the second of February in the year of Christ 619, which year is confirmed by the date of his successor Mellitus, who in Bede, chapter 7, he dies in 619. after governing the Church of Durovernum for five years, departed to heaven in the year of the Incarnation of the Lord six hundred and twenty-four, on the eighth day of the Kalends of May. The more illustrious deeds that Archbishop Laurentius performed are described by Bede in chapters 4, 5, and 6 as follows.
§ IV. The Life of S. Laurentius in the episcopate, in the words of S. Bede.
From the Venerable Bede.
[11] Laurentius, having attained the rank of the Archiepiscopate, most strenuously took care to augment the foundations of the Church which he had seen nobly laid, he instructs his subjects: and to advance them to the completion of their due summit, both by the frequent voice of holy exhortation and by the continuous examples of pious action. He bore the care not only of the new Church which had been gathered from the English, but also endeavored to bestow pastoral solicitude on the peoples of the old inhabitants of Britain, and also of the Scots who inhabit Ireland, the island nearest to Britain. For when he learned that the Scots in their own aforesaid homeland, the Britons and Irish, as also the Britons in Britain itself, lived and professed in a manner less than Ecclesiastical in many things, especially that they did not celebrate the solemnity of Easter at its proper time, to celebrate Easter rightly, but, as we have shown above, thought the day of the Lord's Resurrection should be observed from the fourteenth to the twentieth moon; he wrote, together with his co-Bishops, an exhortatory epistle to them, beseeching and imploring them to maintain the unity of peace and of Catholic observance with the Church of Christ spread throughout the whole world, a letter sent, the beginning of which epistle is as follows: To the most beloved brothers in the Lord, the Bishops or Abbots throughout all Scotland, Laurentius, Mellitus, and Justus, Bishops, servants of the servants of God. When the Apostolic See, according to its custom, as throughout the whole world, directed us to preach to the pagan nations in these western parts and we happened to enter this island which is called Britain, before we came to know them, we venerated with great reverence of holiness both the Britons and the Scots, believing that they walked according to the custom of the universal Church. But having come to know the Britons, we thought the Scots were better. But through Daganus the Bishop coming to this island which we mentioned above, and Columbanus the Abbot coming into Gaul, we learned that the Scots differ in nothing from the Britons in their manner of life. For Bishop Daganus, coming to us, would not take food with us, nor even in the same lodging in which we ate. The same Laurentius also sent, together with his co-Bishops, letters fitting to their rank to the Priests of the Britons as well, by which he strove to confirm them in the unity of the Catholic faith. He attempted to induce them: But how much he profited by these efforts, the present times still declare.
[12] In these times, Mellitus, Bishop of London, went to Rome to discuss with the Apostolic Pope Boniface necessary matters concerning the Church of the English. And when that most reverend Pope convened a synod of the Bishops of Italy, When S. Mellitus had gone to Rome, to establish regulations concerning the life and tranquility of monks, Mellitus also sat among them, in the eighth year of the reign of the Emperor Phocas, the thirteenth Indiction, the third day of the Kalends of March; in the year 610, so that he might also confirm with his own authority what had been regularly decreed by subscribing, and on returning to Britain might bring with him he receives letters from Pope Boniface. commands and observances for the Church of the English, together with the epistles which the same Pontiff directed to the beloved Archbishop Laurentius, and to the entire Clergy, and likewise to King Ethelbertus and to the English nation.
[13] In the year of the Lord's Incarnation six hundred and i sixteen (which is the twenty-first year from when Bishop Augustine was sent with his companions to preach to the English nation), King Ethelbertus of the Cantians, after the temporal kingdom King Ethelbertus dies in the year 616: which he had held most gloriously for fifty-six years, entered upon the eternal joys of the heavenly kingdom. Eadbaldus succeeds as King in Kent. But after the death of Ethelbertus, when his son Eadbaldus had taken the reins of the kingdom, it was to the great detriment of the still tender growth of the Church there. For not only did he refuse to accept the faith of Christ, but he was also polluted with such fornication as the Apostle testifies was not even heard of among the Gentiles, so that he had his father's wife. 1 Cor. 5:1. By both of which crimes he gave occasion for returning to their former vomit to those who, under the rule of his parent, had accepted the laws of faith and chastity either out of the favor or fear of the King. Nor were the scourges of heavenly severity lacking to chasten or correct the perfidious King. For he was burdened with frequent fits of madness and the invasion of an unclean spirit. Moreover, the death of k Sebert, Among the East Saxons, the sons of Sebert. King of the East Saxons, increased the storm of this disturbance; for when, seeking the everlasting kingdom, he left l three sons who had remained pagans as heirs of his temporal kingdom, they immediately began openly to serve the idolatry which, while he was alive, they had seemed to have somewhat intermitted, and to give their subjects free license to worship idols. And when they saw the Pontiff, in the celebration of the solemnities of the Masses in the church, idolaters. give the Eucharist to the people, they said to him (as is commonly reported), inflated with barbarous folly: Why do you not also hand to us that bright bread, which you used to give to our father Saba (for so they were accustomed to call him), and which you do not cease to give the people still in the church? To whom he answered: If you are willing to be washed in that saving font in which your father was washed, you can also be partakers of the holy bread in which he partook: but if you despise the laver of life, you are in no way able to receive the bread of life. But they said: We will not enter that font, for we know that we have no need of it, but we wish to be refreshed by that bread. And when they had been diligently and often admonished by him that it could by no means happen that anyone should communicate in the sacred oblation without the sacred purification, at last, moved to fury, they said: If you will not consent to us in so easy a matter as we ask, you can no longer remain in our province. And they expelled him and ordered him to depart from their kingdom with his followers.
[14] Expelled from there, he came to Kent, to discuss with the co-Bishops Laurentius and Justus what should be done in these matters. In a Synod of the Bishops, a departure from Britain is decided. And it was decreed by common counsel that it would be better for all to return to their homeland and there serve the Lord with a free mind, than to reside without fruit among rebels to the faith. Accordingly, Mellitus and Justus were the first to depart, and withdrew to parts of Gaul, intending to wait there for the outcome of events. But not for long did the Kings who had expelled the herald of truth from their land serve demonic cults with impunity. For having gone out to battle against the nation of the m Gewissae, they all alike fell in the battle with their whole army: nor (though the instigators had perished) could the common people, roused to wickedness, be corrected, nor recalled to the simplicity of faith and charity which is in Christ.
[15] When therefore Laurentius was about to follow Mellitus and Justus and leave Britain, he ordered himself to be prepared a bed that very night in the church of the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, S. Laurentius is by S. Peter of which we have frequently spoken; in which, after many prayers and tears poured forth to God for the state of the Church, when he had lain down to rest and had fallen asleep, received with blows, the most blessed Prince of the Apostles appeared to him, and for a long time in the secrecy of the night afflicting him with rather harsh scourges, inquired with Apostolic severity why he was abandoning the flock which Christ Himself had entrusted to him, or to which of the pastors he was leaving the sheep of Christ, placed in the midst of wolves, by fleeing. Have you forgotten my example, he said, who for the little ones of Christ, whom He had commended to me as a sign of His love, endured chains, blows, prisons, afflictions, and finally death itself — even death on a cross — from unbelievers and enemies of Christ, to be crowned myself together with Christ? Animated by these scourges and exhortations of the blessed Peter, the servant of Christ Laurentius, as soon as morning came, went to the King, and drawing back his garment, by the welts shown, he converts the King: showed him how terribly he had been lacerated with blows: and the King, greatly marveling and asking who had dared to inflict such wounds on so great a man, when he heard that the Bishop had endured such torments and wounds from the Apostle of Christ for the sake of his salvation, was greatly afraid: and anathematizing all worship of idols and renouncing his unlawful marriage, he accepted the faith of Christ, and being baptized, took care to consult and favor the affairs of the Church in all things as far as he could. He also sent into Gaul and recalled Mellitus and Justus, and ordered them to return freely to govern their Churches. After a year from when they had departed, they returned, and Justus indeed went back to the city of Rochester over which he had presided. The Londoners, however, refused to receive Mellitus as Bishop, preferring to serve idolatrous priests. For the King did not have such great power as his father had held over the kingdom, so that he could restore the Bishop to his Church against the will and opposition of the pagans. Nevertheless, he himself with his people, from the time he was converted to the Lord, devoted himself to the divine commandments. Indeed, in the monastery of the most blessed Prince of the Apostles, he also built a church of the holy Mother of God, which Archbishop Mellitus consecrated.
[16] For while this King was reigning, the blessed Archbishop Laurentius ascended to the heavenly kingdom, he dies, and was buried in the church and monastery of the holy Apostle Peter, beside his predecessor Augustine, on the fourth day of the Nones of February. After him Mellitus, who was Bishop of London, received the See of the Church of Durovernum, being third from Augustine.
Notes§ V. Miracles in life and after death, from the Legend of John Capgrave.
[17] The blessed Laurentius, journeying into a Scotland, came to a certain region He walks upon the sea, after a boatman is drowned: where an arm of the sea denied passage to him and his companions. And while he sat on a nearby hill, waiting for a boat — which today is called Laurence's Hill — he finally begged a boatman he had spotted to ferry him across. But the man, alien to both divine and human piety, refusing the pleas of the suppliant, was soon devoured by supernal indignation: not only by the maw of the sea, but by heavenly flame, which consumed the impious man with his ship. Seeing this, the man of God, full of faith and the Holy Spirit, enters b the sea as if it were a field, and treading the watery mountains as if they were solid ground, is carried across to the other shore with dry feet.
[18] Preaching the Gospel in a certain village, when he found no one to receive him, he was expelled with reproach; He is illuminated with light by night, the village being burned. and under a certain hedge he rested for that night: and a solar splendor poured down from heaven surrounded the witness of the Lord and turned that night into day for him. But that malicious village of the people, which had banished the messenger of salvation, was suddenly set ablaze by a thunderbolt hurled from above, and together with all its inhabitants, utterly destroyed the whole place into perpetual desolation, just as Sodom.
[19] While the man of God was everywhere preaching the word of God in Scotland, and his fame had spread far and wide, S. c Ternanus, Archbishop of Ireland, came to him, He persuades Ternanus to observe Easter legitimately: a man of such great holiness that he was said to have raised three dead persons. Hearing the blessed Laurentius discoursing on the observance of Easter and other Apostolic institutions, he yielded to the truth and strove to correct his own nation in the future.
[20] Returning at length, the holy man of God found the son of a certain host of his dead, and the father and mother exceedingly sorrowful, who crying out with a loud voice said: He raises a dead man: O holy Laurentius, raise our son, that we may more faithfully believe in Him whom you preach, Jesus Christ. After making a prayer, he said to the boy: Arise; and immediately the boy rose: who earnestly testified that he had been snatched by most hideous spirits to the flaming depths of hell; but at the prayer of S. Laurentius, he had been brought back to his body by the luminous Angels of God. Having baptized him with his father and mother and the whole household and kinship, He produces a spring. the holy man, penetrating the region, everywhere displayed saving signs and teachings; and near a certain city in arid places he produced a spring of water, which to this day does not cease to flow with unfailing abundance.
[21] In a certain village called d Forduna, the inhabitants built a church in his honor after his death, Women are denied access to the temple of S. Laurentius. which is endowed with so great a privilege of sanctity that no woman may ever enter it. The God-beloved Queen of Scotland, S. e Margaret, with pious devotion wished to enter it with candles and other sacred offerings. The Canons, meeting her at the gate of the atrium, earnestly entreated her not to transgress the law of the most sacred institution and incur the displeasure of the Patron presiding there. But she, responding that she rather wished to honor and exalt the sacred place, pressed her purpose. She had scarcely touched the atrium when, suddenly tormented with dire agonies throughout her whole body, she began to cry out: Quickly, she said, take me away from here: behold, I am already dying. When the Clergy had prayed for her, the Queen, having recovered her health, adorned the church with a silver cross, a precious chalice, and other gifts, and invoked S. Laurentius with constant veneration, whom she was unable to approach in body. In the year of the Lord six hundred and nineteen, S. Laurentius, leaving this world on the f third day before the Nones of February, was buried beside S. Augustine.
[22] A Saxon foreigner, with heels growing from his back, after seeking the patronage of innumerable Saints, Heels growing from the back, came to England, and at Westminster received a divine oracle that he should seek his healing at the shrine of S. Augustine, Apostle of the English. When after three days he had spent his time in prayers there, he beheld three men of Angelic brightness, radiant with heavenly splendor, of whom the one in the middle, tall in stature, had hair whitened like heavenly snow; his aspect was sweet and lovable, exhibiting his brilliance beyond mortal luster. The sign of the Cross which he bore in his right hand shone with ineffable splendor. He who was on his right was of moderate stature; They are removed by SS. Augustine, Laurentius, and Mellitus appearing. but the one on his left was of the stature of Zacchaeus. The garments of all were glorious beyond human comprehension. As they approached the sick man, he who was in the middle said: Go, and having loosed the natural bonds of his sinews, restore him to his proper state. Immediately the one on the right from the head, and the one on the left from the feet, disentangled the twisted limbs. And when the sick man cried out, having received his health, he beheld each of the Saints entering their respective tombs. S. Augustine was in the middle, S. Laurentius on the right, and S. Mellitus the Bishop on the left.
Notes§ VI. Epitaph inscribed on the tomb, from Harpsfield.