ON SS. WULFHAD AND RUFFINUS, MARTYRS,
AT STONE IN ENGLAND.
PRELIMINARY COMMENTARY.
Wulfad, Martyr at Stone in England (St.)
Ruffinus, Martyr at Stone in England (St.)
BY THE AUTHOR G. C.
§ I. The cult and relics of the Saints.
Stone is a market town in the county of Stafford, as Camden attests in his Britannia, in our copy, page 439, which, having arisen in the Saxon age, found its name from the stones which the forefathers had heaped up by a solemn rite, to mark the place, The cult of these Saints, from heterodox [writers,] where Wulfhere, the most pagan king of the Mercians, by a monstrous crime slew his sons Wulfad and Rufinus, because they had given their names to Christ: in which place, when posterity had consecrated a little church in their memory, a town immediately grew up, to which, from those stones, the name Stone (for "stone" in English means a stone lapis) was given, as the Peterborough history records. Whatever be the case about the slaughter wrought by the father Wulfhere upon his sons, which we shall afterward call to examination, at least thanks are owed by Catholics to the heretic Camden, that he bears testimony to the ancient cult of these Martyrs, and confesses that a church was built in their memory. To this the heterodox editors of the English Monasticon agree, who in volume 2 of that work, from page 127, published in print, from very ancient manuscripts, the pious donations made to this church, in which Wulfad is everywhere adorned with the title of saint. But that in those diplomas no mention is made of St. Ruffinus, I judge to have been done for the sake of brevity, just as we are commonly wont to call a church dedicated to two or more saints briefly only by the name of the first Saint. For the rest, let no one wonder that, to prove the cult of these Saints, I have adduced heterodox witnesses: for in this matter the testimony of those who otherwise are wont to dissemble or obscure the ancient veneration of the Saints ought by no means to be suspect. Now I proceed to the Catholic writers.
[2] Among the supplements to Usuard, the Altemps codex, concerning which something was said in the preface to our illustrated Usuard, page 63, and by Catholic writers, records Wulfad alone thus: In the territory of Coventry, at the monastery of Stanes, of St. Wulfad the martyr, who, for the faith of Christ, being slain by the sword by King Wulfhere his father, deserved to receive an everlasting crown, marking himself to live i.e., showing that he lives by manifest signs. The Martyrology of Richard Whitford, or the Salisbury Martyrology, printed at London in the year 1526 in English, expressly proclaims both brothers with a eulogy and as martyrs, not on this day, but on July 31, perhaps because there, for a peculiar reason, their festivity was celebrated on another day. Ferrarius, in the Catalogue of the Saints, on June 1, thus announces both Saints: At Peterborough in England, of the holy Martyrs Rufinus and Wulfad, brothers. But in the notes he indicates that he received them from the English Martyrology. But I do not know why he places them at Peterborough, since, according to both editions of that Martyrology, they are expressly said to be venerated at Stone in Staffordshire. Perhaps Ferrarius saw the Peterborough records cited in the margin, or read somewhere that on the occasion of that martyrdom the monastery of Peterborough was built, and thence thought that their festivity was celebrated at Peterborough. However it be, he erred in assigning the place of martyrdom or of cult, as will easily be gathered from what has been and is to be said. Furthermore, in noting the day of the annual festivity, he followed the Martyrology which was published in English in the year 1608. But in the second edition of the English Martyrology, which was made in the year 1640, they are more rightly referred to July 24: for in the very Acts, which we shall subjoin to this Commentary, at number 26, it is thus clearly read: But they suffered on the ninth day before the Kalends of August. After all these things, Castellanus, in his Universal Martyrology, page 904, as if groping in the dark, reported these two Martyrs among the undated Saints, and recounted them thus obscurely: St. Vulfadius, who was put to death by martyrdom in England with a certain St. Rufinus. These are the things which I could find in the Martyrologists.
[3] and it is proved from the Acts themselves. The immemorial cult of those Saints is also proved from the Acts, which we have from the Peterborough manuscript, in which at number 28 the following are read: The most prudent queen … came to the place of their martyrdom, and, gathering their bodies, honorably buried them together in one stone sarcophagus. And fittingly, the Lord disposing, by a daughter of light their bodies were buried in peace, whose souls the Lord led into the splendors of the Saints, that their names may live, inscribed in the book of life, unto the ages of ages. But in process of time the venerable queen caused a church of stone to be built there with more elegant work; in which place the great Lord, magnifying the merits of his Martyrs, is wont, when faith deserves it, to work wonders with manifold miracles. Thenceforth a multitude of the weak and of those laboring under diverse languors, and of others seeking the Lord and demanding the benefits of the blessed Martyrs, was wont to frequent that place, and to carry stones thither for the building. Whence also that place is called Stanes, which name, translated from the English tongue into Latin, is interpreted "stones" lapides. Then, toward the end of the Acts, this is had: But in that place, by the name of Stanes, where the bodies of the holy martyrs Wulfad and Rufinus are buried in peace, a college of Canons Regular is devoted to the divine offices, where, signs glittering, many benefits are afforded to those seeking health, to the praise of our Lord Jesus Christ, by the merits of the Saints, to whom is glory and dominion unto all the ages of ages. Amen.
[4] To these Acts, in the English Monasticon, volume 2, page 125, is annexed a certain fragment, The true deeds and miracles of the Martyrs probably perished. from which it is easily gathered how the ancient miracles of these Martyrs, and perhaps also their more solemn memory, perished. The anonymous author there writes thus: Almighty God, provoked and angered by the sins of the English, transgressing the Christian law, delivered them into the hands of the nations ignorant of Christ. The most dire and most hard barbarity of the Danes, many times in a grave multitude, and especially under the leaders Inguar and Hubba, who martyred St. Edmund, inundated all England, striving with every effort to empty the island of Christianity and of its natives. For they destroyed with flame [and] famine the churches with their ministers, the monasteries with their monks, the males with the women, the old with the younger, [and] burned in the fire, in contempt of the divine law, the books, the Lives of the Saints, male and female, described with their miracles. This pernicious disaster lasted, with a varied turning of fortune, sometimes conquering, sometimes conquered, up to the times of the most excellent king Edgar, than which England never experienced any happier. The old Saxon Chronicle, published at Oxford in the year 1692 in Latin and Saxon, records this irruption of the Danes at the year 880. But among other monasteries the monastery of Peterborough was laid waste, concerning which Camden, page 379, after narrating its origin, speaks thus: This monastery thereafter flourished with a great reputation of sanctity for about 214 years, up to those most grievous times of the Danish devastation: for then the monks were slain, and the monastery, utterly overthrown, lay for 109 years, as it were unburied, in its own ruins. It is no wonder, therefore, that after so long a time of ruin we do not have more certain testimonies about the deeds and miracles of these Martyrs.
[5] To inquire here at length about the sacred remains of those Martyrs I think fruitless: Concerning the head of St. Wulfad, for who could easily say whether and where they are preserved today, after the Catholic religion has been eliminated from England? Yet I cannot but subjoin here a certain little narration about the head of St. Wulfad, which is reported in the English Monasticon, on the page just cited, in these words: Many strove, with religious devotion, to exalt the Saints of their country, with pious solicitude to investigate their Lives, and by the authority of the Supreme Pontiff to canonize them, and for that cause some busied themselves to visit the Apostolic See. For the sake of this matter, the procurator at that time of the church of the blessed martyrs Wulfad and Rufinus went to Rome, and brought with him, against the will of nearly all the brethren there serving God, the head of blessed Wulfad, by whose sanctity he might more easily obtain what he proposed to ask. And presenting himself to the presence of the lord Pope, he asked more earnestly that the vicar of Christ himself would deign to canonize their Saints, nay their fathers' Saints, and would order their names to be inscribed in the Martyrology of the Holy Roman Church. But lest anyone should dissent or doubt about the sanctity of the Martyrs — although the miracles written about them had been destroyed by the rage of the pagans — he offered of his own accord that he was willing to pass through a pyre of fire with the same head, and for this cause asserted that he had brought it thither with him. The holy Pope, strong in the spirit of discretion, answered: The saying of the Lord forbids that to be done, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. For the sacred canons did not sanction that an examination of fire or water, or a single combat of any kind, should take place, but superstitious men invented it. Yet, having compassion on their laborious journey, he assented to their just petitions, and decreed that the names of those Saints be inserted in the Martyrology of the Church of the Apostolic See, and that the day of their martyrdom be solemnized in their own land and church. Since St. Wulfad is read today as inscribed in no Roman Martyrology, as far as I know, I leave the whole credit of this narration with the anonymous author, who in the same place adds the following miracle.
[6] it prodigiously remaining in another place, So great a business being accomplished according to their wish, he says, returning home [*] in great gladness of mind, they passed the night at the city of Biterinum, and there, in the church of St. Laurence the martyr, for that one night they committed the holy head to be guarded. In the morning, attempting to hasten their journey, they wished to take up again that sacred head and to return to their country; but by no effort could they move it from the place. So confusion covered the face, and great sadness the mind, of them, so great a treasure being lost, as they sought again their native soil. It is clear, therefore, that it was not well pleasing to God and to the holy martyr Wulfad that his head should be carried, for the proof of his sanctity, from kingdom to kingdom through various places, as it were for a spectacle, and even, what is worse, for the sake of obtaining gain or honor or favor. So the head of the holy Martyr remained in that city, and, frequent miracles glittering, it became known to all that he abides with the martyrs in heaven.
[7] a certain doubt is proposed. When I read these things, I began to doubt what the author meant to signify by "the city of Biterinum." After no slight investigation of this obscure expression, all things being weighed, he seems probably to have understood the city of Bourges in Gaul, both because it is not very far from the route of the English returning from Italy to their country, and because in it I find a church of St. Laurence, in which the head of St. Wulfad is narrated to have been deposited. I have learned
indeed from the Patriarchium of Bourges, which our Labbe published in the New Library of Manuscript Books, that in the same city and church are honorably preserved the relics of a certain St. Wulfad; but he is said to have been archbishop of Bourges, as is plain from the words of the anonymous monk of Saint-Sulpice, who, in chapter 48 of the Patriarchium, in Labbe, volume 2, page 67, writes thus: The forty-eighth [who] presided [was] St. Wulfad, distinguished in nobility, illustrious in sanctity, eminent in doctrine, worthy of admiration for his diligence and solicitude both in divine and in human affairs. He (as at least my opinion holds) is seen at St. Laurence's at Bourges in the tomb of the holy pontiffs David and Asclepius, and is there held in veneration under the appellation of St. Florentius; and this is both probable by conjecture, and is also indicated by certain traces. For whereas he ought, as of old, to be named in the popular tongue "saint Vulphant," now nevertheless by error, as the public custom of speaking has it, he is called "saint Florent." Whether perhaps some confusion of relics or of names has here been made, I leave to the people of Bourges to investigate, and I am unwilling rashly to pass judgment from the mere homonymy of St. Wulfad and the similarity of place.
Annotations* read "the house" domum
§ II. The writer of the Acts and their authority.
I do not know who composed the Acts of our Martyrs. Camden wrongly ascribes them Camden [assigns the writer of the Acts] to Robert Swapham, a monk of Peterborough, who flourished after the middle of the 12th century under Henry II, king of the English, as Clement Reyner attests in the Appendix to the Apostolate of the Benedictines in England, writing 64, page 141. "Thereafter," says Camden in the description of Britain, page 379, "it began to be called Petriburgus, Petropolis, Peterborow, and Burgh, and it was by far the most celebrated monastery. But by what beginnings and foundations it was built, I have thought it worth the while to touch briefly, from that Robert de Swapham, an author sufficiently ancient." Then, under the name of that Robert, he sells to unwary readers the whole following history: "Peada, son of Penda, who [was] the first Christian king of the Mercians, in the year of salvation 656, to propagate the Christian religion, laid the foundations of a monastery at Medeshamstead in the region of the Gyrwas, which, being carried off by the evil arts of his wife, he could not complete. To Peada succeeded Wulfhere his brother, who, being most averse to the Christian religion, slew his sons Wulfad and Rufinus with barbarous savagery, because they had given themselves to Christ; but he himself, a few years after, having embraced the Christian religion, in order that he might wash away this his impiety by some pious work, put his hand to the monastery begun by his brother, which, by the help of his brother Ethelred, [and] of his sisters Kineburga and Kineswitha, being completed in the year 633 (read 673), he consecrated to St. Peter (whence the place began to be called Petriburgus), enriched it with most ample revenues, and appointed Sexwulf, a very pious man, who was the chief promoter of the work, its first abbot."
[9] Since Camden asserts these things so confidently, he wrongly assigns [it.] who would not believe that all these were affirmed by Robert Swapham? Meanwhile Robert makes no word about the slaughter of Wulfad and Ruffinus, wrought by their father Wulfhere: nay, in the manuscript history of the monastery of Peterborough, some fragments of which we gave on February 13 in the Life of St. Ermenilda, §3, after the death of Peada the first founder he thus says: When his brother Wulfhere obtained the kingdom, the good work which his brother had begun he himself did well to love, to honor, [and] to enrich with lands and other things, and through that same Saxulf, a most strenuous and most religious man, and most learned as well in worldly as in ecclesiastical affairs, he began most instantly to build, his brother Ethelred and his holy sisters Kyneburga and Kyneswitha helping him. These words do not indicate that Wulfhere was most averse to the Christian religion, since he immediately continued his brother's pious work, when he obtained the kingdom. The writer of the foundation of Peterborough (whether it were Robert Swapham or another), who is published in the English Monasticon, volume 1, page 63, likewise makes no mention of this barbarous cruelty of king Wulfhere; but on the contrary says that the divine worship was more widely propagated under the most Christian and beneficent kings Peada, Oswiu, Wulfhere, and Ethelred, who had succeeded one another, and that Wulfhere so burned in the worship of Christ that he kindled not only his native peoples, but also the kings and peoples of the South subject to him, by royal gifts and enlarged kingdoms, to the true sect of God. From these things I conclude that Camden imposed upon his readers, when he pronounced Robert Swapham the author of this fable.
[10] [The author is anonymous, who wrote long after the martyrdom from popular tradition,] In vain shall I inquire who first attached this slaughter of the Martyrs to king Wulfhere. I indeed suspect that that little fable first arose from popular tradition and was also committed to writing, after the Danes had miserably devastated England, and, among other ruins of monasteries, the true history of those Martyrs had perished, as can be gathered from number 4. My suspicion is increased by the fact that the very writer of the Acts hints that the whole foundation of his narration is exceedingly weak and uncertain: for he thus begins his history: "Nature, by generation, brought forth the blessed youths Wulfad and Ruffinus [as] brothers; but the grace of regeneration rendered them, in faith and in the shedding of blood, more truly brothers by a happier germ. For they are said to have been the sons of Wulfhere, king of the Mercians, and of the holy queen Erminilda." Do you see, by the word "are said" it is not obscurely indicated that the author, after the long-past times of the martyrdom, from the report of the crowd or from popular tradition attributed these sons to Wulfhere, king of the Mercians? Yet upon that foundation the whole of his history rests, and that collapsing, the chief part of the wordy narration must fall. Not a little also against this more recent tragedy makes the silence of the ancient historians of England, who made no mention of those sons of Wulfhere.
[11] and he asserts various things which Moreover William of Malmesbury, book 1 On the Deeds of the Kings of the English, chapter 4, thus expressly writes: Wulfhere, lest he should disappoint the hope of the citizens, busied himself diligently, [and] with great powers of mind and body showed himself a useful prince. In short, Christianity, scarcely yet palpitating in his kingdom and initiated through his brother, he most strenuously aided by his favor… He had in marriage Ermenhilda, daughter of Ercombert, king of the men of Kent, and from her begot Kinred and Werburga, a most holy virgin, who lies at Chester. Ingulf, abbot of Croyland, at the beginning of his history, acknowledges the same Kinred as son of Wulfhere, in these words: There succeeded to the kingdom Kenred, son of Wulfhere, and he reigned four years, and in the fifth year, the kingdom being left, he set out on pilgrimage to Rome, and there, at the thresholds of the Apostles, ended his life. To both agrees Ranulf Higden, printed at Oxford among fifteen other writers of England in the year 1691, who, in book 5 of the Polychronicon, in the said edition, page 236, treating of Wulfhere, says: He took to wife Ermenilda, daughter of Ercombert, king of Kent, from whom he begot Kenred and Wereburga. Nay, the author of the Life of St. Ermenilda, which we exhibited on February 13, has thus: But to St. Erminilda was born one only holy offspring, holy Werburga. Perhaps here "one only offspring" signifies one only daughter; which phrase, so taken, would not exclude a male. However it be, it is a marvel that these and other ancient writers of English affairs made no mention of these two sons of Wulfhere, illustrious for martyrdom.
[12] Our Henschen, on February 13, in the Life of St. Ermenilda, §§2 and 3, from various testimonies of Bede and other ancient authors, learnedly shows and they are repugnant to true chronology, that the greatest part of the Acts is repugnant to true chronology and to English history. To omit other things, the venerable Bede, book 3, chapter 24, attests that the dukes of the Mercian nation rebelled against king Oswiu, Wulfhere, son of the same Penda, a youth, being raised to be king. But Wulfhere gave, in the year of the Lord 664, the 7th of his reign, a diploma in favor of the monastery of Peterborough, which is exhibited entire in the English Monasticon, volume 1, from page 63. If Wulfhere took up the kingdom as a youth in the year 657, how, before the year 664, did he slay his sons, already fit for hunting, out of hatred of the Christian faith? How, I beseech, before the year 664 did he have a marriageable daughter Wereburga, as is reported in the Acts, number 5? There are also other arguments by which this narration is convicted of fiction; but lest I do what has already been done, I refer the reader to the cited Life of St. Ermenilda, being about to indicate briefly the chief anachronisms and errors of the fable in the Annotations.
[13] Not only did the first founders of our work, Bolland and Henschen, so judge concerning these Acts of the Martyrs, as our Alford confesses. but our Alford also, in the Ecclesiastical Annals of England, volume 2, at the year of Christ 669, number 10, adds his suffrage to their opinion in these words: Report is indeed wont to sew uncertain things to what is founded on sure argument: which if you have distinguished from the writings of the ancients, a discernment of things and circumstances being had, you have not vitiated the true with the doubtful. To me it is most fully persuaded that the royal youths Ulfad and Ruffinus were taken off by an innocent death, being intent on prayer and the Christian cause; and so are rightly placed among the Saints, as they are placed in our Martyrology on July 24. But that they were taught or baptized by Ceadda, bishop of Lichfield, or slain in his cell by Wolfhere, the pagan king, about the year 668, is alien from all truth. For neither had St. Ceadda in that year sat at Lichfield, and long before that year Wolfhere had received the faith of Christ; nay, immediately upon being made king, he had begun to promote the Christian cause, to found and enrich churches and monasteries, so that of him Malmesbury wrote thus: "Wolfhere most strenuously aided by his favor Christianity, scarcely palpitating in his kingdom, and initiated through his brother." Two things therefore in the narration displease, and cannot be reconciled: that the youths were taught by Ceadda of Lichfield, and slain by Wolfhere, a pagan king, in the year 668. It must therefore be said that they were baptized before by some bishop of Lichfield, or rather of the Mercians, before Wolfhere had begun to reign, especially in the time of his parent Penda, who labored to extinguish the Christian name, many kings being extinguished.
[14] Yet Alford there subjoins that Camden's opinion does not displease him, Camden's opinion being rejected, by which he hints that SS. Wulfad and Ruffinus were slain by Wulfhere the pagan before his entrance upon the kingdom. But neither does that opinion please us: for besides that it was devised at pleasure by Camden, the above-praised Bede asserts that the kingdom of the Mercians was taken up by Wulfhere as a youth. But he cannot be called a youth who already had sons fit for hunting and most tenacious of the Christian religion. Moreover, who would believe that king Ercombert, who first destroyed all the idols in the kingdom of Kent, gave his daughter Ermenilda in marriage to Wulfhere an idolater? Doubtless he would have imitated his father Eadbald, who, to Edwin, king of the Northumbrians, not yet a Christian, and seeking Ethelburga to wife, by the testimony of Bede, book 2, chapter 9, ordered it to be answered that it was not lawful for a Christian virgin to be given to a pagan, lest the faith and sacraments of the heavenly King should be profaned by the consortium
of a king who should be wholly ignorant of the worship of the true God. So too Peada, or Penda the younger, Wulfhere's brother, by the testimony of the same Bede, book 3, chapter 21, came to Oswiu, king of the Northumbrians, asking that his daughter Alchfleda be given to him to wife; nor could he otherwise obtain what he sought, unless he received the faith of Christ and baptism together with the nation over which he presided. Wherefore it seems in no way probable that St. Ermenilda contracted marriage with Wulfhere while he was still a heathen.
[15] a certain conjecture is proposed, Rather, with Henschen, I conjecture that those Martyrs suffered either of old in the ancient persecution stirred up under the Romans, or under Penda, the most bitter enemy of the Christians, concerning whom Malmesbury, book 1 On the Deeds of the Kings of the English, chapter 4, thus writes: In the year of the Lord's incarnation 626… a certain Penda … industrious in wars, and likewise fanatical and impious, presumed the name of king among the Mercians, when, now a man of fifty, he had nourished his audacity by frequent incursions against his neighbors. And so, the kingdom being seized, his mind sick of quiet, and one that knew not how great a crime it was to conquer in civil war, began to shake the nearest cities, to disquiet the borders of kindred kings, [and] altogether to act with great tumult and terror. For what would he not dare, who by nefarious rashness extinguished the lights of Britain — Edwin and Oswald, kings of the Northumbrians, [and] Sigebert, Egric, and Anna, kings of the East Angles, in whom brightness of birth and sanctity of life squared together… But now it is burdensome to tell how, gaping after all occasions of slaughter, and like a raven flying to the stench of a corpse, he of his own accord ran to the aid of Cadwalla, and was of great advantage for the recovery of [his] rule. Thus, raging for thirty years against his kinsmen, he committed nothing memorable against foreign nations. But at last his unbridled greed found an end suited to its deserts. For, routed by Oswiu, who had succeeded his brother Oswald, more by the power of God than by a military hand with auxiliaries, he increased the number of infernal souls. He had from queen Kineswitha the sons Weda (by others he is called Peada), Wulfhere, Ethelred, Merewald, Mercelin; two daughters, Kineburga and Kineswitha, both excelling in holy continence. Thus a parent perpetually rebellious against God poured forth most holy fruits to heaven. If Penda, in the first fury of his idolatry (toward the end of his life he seems to have been more placable toward the Christians), slew some of his grandsons or kinsmen for the profession of the Christian religion, this crime could easily have been transferred to Wulfhere, Penda's son, when the true knowledge of the martyrdom had perished, and after some centuries the popular report had grown by going, as not rarely happens in similar traditions. Yet I establish nothing from mere conjecture; but only think that this parricide is wholly to be removed from Wulfhere, the husband of St. Ermenilda.
[16] Being about to put an end to this Commentary, I forewarn a few things about the various circumstances of the Acts. and the reader is forewarned about the various appendages of the Acts. William Camden relates that Wulfhere, most averse to the Christian religion, inflicted death upon his sons, and a few years after embraced the Christian faith, as I reported above at number 8. I do not know whether he dug this out from some monuments, or fashioned it from his own brain, to render the history more probable. On the contrary, in the Acts which we received from the Peterborough manuscript, and which were afterward printed in the English Monasticon, volume 2, from page 119, it is said that Wulfhere, after receiving baptism, fell away from the faith of Christ, and by the counsels of the impious Werbold cut off the head of his son Wulfad before the altar, and inflicted a deadly wound on Ruffinus as he fled; and afterward built the monastery of Peterborough to expiate his crime. John Speed, in the Theatre of Great Britain, book 1, chapter 28, page 55, by a new invention even makes Wulfhere a martyr, in these words: Wolfhere, king of the Mercians, began a most ample and most magnificent monastery sacred to St. Peter, namely to expiate the slaughter of his two sons, whom he had slain in the cause of Christianity; but when he himself, for the same cause, because he embraced the Christian religion, had been taken off by his own mother, his brother Penda put his hand to the work begun. As many lines, so nearly many errors! For Peada, who reigned before Wulfhere, began to build the monastery of Peterborough; and he, according to Bede, book 3, chapter 24, perished by the treachery, as they say, of his own wife. But these things Speed, against the ancient writers of England, with the utmost confusion of matters, unskillfully ascribes to Wulfhere. To these add the chronological error of the year 546, which he placed in the margin. Now we here subjoin the Acts themselves, such as they are, from the Peterborough manuscript, and prefix to them the prologue, which is lacking in our manuscript, from the English Monasticon.
ACTS
BY AN ANONYMOUS AUTHOR
From a manuscript of the monastery of Peterborough, which has been collated with the edition of the English Monasticon, volume 2, from page 120.
Wulfad, Martyr at Stone in England (St.)
Ruffinus, Martyr at Stone in England (St.)
BHL Number: 8735
FROM A MANUSCRIPT.
PROLOGUE.
If a penetrating [and] fertile eloquence of Tullian faculty had combed my breast, and had polished to clearness the plectrum of my tongue, The author prefaces, it would sit firm in my purpose to proclaim, and with a panegyric style to illustrate, the martyrdom of the blessed brothers Wulfad and Ruffinus, youths indeed illustrious: for their triumphal titles we receive as commended by the very Wisdom of the Father, [and] believe them consecrated. For when our Savior armed and animated his athletes for the contest, forewarning and forearming them that manifold struggles were to be endured for his name, he foretold among other things: You shall be betrayed by parents, kinsmen, and friends, and they shall put some of you to death. Again elsewhere he says more expressly and manifestly what suits these martyrs: The father shall deliver up his son to death, etc.; that by so much the patience of the Saints might be proved the more ready, and the reward in heaven the more copious, and the crown the loftier, by how much the persecutor had been the nearer in the line of blood.
[2] that he wrote this martyrdom from his own devotion. For who will be able worthily to weigh what and how great torments of heart, together with torments of body, the offspring endured, while he suffers his own most dear one, a bloody butcher, and his own father, to be his slayer? Which thing, indeed foretold by the Lord, in what manner it was fulfilled in the aforenamed Youths, let [my] speech a undertake to unfold — with a rustic narration, though — to the knowledge of posterity. And indeed my own devotion incited me to do this. And, as the discernment of very many will judge, the passion of the aforesaid Youths, described in ancient times b, on account of the uncultivated style and false grammar with which the whole of it teems, lies open rather to contempt than to reading. O unspeakable grief! O unfading crown, when he does not tremble or delay to bring death upon the martyr who, by the law of nature, is bound to suffer death for the protecting of his son's life c!
ANNOTATIONS.
CHAPTER I.
The parents of both Martyrs, and the conversion of the former father to the Christian faith.
Wulfhere, having received baptism, takes St. Ermenilda to wife; Nature, by generation, brought forth the blessed youths Wulfad and Ruffinus [as] brothers, but the grace of regeneration renders them, in faith and in the shedding of blood, more truly brothers by a happier germ: for they are said to have been the sons of Wulfhere a, king of the Mercians, and of the holy queen Erminilda b, who, in the fourth year c after the slaughter of his father Penda d, a most pagan prince, had received the paternal scepter by right of succession. For he, baptized by bishop Tinan e, vowed a vow to the Lord that he would destroy the shrines of demons and blot out all idols from his kingdom, and would spread abroad the worship of the Christian religion as far as he was able [*]. This promise also he repeated when he took the excellent Erminilda in marriage: for this most blessed woman was illustrious in birth and in appearance, but more illustrious in faith and in sanctity. Born of Ercombert f, king of Kent, she had descended from the most illustrious Frankish kings among her forefathers, and had drawn her origin from the most holy stock of the kings of the East Angles g.
[4] And because the aforesaid Penda, both by wiles and by the chances of the field of war favoring him, took out of the way several kings of England, [but he falls away from the faith of Christ, a certain impious man instigating [him],] [and] who at last, slain by Oswiu h, the brother of St. Oswald i, together with almost all his princes, satraps, and retainers, perished by the just judgment of God as a vengeance for those kings, the heart of Wulfhere his son dreaded lest, on account of his father's enmity, he should perish by a like destruction. Providing therefore for himself and his kingdom, he betrothed k holy Erminilda — connected by consanguinity or affinity to all the extinguished kings — by a strict and discreet counsel, that in a time of wrath she herself might become the grace of reconciliation. Wulfhere, therefore, having obtained the name and ensign of king, deferred to render to the Lord his vows which his lips had uttered; nay, a certain depraved and perverse man, by name Werbold []l, who was his privy counselor, instigating [him], he, having slipped almost into apostasy, went backward from the faith. This same Werbold [] was an idolater, a man of Belial, a satellite of Satan, a minister — nay, an evil artificer — of what his father Penda had perpetrated, whom Wulfhere had appointed to himself as a whisperer m and counselor, like another Ahithophel, and as a ruler second to himself in his whole kingdom, just as Ahasuerus of old had appointed Haman. He was crafty in heart, sly in mouth, shifty in deed, slippery in flesh, swollen in mind.
[5] He broke out into such elation that he asked the king that his daughter be given to him as wife — still very little in age, who seeks Wulfhere's daughter as wife, the mother Werburga n by name, whom the queen had borne to him: for he reckoned that by such a covenant of nuptials he would succeed the king in the kingdom, and in the present would possess no small part of the kingdom. And indeed the king lent his assent to his petition; but the queen, more maturely and more prudently, altogether forbade this to be done, [and] disposed to betroth her to one only husband, to present her a chaste virgin to Christ, which she also did in due time: for the venerable Werburga, the suitors of royal stock being spurned, scorning the pompous pride and pinnacle of all worldly glory, bloomed like a violet in the beauty of an inviolate freshness, and, like a flowering lily, adorned the garden of the Lord with her virginal whiteness.
[6] The aforenamed Youths, brothers of the virgin Werburga, and the brothers resisting bore indignantly the insolence of the man, especially of a pagan, and to his presumptuous petition — that it might not, namely, be judged worthy of a hearing — resisted to his face. From that day, therefore, that crafty artificer of guile lay in wait for the Youths, being made to them as it were a lance in the side, and like a stake in the eyes. But they advanced in age and in the grace of the Holy Spirit, beloved by God and by men; and although not yet regenerated through baptism in Christ, yet, showing themselves candidates, as it were, of the sacred laver, they were pleasing by good works and by the best morals. They were, moreover, bright in appearance, but brighter in the elegance of their morals; graceful in gestures, shrewd in wit, eloquent in speech, understanding beyond old men, wise beyond their years, munificent and liberal toward all. By these and other like gifts adorning
arts, the Lord went before them in the blessings of his sweetness.
[7] The elder-born, Wulfad, boyhood being put off, had now reached the threshold of youth, Wulfad, in hunting, pursuing a stag, and, as befits royal stock, sometimes gave himself to fowling, yet chiefly to hunting; but by the wondrous governance of the pitying God, while he desires and is accustomed to hunt wild beasts unto death, he is shot at by the Lord's huntsmen [and] taken unto salvation. For on a certain day, while he was going to hunt, he came upon a stag of wondrous size, which, as it fled, he alone pursued alone for a long while. His companions being scattered [and], by the divine nod, wearied, the stag, bursting into the shady places of the woods, came to the dwelling of the man of God Cedda, built within the thickets of the grove upon the margin of a certain spring, and cast itself into that same spring, hiding itself to refresh its weariness by rest and by coolness. The servant of Christ Cedda, abounding in bowels of mercy toward the creatures of God, covered the stag with branches and leaves of trees, hiding and cooling it, because, as became clear at the end of the matter, he understood that something was being wrought divinely through its compliance: for afterward he placed a rope around its neck, and, it being refreshed by rest, bade it go off into the woods to crop its pasture.
[8] he finds St. Ceadda, The most holy Cedda o was, by the testimony of Bede, bishop of the church of Lichfield, illustrious for virtues and signs, who, indeed choosing for himself the better part of Mary, more secretly and more sacredly panting after the sweetness of contemplation, was leading a solitary life there for a time, [and] sustained himself on the roots of herbs and the fruits of forest trees. The venerable youth Wulfad, treading the tracks of the stag for a long while [], came to the cell of this man of God, and, beholding and saluting him, inquired of him whither the stag had gone, which he had pursued the whole day with so much sweat. To him the Saint answered: Am I then the keeper of thy stag? I care not for, I keep not, the wild beasts of the woods, nor the cattle of the field, nor the birds of the sky; but I have recognized and received the leader of thy salvation by the ministry of the stag: for the will of the Lord who prepares the stags has revealed to thee the thickets of his mysteries, that thou mayest believe in his name and be baptized unto the remission of thy sins, by a most beautiful presage []; nay, by the token of a sure omen the stag, plunging into the spring, portends and foreshows to thee the laver of saving baptism, so that from its meaning thou mayest learn that Davidic word: As the stag longs for the fountains of waters, so my soul longs for thee, O God. My soul has thirsted for God, the living fountain; when shall I come and appear before the face of God?
[9] by whom, admonished about receiving the faith of Christ, Through many things also the Saint discoursed, persuading and teaching how, in the mystery of irrational animals, the divine Wisdom has deigned to reveal its mysteries unto the salvation of the faithful. Namely, to Noah it announced, after his shipwreck, the dryness that restored the world, through the dove; and by the mouth of the ass beneath the yoke it restrained the folly of the Prophet; and by the compliance of the profane [*] raven it fed the excellent Elijah. And rightly the Lord of the Prophets, going toward Jerusalem, deigned to mount the ass and the colt, as a figure of the conversion of both peoples. He related to him, moreover, what is read of blessed Eustace — how the Lord deigned to appear to him in the form of a stag — and subjoined many things, namely the signs wrought concerning brute animals which are found in the deeds of the blessed Martin, Jerome, and other holy fathers.
[10] after a miracle was seen The venerable Wulfad, a vessel of election, is said [p] to have answered to the words of the holy priest: Truly venerable Father, the testimonies brought forth by thy sanctity would have been made exceedingly credible, and more conducive for me to believe what thou persuadest, if the stag which I was trying to catch — which thou didst hide in the spring, and then, its neck being bound about, didst bid go off into the wood — should at once, by thy prayers or command, appear in our presence. The holy priest forthwith prostrated himself in prayer, and behold, the aforesaid stag, bearing the rope on its neck, bursting forth from the grove, presented itself to their sight. Then the Saint, rising from prayer, said to the youth: Understand at least now that all things are possible to him who believes, and if anyone shall ask the Father anything in the name of the Son, it shall be done for him. Hear therefore, son, and thence incline thy ear to obey the Christian faith, to receive the grace of baptism: for he who shall have believed and been baptized, according to the Savior's promise, shall be saved.
[11] Comforted and strengthened in faith, Wulfad rolled himself before the feet of the man of God, he embraces it. and asked that the regeneration of the saving laver be granted to him. Blessed Cedda, seeing the Youth rooted and founded in faith, exulted in the Lord, giving thanks to God our salvation, who had begun in his breast the place of his habitation, and, a hand being laid on, catechized [] him; then, blessing the spring, in the same place he baptized him in the name of the Holy Trinity, being made to him a godfather [] and spiritual father. And because evening was coming on and the day was now declined, the holy father made his little son pass the night with him, and, with the food of bodily and spiritual nourishment, as he could, refreshed both the outer and inner man of him. A most beautiful spectacle likewise appeared there. Just as holy Cedda stayed with holy Wulfad, so the stag with the beast of burden — the wild animal with the tame — stood in all gentleness, lay down, [and] cropped the hay. Morning being come, the holy priest celebrated Mass, and, communicating his neophyte by participation of the Lord's body and blood, associated him to the body of the Church as a proper and most useful member. The stag, moreover, at the command of father Cedda, sought again the familiar groves, and the mind of the recruit of Christ advanced more and more in the faith and charity of God.
ANNOTATIONS.
p. Rightly the compiler of the Acts employed from time to time the phrases "is said," "are said," and the like, because he judged, and deservedly, that credence was not to be given to him by posterity in these more hidden colloquies and other matters. Concerning this manner of speaking I noted something in the preliminary Commentary, number 10.
* read "dilataturum" would spread abroad
* the edition reads "Werebod"
* the edition reads "Werbodus"
* the edition reads "e vicino" from nearby
* that is, "prognostico" presage
* the edition reads "prophetam"
* read "catechizavit" catechized
* the edition reads "patrinus" godfather
CHAPTER II.
The conversion of Ruffinus to the faith, and the martyrdom of both brothers.
Wulfad, confirmed in faith Wulfad, having entered the way of truth, [and] solicitous for the salvation of his brother, humbly besought holy Cedda that he would busy himself to obtain by his prayers from the Lord that he might bestow on his brother Rufinus both the desire and the effect of coming to the religion of the Christian faith. To him the holy elder said: Why dost thou ask to be granted by me, a small [man], what thou canst obtain from the Lord in an instant? for thy faith shall save thy brother, and within three days shall lead him to the acknowledgment of the truth: for he who set you apart from your mother's womb will call you both to himself by his grace, will justify [you] in himself, [and] will glorify [you] from himself. After this Wulfad, bidding farewell to the man of God, offered him a holy kiss, and, a blessing being sought from him and received, robust in faith he returned to his own home. And when he was approaching his father's castle, from which he had departed — which is now called Wulfhere-cester a — he met his brother Rufinus, afflicted with great grief at his absence: for he suspected that he had been torn to pieces by some beast, or slain by some adversary, or that something else adverse had befallen him.
[13] For this cause he had gathered together very many of his [men], and had disposed to seek him through the hollows of the valleys, through the thickets of the groves, he exhorts his brother to the same, through the lairs of wild beasts. But when he was seen, sadness was turned into joy, trembling into dancing, solicitude into solace. He inquired of him where he had been tarrying, or whether all things were going rightly with him. Wulfad, answering, asserted that all things prosperous were being done with him, and, speaking to him more secretly [and] disclosing to him all that he had done, earnestly admonished him to do the same. But Rufinus, prevented by divine grace, rendered manifold thanks to God, affirming that he had long desired and deliberated to come to the faith which is in Jesus Christ, from which he had first heard the word of life from holy Germanus b, bishop of the East Angles. For that pontiff had come with the venerable Erminilda mentioned above to those parts, and, dwelling there for some time, evangelized the word of God to many.
[14] Therefore the soul of Wulfad magnified the Lord, and his spirit exulted in God the salvation of all, who, by the same stag, because he looked upon [him], and the light of his visitation illumined the mind of his brother. That therefore what was divinely inspired to their desire might the sooner be delivered over to effect, [by prudent
using counsel, they set out in the morning with dogs, as if to hunt, so that, while, not keeping the certain and beaten road, they came to the cell of holy Cedda, their purpose might be hidden from the rest. They had not yet proceeded far into the wood, and behold, the stag which had first appeared to blessed Wulfad, having its neck encircled with the rope, presented itself to him and afforded [him] a passage [*] all the way to the dwelling of the man of God. Rufinus followed at his heels the one running before.
[15] But Wulfad, understanding what the presence and the running-before of the brute animal portended, he is led to St. Ceadda, strove by shouting and by sounding the horn to call him Rufinus back, lest perchance the wild beast, bearing the dish of salvation, should be shot by him. The Boy, however, not understanding nor heeding the shout or the horn-blowing of his brother, ran on more swiftly than he, and came first to the dwelling of the man of God. But the stag, as before, cast itself into the spring of the servant of Christ, so that it might be powerfully given to understand that it was leading the Boy, by the sign it could give, to the streams of life-giving baptism. Many report that the most holy Cedda brought forth that spring from the earth by his prayers, which even to the present day is called the spring of St. Cedda c, and affords to many, laboring under various afflictions, a draught of health-bringing remedy. The man of God, perceiving by hearing and by sight what was happening, went out of the cell, and under the open sky, with eyes and hands fixed toward heaven, poured forth devout prayers to the living God for the salvation of both men.
[16] And when the prelate was standing most instantly at prayer, Rufinus arrived: and that this was blessed Cedda, by whom, instructed in the Christian religion, concerning whom he had heard many and great things from his brother's telling, he held at once persuaded in his mind in the very twinkling of an eye; and, saluting him with all reverence, he said: Art thou he, lord father Cedda, beloved by God and by men, friend of Anna d, once the most Christian king of the East Angles, the teacher and leader to salvation of my brother Wulfad? And when he answered, "I am," he fell down at his feet, earnestly beseeching that he would not delay to initiate him into the rules of the Christian faith by imparting the saving laver. The gracious prelate, marveling at and embracing in his mind so great a devotion glowing in the breast of the Boy — but [one] of hoary i.e., mature understanding — rejoiced with a very great joy. But Wulfad also, arriving meanwhile, when he recognizes his brother's desire, being made certain of his conversion, his mouth was filled with joy and his tongue with exultation.
[17] he is baptized, Holy Cedda straightway catechized [] and baptized him in that very spring, Wulfad holding him according to ecclesiastical custom and receiving him from the laver. Thus he who in the first generation had been his brother of the same womb, in the second was made to him a godfather []. The priest of the Most High afterward celebrated the solemnities of the Masses, and satisfied them — made new lambs, shorn from the flock, ascending from the laver — with the most holy libation of the immaculate Lamb; and with prophetic mind and voice he foresaw [and] foretold that they would ascend to Mount Gilead, that is, the heights of martyrdom. Then he taught them to observe the commandments of God, preaching to them the precepts and the law of life and discipline, because he knew that the younger ones correct their ways in keeping the words of the divine law. The declaration, therefore, of the words of God gave so much understanding to his little ones in Christ, that neither death, nor life, nor things present, nor things to come, nor any creature could separate them from the charity of God, which is in Christ Jesus, the Lord of all.
[18] and with his brother Wulfad he often returns to St. Ceadda. The elect of God, about to depart from the presence of the holy prelate and to return to their own home, with humble and devout instance of prayers asked the man of the Lord that he would deign to build his dwelling nearer to their father's castle Wulfhere-cester, whereby they might more freely come together to him, be more frequently present at the celebration of the divine mysteries and the chanting of the hours, and might the more often hear the word of God. The petition of the Boys pleased in the eyes of the pontiff, and, building a cell with an oratory in a fitting place, he afforded them, who were to visit him, a nearer [*] opportunity of himself. They, coming daily to the man of God, assisted at the divine offices; sometimes they lingered in divine things, and, by a feigned zeal for hunting, they overshadowed concealed the Christian religion which they had received, lest they should be detected in it.
[19] The impious Werbold, the conversion of the royal sons being detected, But because it is written: He who is a friend always loves, and, on the contrary, in his own time the enemy is not hidden — Werbold, a man of Belial, mentioned far above, sat in ambush, like a deceitful bow, to shoot the spotless, to slay those innocent Boys. Very often that traitor, step by step, like a peacock, walking behind them as they went in the evening and morning to the cell of the Saint, spied out their journeys and their deeds; and with every effort he was on the watch for a time and occasion whereby he might inflame the king's mind to the hatred, nay the destruction, of them. And when, by more certain search, he had learned by spying that they, made most Christian, frequented that oratory for the sake of divine worship, and thus visited the man, approaching the king, he strove to intimate this very thing to him with informing words, and, circumscribing [it] with malignant circumlocutions, he did not cease to incite him to the fury of wrath. For that same king Wulfhere was, like Penda his father also, by natural temperament wrathful, and in the time of his agitation fiercer than a wild beast, more raging than a wild beast.
[20] Having therefore obtained a time opportune for his malice and wickedness, he warns the king of it, the inventor and kindler of all evil is said to have burst out to the king in this manner: Long, my lord king, must that be deliberated which is to be established once for all; since it pertains to childish levity, nay redounds to the ignominy of royal maturity, to tear up what is planted, to destroy what is built, to scatter decrees, to change what is sanctioned. It has therefore pleased the prudence of your loftiness, by a more inclined providence, to weigh with a discreet balance whether the new sect of the Christians ought to be chosen, or the worship of the gods, approved from ancestral times, be retained. For under it thy father lived long most victorious, reigned happily, the gods being propitious, [and] splendidly triumphed over tyrants and kings. But if it should please your majesty to cast it off and to blot [it] out from your kingdom, it is fitting that that be done with the counsel of your magnates. But now thy sons, made worshippers of Christ, despising your ordinance with an irreverent and senseless mind, cease not daily to frequent the shrine of the Christian law, which within the thickets of the woods, to the contumely of your royal majesty, they had contumaciously caused to be built [*]. Unless therefore such presumption be punished with strict animadversion, your authority will very quickly perish, and everyone will choose for himself whatever sect shall have pleased his eyes more.
[21] Hearing these things and the like, the king grew wholly hot with wrath, and he incites him to call them away from this religion, and swore that he would gravely take vengeance on them, if the matter so stood: and he made the minister of malignity stay with him that night, wishing on the morrow, with the sun itself, to test by investigation the truth of the matter which he had reported to him. Therefore he thought it more prudent to take that accuser alone with him, so that, if he should perpetrate anything graver against his sons, wrath dictating, it, known only by that man's knowledge, might thereafter be hidden from all. At the very first dawn of the following day, while there was still darkness over the earth, the king, with the son of darkness, girt with a sword, set out on the way toward the place. But knowing that he would be unable to restrain the onset of his wrath, he sent ahead before his face that satellite of the devil, to announce to his sons his coming, if perchance they should be found in that oratory, so that thus at least, terrified, they might absent themselves from him, by the benefit of flight and of a hiding-place.
[22] The minister and master of crime, being sent, approaching the oratory secretly and looking in through the little window, observed them, prostrate to the ground, lying down most devoutly at prayer, and he accomplishes so much by lies, and, not uttering even a little word or a sound at all in his visiting, but secretly withdrawing with all silence, [and] returning to the king, he said: Thy sons are present, contumacious and rebellious against your commands, obstinate and stubborn in their purpose; they worship and adore Christ, and not only do they not dread your countenance, but even, heaping upon me manifold reproaches and insults [*], they name you not king or father, but blasphemer and apostate. All these things the man of Belial uttered, lying, and drove the king, moved beyond measure, to go for the blood of his sons. So the king went with that pestilent [man], breathing threats and slaughter against his sons, now disciples of Christ, and, not merely hurling words, but rather thundering for fury, he approached the enclosures of the oratory.
[23] so that the father, driven into fury The most blessed Youths, hearing the thunder of his voice, were anxious for their spiritual father, fearing lest, kindled with excessive fury, he should lay a hand on the most holy Cedda himself, the anointed of the Lord. For they could suspect that their father would inflict on them nothing else but injuries of words or blows of rods, whereas yet they themselves had a heart ready and prepared to suffer, for the name of Jesus, reproaches and terrors and any kinds of death whatever. Blessed Cedda, knowing that, by the testimony of Solomon, as is the roaring of a lion so is the wrath of a king, the boys themselves urging [him], giving place to wrath, turned aside from the face of king Wulfhere, as David from the face of Saul, and, going on to the inner and farther parts of the woods, hid himself. Doing this, he by no means dreaded death, which he reckoned to himself gain, but understood that a better fruit would come to many from his life yet preserved than from a death presently undergone.
[24] his sons praying in the chapel of St. Ceadda, King Wulfhere (if however he ought rightly to be named king in this place, who could not or would not rule himself), bursting into that chapel, found his sons intently set before the image of the Savior in prayer, and said to them: What do you, degenerate and contumacious ones, worshipping new sects and openly introducing the worship of the Christian law into my kingdom without my permission? If you do not at once renounce this sect, I abjure that I hold any longer the rights of all fatherhood toward you: since you yourselves have deprived yourselves of sonship to me, and I will condemn you to perpetual thrusting into prison, or will punish [you] with the banishment of exile, or with the mutilation of limbs, or with death.
[25] and steadfast in the law of Christ, To this Wulfad answered: It is not upon our conscience, by receiving the worship of the Christian faith, to have depraved the royal stock with any degenerate infamy, or to have wished to rebel against you in anything, especially since you too received baptism long ago, and proposed to blot out idolatry utterly throughout your whole kingdom, and, as we thought, to publish or promulgate the law of Christ. Know, reverend lord king and most dear father, that no squalor of prison, nor terror of exile, nor cutting-off of limbs, nor the threatening or the inflicting of any punishment whatever or of death, will be able to separate us from the Catholic faith which we received in baptism. But if, undeserving, for the faith and love of Christ, we be deprived of your paternal affection, we are and shall have been made the sons of him from whom all fatherhood in heaven and on earth is named.
[26] he slew [them with his own hands.] And when the holy youth was uttering words in this manner, Wulfhere, fiercer than any wild beast,
and more unbridled [], putting off nature, Satan instigating and his satellite goading, the sword being drawn, cut off the head of Wulfad, the athlete of Christ, and consecrated [him] a martyr to Christ, although unwilling or unwitting. Rufinus the younger, seeing these things, took to flight; whom the raging father, pursuing, inflicted on him a deadly wound; which being received, falling to the ground, after a short space of time he expired, and, made his brother's fellow-martyr, departed to the heavenly glory. Thus those whom on earth nature made of the same womb, they being joined [] in faith and charity, grace granted one heart and one soul in the Lord, [and] united and joined them both in the heavens in the glory [*] of martyrdom. But they suffered on the ninth day before the Kalends of August.
ANNOTATIONS.
* the edition reads "prævium" passage
* read "catechizavit" catechized
* the edition reads "patrinus" godfather
* the edition reads "illic" there
* perhaps "fieri" to be built
* the edition reads "improperia" reproaches
* the edition reads "efferatior" more savage
* the edition reads "unitis" united
* the edition reads "gratia" grace.
CHAPTER III.
The punishment of the impious counselor, the honorable burial of the Martyrs, and the penitence of king Wulfhere.
So great a crime being perpetrated, the king, with the oft-mentioned minister of death, The slaughter being revealed, and Werbold divinely punished, with hurried step turned himself aside from the place, that witness of the parricide. But lest the nefarious work should come to the knowledge of the queen or the people, it was provided by the counsel of both that that whole dwelling should be destroyed by that son of slaughter in the nighttime, and the bodies of the slain buried in some hidden place. But, by the testimony of Solomon, there is no wisdom, there is no prudence, there is no counsel against the Lord; for what was done in darkness — the effort of any [man] not prevailing to obstruct [it] — was to be [*] revealed in the light. For when the king had entered the castle with that worst [man], who was his privy counselor, and had betaken himself to his own quarters, before the doors of the royal house, in the courtyard, in the sight of many standing by together, the malignant spirit invaded the contriver of the death of the martyrs, the brothers of the same womb, as his own chattel and vessel; for he tore his own hands and arms with his own teeth, and whatever the bloody father had committed against his sons through his Werbold's own baleful instigation, crying out in the ears of all with wild voices, he divulged. But the evil spirit of the Lord did not cease to vex him so long, until it compelled him to breathe out his foul spirit.
[28] the mother buried the bodies of her sons honorably, The report of the detestable deed, although it struck very many with grave torment, from the time it had touched the ears of the holy queen, both for the wounding of the royal conscience and fame, and for the slaying of her own children, transpierced her mind with a sword of inestimable grief. But because what has been done cannot be undone, the most prudent queen diligently strove to exhort her husband that he ought to have recourse to the remedies of penitence. But she herself came to the place of their martyrdom, and, gathering their bodies, honorably buried them together in one stone sarcophagus; and fittingly, the Lord disposing, by a daughter of light their bodies were buried in peace, whose souls the Lord led into the splendors of the Saints, that their names, inscribed in the book of life, may live unto the ages of ages.
[29] and afterward she founds a church over them. But in process of time the venerable queen caused a church of stone to be built there with more elegant work: in which place the great Lord, magnifying the merits of his Martyrs, is wont, when faith deserves it, to work wonders with manifold miracles. Thenceforth a multitude of the weak and of those laboring under diverse languors, and of others seeking the Lord and demanding the benefits of the blessed Martyrs, was wont to frequent that place, and to carry stones thither for the building: whence also that place is called Stanes a, which name, translated from the English tongue into Latin, is interpreted "stones." But from that time holy Ermenilda the queen, desiring to lack the consort of her husband, proposed not only to abstain from the marriage bed, but also to depart from the royal throne, and fixed [it] settled in her heart to become a nun with the most blessed virgin Werburga her daughter, as also she afterward did.
[30] Wulfhere repenting of the deed King Wulfhere, pierced with intolerable anguish of mind for the slaying of his children, lay down on a bed of sickness, of whose recovery despair weighed down all his people. But his friends and kinsmen approached him and stood [by], and, longing to soothe the grief of heart with which he was inwardly touched, persuaded him to apply himself to hunting or fowling, [and] to give attention to melodious instruments of music. But the queen, with her people, admonished him above all never to distrust the divine mercy, but rather to consult the holy bishops Germanus and Cedda, to make satisfaction with a contrite and humbled heart by receiving from them the form of penitence, to cast idolatry utterly out of his kingdom at their discretion, and thenceforth to amend his life. But the king accommodated his mind to counsels of this kind, and firmly resolved with himself to visit holy Cedda and to do whatever he should enjoin on him.
[31] he betakes himself to St. Ceadda, On the morrow, going out to hunt with his [men], he had conceived a hope of coming to the man of God by such an occasion, as he had before heard that his sons, now martyrs, had done. Blessed Cedda the pontiff had returned to his former dwelling beside the spring immediately after the slaying of the holy Youths, and there, living solitarily, dwelt by himself. But when the king had proceeded a little farther within the thickets of the woods, all his [men] being scattered by the divine nod in different directions, [and] being alone, he descried from afar the oft-mentioned stag leaping, having its neck bound about with the rope. Who, having seen [it], made glad, followed it going before, as the messenger and bearer of his salvation, until he came to the dwelling, namely, of the servant of God St. Cedda. The stag, passing through and leaping across, as if its embassy were accomplished, left the king, and plunged itself into the prelate's spring for coolness or a draught of drink.
[32] The king straightway leaped down from his horse, and, approaching the window of the oratory, saw the man of God, clothed in priestly vestments, standing at the altars celebrating Mass; by whom, after the Mass had been prodigiously celebrated and standing outside, his conscience [] obstructing [him], before he should be absolved by the pontiff and brought in, he did not dare to enter. But when the priest of the Lord, beginning the canon, lifted up his hands in the holy rite, so great a light, sent from heaven, flashed through the openings of the wall, that the sacrificer and the sacrifice and the things placed around him were covered [], suffused with brightness. By this the gaze of the beholder was darkened, since in comparison with this God-made light the noonday light was in a manner reckoned nothing or very slight. And what was marvelous enough, that splendor was in no way diminished until the celebration of the most holy Mass was completed. But the Mass being finished, that heavenly light disappeared, and the material sun, entering through the windows and openings, extended its rays to stand beside [him]. But the coming of the king, who saw these things, became known to the holy pontiff by the divine light illuminating him within and without, and he recognized what he was awaiting and seeking.
[33] The Mass being celebrated, divesting himself of the sacred vestments with haste, he humbly asks pardon for his sins, and thinking to place them upon the wooden rest beside the altar, he unknowingly cast them upon the solar ray, and went to the king, who was outside the oratory. But the solar ray sustained the priestly garments placed upon it, that they should not fall to the ground b, by a manifest miracle sufficiently indicating that that son of light clung firmly, by faith and love, to the Sun of justice. The Saint, having gone out, found the king prostrate on the ground before the door of the church, greatly confounded for his sin, and afflicted with excessive languor of mind. The holy prelate lifted him up, pouring into the wound of his soul, with the wine of harsh rebuke — after the example of the good Samaritan — the oil of consolation, lest he should slip into the vice of despair. Many times, he said, I have asked the most merciful Founder of all that he would deign to take away thy sin, which thou didst commit against thy sons, at the instigation of that chattel of death, who is now made a dweller of the infernal regions; but the Lord, to show in thee the riches of his goodness, has given thee, by my prayers, a place of penitence, if thou wilt acquiesce in my counsels. The king answered with great humility that he wished in all things to obey his counsels, and to amend, at his discretion, what he had impiously done.
[34] Holy Cedda enjoined on king Wulfhere, under the key of penitence, and penance being accepted, that with all speed he should cause, throughout the whole kingdom of the Mercians, all the shrines of demons to be destroyed, idolatry to be plucked up by the roots, churches to be built, monasteries to be founded, clergy to be ordained, [and] that he should order the institutes of the Christian law to be firmly observed by public edict: he admonished [him] to do judgment and justice between man and man, to give attention to frequent prayers, to redeem his sins by works of mercy according to the exhortation of holy Scripture, to restrain himself in every way from depraved deeds, and to keep faith to the marriage bed. When the man of the Lord had said these things and the like, turning aside a little from the king, he betook himself to prayer, and enjoined on the king also that he should entreat the face of the Lord.
[35] and a miracle being seen, The penitent king prostrated himself in prayer according to the word of the holy priest, and, raising his eyes, saw the priestly vestments hanging upon the ray of the sun, not without great admiration. Rising therefore, he forthwith approached to see this great vision, and placed his gloves and his belt upon the ray; which immediately fell to the ground. The man of loftier wit understood that holy Cedda was decreed a partner and fellow-citizen of the citizens above, and beloved of the Sun of justice, to whom, while yet living on earth, the sun rendered such homage. A little after, to the pontiff, returned from prayer, the king recounted the matter to be pondered, and showed to his eye his own sign — not yet noticed, [and] unworthy of concealment. He, straightway approaching, took up again those vestments, and, laying them upon the altar, offered devout thanks and thanksgivings to the true Light, which illumines every man coming into this world. The king, edified and greatly delighted in the Lord, bringing the holy priest with him,
returned to his own home and his own people, striving in a short time to complete by work what he had promised to God before the holy man.
[36] to expiate the slaughter of his sons he performs various pious works. Blessed Cedda admonishing, and holy Ermenilda cooperating, the king, within a space of time, purged his whole kingdom from all the filth of idolatry, and took care to eliminate whatever he could recognize as adverse to the sound faith. He built or caused to be built churches in fitting places: he erected several and illustrious monasteries of both sexes, and enriched them with ample possessions; among which he endowed with estates and possessions that noble monastery at Medeshamstead c, and is reported to have specially founded [it] to expiate the crime committed against his sons, which today is named Peterborough, that is, the city of St. Peter. For there, in the church dedicated in honor of the Prince of the Apostles, it contains within itself many citizens of the Saints, and is wont to send forward more to the fellowship of the citizens above, most blessed Peter leading them and opening the gate of the kingdom. But in that place by the name of Stanes, where the bodies of the holy martyrs Wulfad and Ruffinus are buried in peace, a college of Canons Regular d is devoted to the divine offices, where, signs glittering, many benefits are afforded to those seeking health, to the praise of our Lord Jesus Christ, by the merits of the Saints, to whom is glory and dominion unto all the ages of ages. Amen.
ANNOTATIONS.
* the edition reads "fuerit"
* perhaps "reatu conscientiæ" by the guilt of conscience
* should it not [be] "tegerentur" were covered?