Theodore of Canterbury

ON ST. THEODORE OF CANTERBURY, ARCHBISHOP,

IN ENGLAND

In the year 690.

PRELIMINARY COMMENTARY.

Theodore, archbishop and confessor, at Canterbury in England. (S.)

BY J. C.

§1. Illustrious elogia of St. Theodore among writers, his memory in the sacred calendars, his cult and birth, the plan of his life up to his taking on the episcopate, his mission to England.

Saint Theodore, the sixth archbishop of Dorovernum or Canterbury from St. Augustine, is extolled with the highest praises not only by Catholic writers, St. Theodore is praised but also by almost all the heterodox who with any reputation for learning have handled the ancient affairs of the most illustrious nation of the English. Indeed, the lovers of antiquity dig out scarcely any monuments which do not speak of Theodore as bringing the sciences from Italy, along with the Roman faith, to the Anglo-Saxons, establishing schools and gymnasia, and imbuing the whole island with sacred and profane learning. So much so that not a few most learned English writers contend that the beginnings of their most illustrious universities are to be referred to him, as to the author of the sciences introduced and of happier times.

To pass over countless writers, and among them the venerable Bede, whose fuller elogia of St. Theodore I shall report below among the Acts, William of Malmesbury writes thus of him in book 1 On the Deeds of the Kings of the English, chapter 1, toward the end: But his son (of Ercombert, king of Kent), Egbert, holding his father's throne for nine years, did nothing memorable in so brief a compass of rule, unless one should impute to the glory of those times the coming of Theodore the archbishop and of Adrian the abbot, learned men, who had drunk in all literature to the inmost marrow; and if it were not everywhere worn threadbare, I would gladly go on to relate how much light then shone through them upon the British world, how from this side the Greeks, from that the Latins, brought together into one the wrestling-schools of letters with rival zeal, and made the island, once the nurse of tyrants, a familiar dwelling of philosophy.

[2] by almost all writers What he presses together as everywhere worn threadbare and most known to all, Gervase, monk of Canterbury, who, if we believe Twysden in the Preface to his Collection, wrote about the year 1170, pursues more fully in the Acts of the Pontiffs of Canterbury. But Theodore, he says, presently traversing England, was most gladly received by all and listened to. For, with Adrian's cooperation, he spread abroad the right order of living and of celebrating Easter: and he was the first among the archbishops to whom the whole church of the English consented to give their hands. And because both were abundantly instructed in sacred and at the same time secular letters, a company of disciples being gathered, rivers of saving knowledge daily flowed forth to water their hearts; so that they handed over to their hearers the discipline of the metrical art, and of astronomy, and of arithmetic, amid the volumes of the sacred writings. Nor ever at all, from the time when the English conquered Britain, were there happier times, since they both had most brave and most Christian kings, formidable to the barbarian nations, and whoever desired to be instructed in the sacred readings had ready at hand masters to teach them. Birchington in Wharton's Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury weaves this short but error-filled elogium: Theodore, a Roman by nation, a monk, born at Tarsus of Sicily, succeeded … he, learned in the Greek and Latin tongue, for his eminence in these was called Theodore the Great. Nor was the esteem of St. Theodore among foreigners less: certainly the Roman pontiff Agatho made so much of him that he put off for a long while the Roman synod to be convened against the Monothelites, hoping that Theodore would return to it from England. Agatho himself testifies this in Baronius at the year of Christ 680, in his letter to the emperor, in which he gives the reason for the deferred council, in these words: We were hoping to join to our humility from Britain Theodore, our fellow-servant and fellow-bishop, archbishop of the great island of Britain, and philosopher; … and for this cause we have thus far deferred the council. The elogia of other Catholic writers are everywhere to be met with.

[3] But if it is more glorious to be praised by an enemy, and if that finally is true praise which illustrious virtue as it were wrings from the unwilling, let us hear the heterodox themselves proclaiming the virtue and doctrine of this holy prelate. who treat of the affairs of England; Weever in his Monuments, page 299, calls him worthy of eternal memory for his remarkable virtues: Spelman in the Councils of England, page 152, most illustrious and praised both for his character and for his letters. Of him Camden writes thus in his Britannia, page 294: It is incredible how greatly Canterbury flourished, both by its archiepiscopal dignity and by the school of better letters which Theodore established. Finally, that I may not be endless, and heap up Ussher, Foxe, and almost countless others, let it suffice to have added two testimonies of illustrious writers of the English sect concerning St. Theodore. Of these the one is Godwin's, in the Life of this holy prelate, number 7, where he speaks thus: Never before these times (the coming of St. Theodore into England) did England see so many men at once outstanding in letters and erudition: whose number nevertheless was shortly afterwards greatly increased. This prelate is said to have erected a school — unless you prefer to say a university — at Cricklade; so called, namely (as some suppose), from the Greeks teaching Greek letters in that place; who at length migrating thence to Oxford are, by a conjecture surely by no means absurd, thought to have laid the foundations of the most celebrated university that afterwards arose there.

[4] The other is Parker's elogium of our St. Theodore, in his Life, number 7, in the author of the Flowers of the Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation, in these words: even by the heterodox. Theodore was instructed in the same disciplines in which we have said Adrian was (whom a little before he had called a man most fully instructed in the sacred letters and in every kind of discipline), a man venerable also in age. He brought with him into England a copious library both of Greek and of Latin books, some of which, written in the Greek tongue, remain among us. To him the whole English church gladly subjected itself, and he, having traversed the whole island, everywhere established the celebration of Easter and the remaining Roman rites, and was so far from doing anything alien to the Roman Church that he is thought to have defended its authority too contentiously. This man's virtues were not common. After Britain was occupied by the English there were no happier times, nor richer in erudition, than when he presided at Canterbury. Besides the rest of his virtues, he was exceedingly learned, and after his death, as it were living on in his disciples, who were many and illustrious. In Twyne, cited by Alford at the year 669, this is read: Theodore, archbishop of Canterbury, is commended through all the chronicles as having shone with the light-bearing rays of reason, together with Adrian the abbot, upon the British world, and as having turned the island, once the nurse of tyrants, into a familiar dwelling of philosophy. Of these things everywhere the evidence of reason is brought back to the memory of moderns through that little village which, "the praise of the Greeks," is called Greekeslade from Theodore's teaching, where he first held schools. For in that lake Theodore shone like a sun, illumined by the Sun of justice. Thus those authors on the virtue and erudition of St. Theodore. Alone, so far as I know, the most lying Bale drew a venomous pen against St. Theodore. It is shameful to report the Stygian calumnies of the filthy man. Therefore I pass on to the sacred calendars in which the sanctity of St. Theodore is celebrated.

[5] His memory in the sacred calendars Besides the Roman Martyrology of Baronius, Galesinius and Wion reckon our St. Theodore among the saints at this day. He is also commemorated in the Vatican Calendar which Georgi appended to Ado, and in our manuscript Florarium; and he is celebrated by Greven in Sollier's Appendices to Usuard in these words: In England, of blessed Theodore, archbishop of Canterbury and confessor. He (on Bede's testimony, book 4) born at Tarsus of Cilicia, instructed in divine and human literature in Latin and Greek, venerable for upright morals and for age, when he was sixty-six years old, was consecrated bishop of Dorovernum or Canterbury by pope Vitalian, and, filling the churches of all England with his example and doctrine, rested in peace full of days. With these Molanus agrees, except that at the end he cites Bede. Fuller is the elogium of the holy prelate in the English Martyrology: At Canterbury, the deposition of St. Theodore, archbishop of that see and confessor, who, born at Tarsus in Cilicia of noble parents, was made a monk of the venerable order of St. Benedict, and afterwards was ordained archbishop of Canterbury and sent thither from Rome by pope Vitalian. He celebrated two provincial synods in our island, one at Hertford, the other at Hatfield, on the Reformation of the clergy in England. And after he had governed the aforesaid see of Canterbury for 22 years in a holy and devout manner of life, he at length most holily rested in the Lord, about the year of Christ 690, and was buried at Canterbury. In a manuscript Martyrology for the use of the Church of Salisbury, as it bears in its title, which was afterwards printed at London in the year 1526, by Richard Wilford, the memory of our saint is thus made in English: The feast also of St. Theodore, archbishop of Canterbury, who was sent into England by the Pope to instruct the people, where he erected many schools, both of the Greek and of the Latin tongue, and by his holy life and great miracles greatly edified the Church of Christ. Finally, most celebrated is his memory in all the sacred calendars of the Benedictines.

[6] his cult That the cult of St. Theodore is most ancient becomes manifest from the History of the Translation of the relics of St. Augustine, archbishop of Canterbury, and of his companions, addressed to the venerable Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury, written by Goscelin the monk in the seventh year from that Translation and of Christ 1097. Papebroch published it in our work, volume 6 of May, at the 26th day of that month, page 411 and following. There the following is read of St. Theodore in book 2, chapter 3, page 438, number 21: Of the very many, five archbishops of Canterbury, as the most choice, are translated first, like five prætors of the Lord's hall; namely the most renowned and most holy Theodore, and his holy successors. Then in the following number: But when in the translation the lid of the tomb of the most eminently named Theodore was removed, his incensing satisfied all in abundance, so that this delight burst out even into the cloister of the Brethren. He lay as he had been laid from the beginning, in the entire form of a metropolitan Priest, covered only with a pallium and a monastic cowl. So great was the grace that one would think he still flourished in solid flesh, and the Brethren, laying hands on him, strove to take him up as though whole. But before, the unmoved dust presented the image of wholeness; the touch, however, proved the truth of dissolution; but the dissolution added a more venerable grace of sanctity. For that most precious ash, destined for the glory of the blessed resurrection, so bloomed with a more powerful fragrance from the touch as spices are wont to give off their scent from the grinding. And so a leaden case receives those most sacred pledges, most attentively gathered as the finest gems: it is clothed with special ornaments, it is laid upon a bier by two brethren most lightly; but it is not carried out with that lightness. The Responsory proclamation is intoned, the solemn college proceeds, four chosen Brethren set upon the burden of light to be brought forth: the clay clings to the ground, as if rooted: help is doubled; they strive with all their strength together with prayers, and by eight shoulders it is scarcely taken up; most heavily it is carried, and even with the utmost labor the steps of the presbytery are scarcely reached. There at last the effort and strength of all who bore or assisted collapsed: outweighing all, it fixed all; the more who came up, the more it rendered them, panting with a vainer effort, as if lifeless. And now they were about to be overwhelmed by their burden, when at last, turning to prayers and tears, they began to beat their breasts, to accuse their own unworthiness, to ask pardon, to promise amendment of life; only let the Saint suffer himself to be carried out.

[7] Appeased by these prayers, he straightway becomes light, ancient, and is carried to the principal altar and the place prepared by a few, who a little before could not be carried by all. Rejoicing, they marvel that the temple of God and dwelling of the Holy Spirit was made so heavy to the empty, so light to the devout. And so he is laid away on the right side of the altar, in the prepared tomb, in which he is set down with the leaden case by only two Brethren. From which it is easily gathered that Theodore was already then held and venerated as a Saint in England: but whether before, and already from the times of Bede, sacred honor was paid him, as Mabillon seems to hint, I should not dare to assert with certainty. The sanctity of Theodore

he everywhere extols; but neither is he more sparing in praising other illustrious bishops and abbots who, when he wrote these things, were certainly not yet venerated as Saints. Finally, neither have I found the memory of St. Theodore anywhere in the Martyrologies which bear the name of Bede, into which why he was not inserted, if honors were already then paid him, it is not easy to judge; especially since Bede is said to have written his Martyrology at the end of his life. That our saint is announced at this day in a manuscript Martyrology of Christ Church, Canterbury, which is preserved in the Lambeth Library, Wharton asserts in the Anglia Sacra, part 1, page 93: but since I do not know of what age and authority it is, I can make out nothing further from it for the antiquity of St. Theodore's cult.

[8] For the rest, when Bede writes: But in the year next after that in which Ceadwalla died at Rome, that is, the six hundred and ninetieth of the Lord's Incarnation, Theodore of blessed memory died, the day and year of his death, the writers of his life. he so distinctly designates the year of the holy prelate's death as to leave no doubt. Nor is the day of his deposition less certain, from the epitaph of which the same Venerable writer recites a part in book 5, chapter 8, and whose penultimate verse here,

For September had its nineteenth day,

When the spirit goes out from the prison of the flesh,

indicates this day, on which the Church keeps his memory in the sacred calendars. Moreover his Life and Acts from the beginning of his episcopate Bede accurately describes in books 3, 4, and 5 of the Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation. What is scattered there, Capgrave, Surius, and Mabillon have collected, the last of whom added it to the Acts of the Saints of the Order of St. Benedict, century 2, page 1030. Surius's collection, because he selected and added some things from Bede which illustrate the history of this time and the deeds of Theodore, I shall here follow, and shall illustrate it after my custom with notes. In Bale, under Wighard, I have found Leland citing a little book on the Life of Theodore, which I have sought in vain. If everything in it is taken from Bede, as Leland there hints, it is not difficult to do without it. The Deeds of St. Theodore Gervase, monk of Canterbury, collected from the same Bede in his Bishops of Canterbury. What occurs in him worthy of note I shall insert into this Commentary: yet some things must first be premised, lest our intercalated Notes run out too far.

[9] St. Theodore was born at Tarsus in Cilicia, That St. Theodore was born at Tarsus in Cilicia the venerable Bede writes in express words. Tarsus, the fatherland of the apostle St. Paul, is a city of Asia Minor set on the river Cydnus five miles beyond its mouth, the metropolis of all Cilicia, once a most flourishing region. Strabo writes that the city was most populous and very powerful, and flourished so much in philosophy and in the other sciences of that kind of discipline that in that fame it surpassed Athens and Alexandria. It easily embraced four miles in its circuit, as much as Lucas in volume 2 of the Itinerary of Asia Minor was able to gather from the ruins of the walls. Today it obeys the Turks, and has lost so much of its ancient nobility that it scarcely any longer deserves the name of a city. The few indications of its former splendor which remained, on the testimony of the same Lucas, were cut down in the fifth year of this century, and gave place to crops and to cheap huts. In the year 681 it was still distinguished by an archiepiscopal see; for there subscribes to the sixth œcumenical synod Theodore, by the mercy of God bishop of Tarsus, metropolis of the first Cilicia. Moreover in the second year of the seventh century our St. Theodore was born there, as will become clear from Bede's words and from the rest of the chronology of his life.

[10] it is uncertain whether of a noble family. Wilson in the English Martyrology cited above writes that Theodore sprang from noble parents at Tarsus. Whence he received this he does not indicate, nor is it easy to find out from elsewhere. Certainly I have been able to find nowhere any trace of that noble lineage. I fear that this is a pious fiction of Wilson, imitating those writers who, thinking — seduced by I know not what foolish opinion — that something is lacking to the praise of the saints unless they are exhibited as sprung of illustrious blood and famous by a long series of ancestors, adorn their birth with titles begged from fancy and with a made-up nobility: which, by as much as it is alien to true praise, so much does it lessen the credit of those authors and betray their absurdities. Therefore, since there is nothing which persuades with certainty that St. Theodore was born of a noble house — nay, nothing which even suggests it — I should prefer to leave that matter uncertain rather than to establish even by conjectures a thing of very little consequence. For indeed the holy prelate's own illustrious fame of learning and virtues, the excellence of his Apostolic ardor, and the glory of his shining sanctity will stand without supports sought from the splendor of an uncertain pedigree. Let us therefore pursue these.

[11] educated at Athens, Pope Zachary, in his tenth letter to St. Boniface, archbishop of Mainz and apostle of Germany, teaches us one thing which Bede and others have passed over in silence. The first chapter, he says, concerning the synod of the province in which you were born and nourished, which … most recently in your own times Theodore, a Latin from a Greek, formerly a philosopher and educated at Athens, ordained at Rome, raised to the pallium, and sent over to the aforesaid Britain, judged and governed. From which it is established that St. Theodore sought the sciences — which had perhaps already languished in his own country — at Athens, restored and flourishing again after the times and cares of the emperor Justinian. But under the appellation of philosopher he has left another matter ambiguous, which regards the plan of the holy prelate's life before he joined the monks, of which nothing has become known to us from elsewhere. Whether he wished by the name of philosopher to designate a sect, or the public profession of a certain sect, I cannot say, since it has another and not one meaning and admits of interpretation. Meanwhile I do not believe that the monastic life is here meant by the name of philosophy, for when the ancients use that word for it, they commonly add such things as of Christ, sacred, etc., whence you may clearly see that something altogether other than profane erudition is designated by that word. And so, either on account of his outstanding excellence in the philosophic disciplines, or because he had before publicly professed that science, perhaps at Athens according to the custom of those times, I judge that he was here called a philosopher by Pope Zachary.

[12] Of the whole age and deeds of St. Theodore up to his sixty-sixth year, He was perhaps an Eastern monk: scarcely anything beyond conjectures can be said. For he was venerable in age when St. Adrian offered him to Pope Vitalian to be ordained: from which epoch the venerable Bede begins his narration about our saint. But he teaches at the very beginning that he was a monk; for he writes: There was at that time at Rome a monk known to Adrian, by name Theodore. Then after a few words he hints that he had adhered to the institutions of the Easterns, perhaps under some Rule of St. Basil or St. Athanasius: for, being ordained subdeacon, he waited four months until his hair should grow, so that he might be tonsured. For he had had the tonsure after the manner of the Easterns of the Apostle St. Paul. Of this Tonsure Alford may be consulted, Annals of the Anglo-Saxon Church, volume 1, at the year of Christ 664, number 12 and following; where he treats of it at length and learnedly. Take a few things from these. The Easterns, shaven over the whole head, said that in this they imitated the Apostle, whom the Acts of the Apostles prove to have been shorn at Jerusalem after the manner of the Nazarites, and whom they contended to have prescribed this form of shearing to his clerics, or at least to have commended it by his own example. Whatever be the case with that, from St. Isidore in Thomassin it is clear that the Greeks had this rule of shearing peculiar to themselves. Moreover Vitalian took care lest this custom should spread to the Westerns and penetrate into England itself, where not long before dissensions and disturbances had arisen from the different manner of shearing; and therefore he marked St. Theodore with that which was common to the Westerns and was called St. Peter's, whose use the aforesaid Alford shows that the bishops of Britain much defended against St. Colman and his Scots.

[13] To the words cited last above Bede had premised: on this condition, that St. Adrian Offering him (Theodore) to the Pontiff that he might be ordained bishop, Adrian obtained it; yet with these conditions interposed: that he himself should conduct him into Britain, … and that, being a fellow-worker with him in doctrine, he should diligently take heed lest he should introduce anything contrary to the truth of the faith, after the manner of the Greeks, into the church over which he should preside. Benedict also, surnamed Biscop, on Gervase's testimony in the Acts of the Pontiffs of Canterbury, an Englishman by nation, a prudent man, was sent with him, lest he should change the English institutions with Greek novelty. From these things not a few deduce that St. Theodore was not only a Greek in his institute, but was also on that account suspect in the faith to Pope Vitalian. Against them Alford sets himself wholly, at the year of Christ 667, number 3, and contends that the Pontiff suspected or feared nothing adverse about our saint, but added companions, as prudent kings are wont to join to their legates grave men who may aid them by counsel, sustain them by help, and finally add splendor to their retinue. But Bede's words hint something rather more, wherefore I should prefer to go by a middle way between the two. Not indeed without the greatest mark of imprudence would Vitalian have sent as legate with so great power into England, where the beginnings of the faith had scarcely yet grown up, a man of whose true and Catholic sense and doctrine he had rightly and prudently doubted. Nothing of the kind therefore should I dare to suspect either of Theodore or of that Roman Pontiff; nor yet do I contend that he was altogether free from care about him.

[14] should assist him as a companion, he is ordained, Theodore was a new man among the Latins, hitherto unknown to Vitalian, himself a Greek brought up and always conversant among the Greeks, where at that time very many errors were struggling and the worst heresies were spreading, from which something could have clung to our saint even without his knowing it. These things assuredly were apt to cast some slight suspicion, or rather fear, upon Vitalian, and must have seemed to require some caution. Then the most cautious Pontiff rightly feared lest Theodore, having not long since been taught the Latin rites and institutions, should introduce into that island the ceremonies of the Easterns, much differing from the Roman and English ones, which by their novelty would strike those peoples and stir up disturbances in the new flock of Christ, which had already in similar matters been most wretchedly dislocated by more than one controversy. Certainly the words of Gervase readily bear this sense, nor do Bede's altogether reject it: for those things are not rarely called contrary to the truth of the faith which in lighter matters also depart from the use and custom of the Church. For there are a thousand obvious passages where faith means the custom and usage of the Church. But whether you embrace this last milder sense, or judge that something also of the former moved Vitalian to employ this caution, Theodore's faith stands pure and entire, and the vigilance of the Roman and supreme Pastor is commended, who wished the flock committed to him to be guarded on every side and as far as he could.

[15] and through the Gauls, Nor was even this suspicion, such as it was, the whole reason and cause why the Pontiff stipulated Adrian as his companion. For Bede adds: Because he (Adrian) had already twice, for various causes, the parts of the Gauls

visited, and on that account had greater knowledge of making this journey, and was sufficiently provided with possession of his own men, among whom they could be received in hospitality and be held according to their dignity — the affairs of Gaul, ecclesiastical as well as secular, being disturbed in a wretched fashion by the tyranny of Ebroin. At length St. Adrian stood by these conditions, and St. Theodore was ordained by Pope Vitalian in the year of the Lord's Incarnation 668, on the 26th day of March. After this Theodore and Adrian spent two months at Rome, and at length on the 27th of May sailed to Marseilles, the noble emporium of Narbonese Gaul, and thence, setting out by a land journey to Arles, turned aside to John, bishop of that city, fortified with commendatory letters of Vitalian. Of that John very few things are brought forward, and scarcely any resting on other support than this testimony of Bede. By the learned authors of the Gallia Christiana he is numbered as the first of that name and the twenty-eighth of the prelates of Arles: in the Diptychs of that church in Mabillon's Analecta he comes thirty-eighth in order; Pierre Saxi, among Menken's Writers of German Affairs, reckons this John as the second by name and the forty-first in the series. From this variety it is clear how uncertain are the series and succession of very many bishops of Arles, about which something has already been said among us at the 5th day of March, and about which more may be treated on the 29th of December, where the Acts of St. Trophimus, the first bishop of that see, will come to be discussed. Meanwhile let us follow Bede narrating, and our saints on their journey.

[16] where, having stayed a longer time with St. Agilbert, John received such guests most kindly, and kept them with him until Ebroin the Mayor of the palace — a man most notorious for his most crafty cruelty and insatiable ambition — should give leave to pursue their journey to those who were urging their departure. The holy Newcomers had reason to fear from that man, who not long before had had St. Ennemund wickedly butchered, and to whom, all but reigning through right and wrong, all things could not but be suspect. Most cautiously therefore John consulted for St. Theodore and Adrian, and obtained for them leave from Ebroin to travel through the Gauls wherever they wished. Fortified with this, our saint set out for Paris, St. Adrian turning aside elsewhere. At that time St. Agilbert sat at Paris, already then most famous for apostolic labors undergone for a full 24 years among the Britons and Saxons. To him St. Theodore betook himself, as without doubt he had in his instructions from the Pontiff. No one could better than Agilbert profit by counsels and admonitions the archbishop of Canterbury, a stranger, since to him the affairs of England were well known by long and still recent experience. Making use of the occasion offered, Theodore spent many months with him, and thoroughly learned the customs of the English nation, the usages of the churches, their dissensions, the state and perils of religion through the various provinces and kingdoms, and other things which he foresaw would be of profit to him and could more zealously investigate.

[17] Alford in the Annals of the English Church at the year of Christ 669, number 12 (from which Pagi took his own number 3 at this year, as elsewhere he commonly takes other things, without citing any writer), judges he is believed to have obtained the privilege of the primacy that to this time is to be referred the letter of Pope Vitalian by which he grants to Theodore the primacy of all the churches in England and a most ample power in that island over all clerics. For he suspects that St. Theodore learned from holy Agilbert that Gregory the Great had granted to Augustine, first prelate of Canterbury, very many privileges of Pontifical authority, by which jurisdiction over all the churches of Britain had been conceded to him: that Theodore sought that same from Vitalian, and obtained it from him while he was still living at Paris. Although this letter would seem to be deferred still further, after St. Theodore's coming into England, when in the very first beginnings of his Apostolic charge St. Theodore judged that so great a power would be altogether useful to him against some men of a harder neck, I nevertheless append Vitalian's letter here, lest I should afterwards interrupt the order of events. Malmesbury recites it in book 1 On the Deeds of the Pontiffs of England, page 209, and alone, so far as I know, Wilkins lately inserted it into his Collection of councils from a Cotton manuscript, in this tenor.

[18] To his most beloved brother Theodore, Vitalian, bishop, servant of the servants of God. from Pope Vitalian Among the very many things which you bade be made known to us through your syllables, we have learned also your desire concerning the confirmation of the diocese which lies subject to your rule, since you desire in all things to shine by the privilege of our Apostolic authority: but we, granting your petition, since it accords with pastoral solicitude concerning the churches of God, which we understand to have been established from ancient times by this Apostolic see, will with an unbreakable will that, as by us, so by our successors, they be fortified with perpetual stability. Whence it has seemed good to us to exhort you, and in the present to commend to your most sagacious sanctity all the churches placed in the island of Britain. All things therefore which were established and confirmed by our predecessor holy Gregory for Augustine his own attendant, or also granted through the sacred use of the pallium, we grant to you for ever; and have the city of Dorovernum, where first, by the revelation of Jesus Christ our Lord, the Catholic faith was received according to the institution of the sacred canons.

[19] to have obtained, But by the authority of blessed Peter, prince of the Apostles, to whom power was given by the Lord God of binding and loosing in heaven and on earth, we, though unworthy, holding the place of that same blessed Peter, key-bearer of the kingdom of heaven, grant to you, Theodore, and to your successors, as they were granted from olden times, so in perpetuity in that your metropolitan see, which is situated in the city of Dorovernum, to be held unimpaired. But if anyone, which we do not wish, shall attempt to come against this authority of our Apostolic definition of privilege, if indeed he be a bishop or presbyter or deacon, by this Apostolic authority we establish and decree that the bishop shall lack the rank of his prelacy, and that the presbyter or deacon shall know themselves cast down from their Orders: but of the number of laymen, whether of kings or of princes, whether he be a great or a small person, let him know himself estranged from the participation of the body of our Lord Jesus Christ. And this page of privilege, upheld by the authority of blessed Peter, prince of the Apostles, whose ministry we discharge, we assign to you, Theodore, and to your successors, to be held in perpetuity. May God keep you safe, most beloved brother. Of this privilege the discourse will return below.

[20] he lands in Britain While St. Theodore was staying with St. Agilbert, news had reached England to king Egbert that the bishop whom for so long a time he had most eagerly sought and awaited from Rome had at last come into the Gauls. The king, impatient of further delay, in accordance with the spirit he had toward the Catholic religion and toward ecclesiastical men and heralds of the Gospel, at once sent into Gaul Redfrid the prefect of his court, who should receive with honor the Prelate destined for the church of Canterbury and convey him across into England. When Redfrid had come to Paris, he set forth his king's commands to Theodore and to Ebroin. The latter consented to his departure, but detained Adrian longer, suspecting that he had matters from the emperor which he might treat with the kings of Britain against his own wicked machinations. Adrian therefore being left behind, Theodore, undertaking the journey into England with Redfrid, was conducted to Quentavicus, once a maritime city of Picardy at the mouth of the river of Kent. Here, detained for a while by infirmity, he at length set sail for England, and when he had happily landed there and had been most amicably received by the king, at length on the sixth of the Kalends of June, in the second year after he had been consecrated, he was given to his church.

[21] with St. Benedict Biscop, It may seem strange that in that whole description of the journey in Bede, St. Adrian is treated of throughout and no word anywhere is made of St. Benedict Biscop, whom Gervase writes above to have been given by Vitalian as a companion to Theodore. In the Life of St. Benedict, by the same Bede as author, in Mabillon, century 2, page 1002, the following is found, which leaves no doubt. But the Apostolic Pope, lest, the legates having died, the religious legation should lack the fitting fruit of the faithful, took counsel and chose from among his own one whom he might send as archbishop to the Britains, namely Theodore, a man endowed with secular and at the same time ecclesiastical philosophy, and this in both tongues, namely Greek and Latin, giving him as colleague and counsellor a man equally most vigorous and most prudent, Hadrian the abbot; and because he perceived that the venerable Benedict would be a wise, industrious, religious, and noble man, he commended to him the ordained Bishop with all his company, and commanded that, leaving the pilgrimage which he had undertaken for Christ, and returning with a view to a further advantage to his fatherland, he should bring to it the teacher of truth whom it had diligently sought. To whom, both as he journeyed and as he taught there, he could be alike interpreter and guide. He did as he had been bidden; he came to Kent; they were most gladly received. Theodore ascended the see of the bishopric, Benedict received the monastery of blessed Peter the apostle to be governed, of which afterwards the aforesaid Adrian was made abbot.

[22] And with these agree, concerning St. Theodore and Benedict, the things St. Adrian being left behind in Gaul. which are read in the Sermon on the Birthday of the same holy abbot, which is found among the Works of the venerable Bede in the Basel edition of the year 1563, volume 7, column 464, number 50, in these words: There (at Rome) therefore, having been instructed (St. Benedict) in Christ, tonsured in those parts (of Lérins), there he was imbued with monastic institutions, there he would have spent the whole of his life, had not the Apostolic authority of the lord Pope forbidden it, who commanded him to return to his fatherland for the sake of conducting into Britain bishop Theodore of holy memory. Of this homily indeed the aforesaid Mabillon is in doubt, because in all the most ancient Martyrologies of Bede no mention is made of St. Benedict, who in that Sermon is exhibited as a Saint, and to whom this panegyric is made. Our Bolland, however, at the 12th day of January ascribes it without doubt to Bede. Certainly it presents his style most perfectly. Whatever be the case, from what I first adduced and from Florence of Worcester it is certain that our St. Theodore came into England with St. Benedict as his conductor. For the rest, since it is established from the Life of St. Benedict that he, having returned into Britain, presided over the monastery of St. Peter for two years, and Bede writes in book 4, chapter 1: As soon as he (Adrian) came to him (St. Theodore), he gave him the monastery of St. Peter the apostle … for the lord Apostolic had commanded Theodore as he departed that he should provide in his diocese and give him a place in which he could fitly live with his own — Adrian must have been detained in Gaul by Ebroin for nearly two whole years, or that at once must be extended more broadly; which the words of the same Bede rather persuade, asserting that St. Adrian was St. Theodore's companion and fellow-worker in apostolic labors from his very coming to the see.

§2. The illustrious deeds of St. Theodore in England, his disagreements with SS. Ceadda, Winfrid, and Wilfrid: the councils convoked under St. Theodore.

St. Theodore, having presently obtained an outstanding fame Scarcely had St. Theodore set foot in England when

traversing the whole island, he proved to all his sanctity and erudition. For when he mingled with sacred instructions the metrical art, astronomy, the reckonings of the ecclesiastical computus, and the precepts of the Greek and Latin tongues, and imbued a nation eager for erudition with those sciences in which he most excelled, he instilled heavenly doctrine more sweetly into the minds of the peoples, and in a short time obtained so great a praise of erudition, and from it so great an authority, that he was most gladly heard and received by all, and was the first among the archbishops to whom the whole church of the English consented to give their hands. Relying on this prerogative, he most freely pursued vices, not few nor small, which had both newly crept in and clung on from idolatry; as arbiter he settled disputes, and rooted out errors utterly. Among these, one, proceeding, as it seems, from the Asiatic Quartodecimans, had long vexed the faithful, had often set at odds men otherwise of the highest rank, and for the plucking out of which holy Augustine of old and the prelates who followed him down to these times had labored much, but in vain. That one regarded the rite of celebrating Easter, which for the Scots and not a few of the Britons came round on another day than for the Romans.

[24] he roots out inveterate errors in England. For they contended that Easter must be celebrated on that Lord's day which should fall between the fourteenth and the twentieth moon, while others protested and, according to the Roman custom, excluded the fourteenth moon. And hence it came about that, when the fourteenth moon fell on a Sunday, the Scots with their people held as solemn and Paschal that day which for the rest was Palm Sunday; whence the greatest inconveniences and contentions arose, which, though often lulled and repressed, sprouted again and again. St. Theodore therefore strove with all his strength to cut out the error by the roots; which indeed he so happily attained that, a canon on that matter having been made in the council of Hertford, all throughout the whole of Britain celebrated Easter with unanimous consent by the Roman rite. These things being thus settled and the foundations of faith and unity fixed, he turned his cares to those things which made for the splendor and majesty of the ecclesiastical rites. To this end, since he could not himself suffice for all things, he summoned men from elsewhere who should teach the English the manner of singing in church, so that not undeservedly the venerable Bede writes that England had never seen happier times than those which Theodore brought into it.

[25] He is accused of a harsher rule But, as human affairs go, which are never perfect on every side, among the affairs of the Church so illustriously carried out by St. Theodore, something crept in which seems to very many writers to have burned some stain upon so great a name. Of it Malmesbury speaks thus, in book 1 On the Deeds of the Pontiffs of England: Bede records that he (St. Theodore), sent from the Apostolic See, was the first of all the Prelates of Canterbury to exercise pontifical vigor throughout all Britain. In short, that both on this side and beyond the Humber he drove out some bishops at his good pleasure and set up others. That in York itself he consecrated prelates of other cities, and, as is read in the Life of blessed Wilfrid, that he expelled, whether by reason or by force, the pontiffs of that same city, Cedd and Wilfrid himself. Where human wretchedness may be seen, namely that however great the sanctity in which a man is strong, he does not fully put off obstinate habits: because those two eyes of Britain carried on controversies between themselves. Since Theodore, so far as our conjecture holds, unjustly cast out Wilfrid, Wilfrid, tossed by many perils before, brought his complaint to the Roman Pope Agatho. Modestly indeed, so as neither to press with accusations one directed by the Apostolic See, nor yet to allow his own innocence to waver: thus he. More harshly does Eddius censure our St. Theodore, chiefly in the case of Wilfrid, whom not a few others follow, exaggerating too much the fault of our holy prelate. It has seemed good to review the causes of the disagreements a little more fully, that the reader may have a prudent judgment in a matter where the excuse of one saint must seem the accusation of another saint.

[26] but too unfairly: That jurisdiction over all the churches of the English was granted to St. Theodore, the letters of Pope Vitalian show, which I reported in the preceding paragraph, number 18 and following. In them the Pontiff grants to Theodore whatever privileges Gregory had of old bestowed on St. Augustine, which are indeed most ample, as may be seen in Bede, book 1 of the History, chapter 29, where the bishop of York, even though he enjoy the prerogative of the pallium, is bidden to be subject to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and then it is said: But let your fraternity have subject to you, by the authorship of God our Lord Jesus Christ, not only those bishops whom you shall have ordained, nor only those who shall have been ordained by the bishop of York, but also all the priests of Britain. Almost the same things from Gregory's letter Boniface, Honorius, and Formosus grant to the archbishops of Canterbury. From which Baronius writes thus at the year of Christ 676, page 518: And from these greater labors grew for St. Theodore, to whom the care not only of the church of Dorovernum but of all England had been entrusted by the Roman Pontiff as though to a legate of the Apostolic See, so much so that it depended on his judgment whom he wished to sit as bishop or to be moved from his see. Finally, that power was granted him to divide what sees he wished for a just cause I have not seen any deny; but not a few judge that our saint used the faculty he had obtained too imperiously, which remains further to be inquired into.

[27] There are chiefly three bishops on account of whose deposition St. Theodore is commonly charged with a harsher rule. for he seems rightly to have deposed St. Ceadda Saint Cedd, who is generally named Ceadda by Bede and others, Malmesbury mentions first. Of him Bede writes in the Life which we give, number 7. Eddius relates the matter thus in the Life of St. Wilfrid, chapter 14. At a certain time therefore, while the holy bishop Wilfrid had not yet come back across the sea, king Oswiu, ill-persuaded by envy, at the prompting of the ancient enemy, taught to seize another's see irregularly, consented with those who had chosen for themselves the Quartodeciman side against the Rule of the Apostolic See; and ordaining the most religious Servant of God … Ceadda, while he was still ignorant of it, they set him unskillfully, against the canons, in the episcopal see of the city of York. And chapter 15: After therefore … Theodore … at his first entrance into that region heard from true witnesses of the thing wrongly done against the canons, that a bishop had dared after the manner of a robber to seize the see of another bishop, and bearing it indignantly, ordered bishop Ceadda to be deposed from another's see. This somewhat sharper narration hints at that cause of Ceadda's deposition which Alford suspects, namely that he had been intruded into another's see by those whose part it was neither to ordain bishops nor to set them over churches. Certainly Bede signifies not obscurely that there was a fault in the very substance of the Order, since he presents St. Theodore arguing that Ceadda had not been rightly consecrated, and presently adds: He himself completed his ordination anew by the Catholic manner. But what that error was it is not worth while to divine.

[28] These things ought to suffice to remove all fault from St. Theodore, from the see of York, who did not think that the man whom he had found to have been illegitimately ordained should even be rejected from the episcopal dignity, but reordained; and, the see into which he had been intruded against the rights of St. Wilfrid being left, took care that he should be set over some other church, as St. Theodore professes in the clearest words in Bede. And that he did such things not seduced by any peculiar hatred against the holy man, both these very things prove, and what the same holy historian narrates in book 4, chapter 3. At that time Wulfhere ruled the province of the Mercians, who, when on the death of Jaruman he asked that a bishop be given also to himself and his own by Theodore, he did not wish to ordain a new bishop for them, but asked of king Oswiu that bishop Ceadda be given them, who then in his own monastery … was leading a quiet life … and because it was the custom of that most reverend prelate to perform the work of the Gospel rather by walking than by riding, Theodore ordered him, whenever a longer journey pressed, to ride; and when he strove much against it out of zeal and love of pious labor, he himself lifted him with his own hand onto the horse, because indeed he found him to be a holy man, and compelled him to be carried by horse wherever it was necessary. In which the piety and fatherly care of St. Theodore sufficiently shine forth, so that he need fear nothing of unfair repute from what he had rightly done at first against St. Ceadda.

[29] as also Winfrid from that of Lichfield. Another was the cause of the deposition of Winfrid, whom Eddius names Wulfrid: Bede relates in book 4, chapter 6, that it was some disobedience; but what it was, or in what matter, I find nowhere explained. Most likely is Wharton's conjecture, which he sets forth in his Anglia Sacra, part 1, page 426. From it some things must be taken which bring no little light to the controversies with Winfrid and Wilfrid. Wharton therefore unfolds the matter thus. The number of the faithful growing day by day, it seemed advisable to Theodore to ordain more bishops, who might feed their flock more closely and contract their cares more. He had shown his mind on this both from the very beginnings of his archiepiscopate and had made it manifest to the prelates gathered in the council of Hertford. Hence there in chapter nine it was treated that more bishops should be added, the number of the faithful growing. To these words of the council is added: But of this matter we have for the present kept silence, which Wharton thinks were added by someone else; nor does the suspicion seem altogether to be despised, for they do not seem to present the words of the council, nor are they found in the Saxon version. I should think, however, that they are truly to be ascribed to the council, lest one be pleased to exclude that whole chapter, for what precedes savors equally of mere narration rather than of the acts of a council. But like things occur here and there among the decrees of other synods. I judge therefore that Theodore, when treating of multiplying sees in the council, found some bishops resisting, because they feared for their own affairs more than was fair.

[30] The origin of the discords was the multiplication However it be, this purpose constantly clung to St. Theodore, that he should increase the number of bishops, especially in the province of the Mercians, which at that time comprehended almost half of England and was subject to a single prelate. What therefore he despaired of being able to do by common consent, he resolved, the bishops resisting in vain, to press and to accomplish by the power granted him by the Apostolic see. Nor in that which the necessity of so many faithful demanded does St. Theodore seem to have abused his right: for he was putting into execution what Pope Gregory had of old written back to St. Augustine. The letter is found in Bede, book 1, chapter 29, which I cited above, where the Pontiff earnestly commends that episcopal sees be multiplied until the kingdom of the Northumbrians should number thirteen bishops. What St. Augustine had then been unable to accomplish, Theodore, relying on the authority in which he was very strong, set about; and this seems to have been the origin of various dissensions, since the bishops only most grudgingly suffered some part to be torn from their dioceses, and sometimes the greatest portion of them to be distributed among two or three others. And against this design of Theodore, unless I am mistaken, Winfrid took offence, when he set himself against the Archbishop desiring to divide his immense province; wherefore he was driven from the see of Lichfield, another being substituted in his place,

Sexwulf, who a little after ceded a part of his province to the new see of Hereford. But in all these things there is nothing that can be turned into a fault in St. Theodore, who followed the Apostolic mandates.

[31] of episcopal sees, More intricate are the disagreements carried on with St. Wilfrid, nor are they such as remove on every side the suspicion of fault in St. Theodore. Their causes come back to that same will of Theodore to divide dioceses. For if perchance the evils which the holy bishop of York endured for several years proceeded not chiefly from that source, but from the envy and avarice of queen Ermenburga, I nevertheless believe that thence the queen sought occasion and patronage for her thefts, because she had long seen St. Theodore inclined toward dividing among several bishops the goods of the excellent church of York, and Wilfrid refusing. But let us take the whole matter rather from the ancient writers. The venerable Bede narrates it briefly in book 4, chapter 12, and casts the whole cause of the evils upon king Ecgfrith, no mention being made of St. Theodore: the same Eddius, more at length, describes with a sharp pen in chapter 24, where, after he has presented the queen pleading with her husband against Wilfrid on account of his excessive wealth and possessions and his pride, and the king caught by such enticements, he continues thus: For the aid of her madness they invited archbishop Theodore with gifts, which blind even the eyes of the wise, as Balak invited Balaam against the will of God. When therefore the Archbishop came to them, they laid open what they were plotting in their minds in contempt of him, and, without any peril of blaming, he consented (which be far from us) unjustly to condemn. Harsh is this speech, which Malmesbury judged should be sharpened a little further still, On the Deeds of the Pontiffs of England, book 3, page 262.

[32] There ran therefore, he says, so envious a report (of Ermenburga and king Ecgfrith) to Theodore, archbishop of Canterbury. which he was urging more sharply. He, not delaying, but enervating the vigor of his mind at the sight of the gifts, without consulting Wilfrid, introduced three bishops of another region into his diocese. And they alleged the cause of justice, that from thence three bishops might be fed where one was swelling with pride: that so great revenues and the circuit of so great a diocese would suffice for four bishops. And these things indeed might seem rightly said, if he had either not cast down utterly despoiled the man who by his own industry had acquired everything, or at least had acted with his consent. Thus they; but, to confess candidly what I feel, Eddius, with his mind embittered as it was against St. Theodore, seems here to have indulged his own feeling rather too much, and Malmesbury following him. For indeed, although I do not contend that St. Theodore was wholly free from every blemish of fault in the case of St. Wilfrid, I shall not readily exhibit to myself the holy man as so wicked as Eddius depicts him to me with a brush blackened by his own bile. I believe that the holy prelate suffered in this something human, but I cannot imagine him so wicked that, seduced by avarice, he wickedly and sacrilegiously sold for a few gifts St. Wilfrid's goods, rights, quiet, and all but his very life, which Eddius seems to say nothing less than. I rather suspect that St. Theodore, when he had found Wilfrid less favorable to his wishes about multiplying sees, seized the occasion to do as it were by force what he despaired of accomplishing with his consent. But even so I acknowledge that Theodore sinned, especially if, as they say, the highest right is the highest wrong. For the diocese could have been divided, leaving St. Wilfrid his own see of York, from which he seems to have been able to be expelled only by injustice (as Malmesbury, now a little milder, notes), since against one protesting of injustice no fault could be brought which deserved such a thing.

[33] And this opinion of mine the monk of Durham long since set forth in the History of the Bishops of Durham, under Tuda; for he says: At length in the year 678 Theodore, archbishop of Canterbury, who had often in vain urged Wilfrid about setting up more bishops in the very ample province of the Northumbrians, with king Ecgfrith assenting, ordained three bishops on his own authority, … He is not excused from all leaving to Wilfrid Lindisfarne, the ancient see of the bishops of Northumbria. These last words, if they are true, take away much from the fault of St. Theodore which I have already acknowledged. For thus St. Wilfrid is despoiled indeed of the greatest part of his province, but there is left to him the church of Lindisfarne and no small portion of possessions. That this see was left to St. Wilfrid Malmesbury himself, cited above, in some measure hints, when among the pretexts with which he asserts that St. Wilfrid's enemies wished to cover the injury done him, he confesses that they said that so great revenues and the circuit of so great a diocese would suffice for four bishops: according to which St. Wilfrid seems to be counted along with the three new ones whom Bede enumerates, unless you say that in support of their case his riches are so vaunted as being able to suffice for even more bishops than were created. Whatever be the case, St. Theodore seems here to have suffered something human, whether, wishing to break the man he could not bend, he expelled Wilfrid from his whole see, or whether he permitted him to be despoiled of a part of the goods which he as bishop of York had procured for himself, or of all his riches (which from Theodore's own confession, to be recited below, appears more likely). Certainly the Pontiff did not approve his whole manner of acting in this case, and therefore neither do I wish him wholly excused.

[34] fault, at least of too great connivance and slackness Harder still are the things which followed St. Wilfrid's absolution in the Roman council (of which more in the following §), St. Theodore either conniving or cooperating. For Wilfrid, having returned from Rome into England bearing the standard of victory (they are Eddius's words in chapter 33), that is, carrying with him the judgment of the Apostolic See, peaceably greeting the king, approached him, and humbly showing the king the written judgments of the Apostolic See, with the consent and subscription of the whole synod, delivered them sealed with Bulls and seals. Then, all the princes dwelling there, and also the servants of God, being summoned to a synodal place, to hear the saving counsels transmitted from the Apostolic See for the sake of the peace of the churches. But even so he profited nothing; nay rather, he the more embittered the mind of the king and of the courtiers: for when they had seen that certain difficult things and contrary to their wishes were contained in them, they contumaciously rejected them, alleging that the writings had been bought with a price and were fraudulent. Nay rather, by the command of the king and of his counsellors, with the consent of the bishops who held his bishopric, they decreed to lead him into custody and to keep him for nine months without any honor: until the divine vengeance repressed the queen's sacrilegious thefts; for, afflicted in all her limbs and vexed by an evil demon, she caused horror to the king and to the court, when the holy woman Æbbe uncovered the cause of the terrifying vengeance. Obeying whom, the king … granted that the most holy priest, being released, should freely depart from him with his holy relics and with his companions gathered together, and the queen was healed. But even so St. Wilfrid was not restored to his see and his former rights: but, an exile still for several years, having endured the wrath of kings and countless troubles, Ecgfrith being slain, in the second year of Aldfrith, who reigned after him, he recovered his goods and afterwards the see of York.

[35] in the expulsion of St. Wilfrid. The silence and connivance of St. Theodore in all these matters it is of no use to extenuate: he himself confessed his fault and repaired it by a glorious retractation. Let us hear Eddius Stephanus narrating it, whom a little before we saw of a rather bitter mind toward our saint, whence there is no reason for us to suspect him of flattery. At the same time also (namely in which Cedwalla, raised to the kingdom, had heaped very many benefits on St. Wilfrid) Theodore, by the grace of God archbishop, honoring the authority of the Apostolic See from which he had been sent, fear moving him, delayed no longer to enter into a true friendship with the blessed Wilfrid our bishop, long an exile and despoiled. For when archbishop Theodore was distressed in a full old age with frequent infirmity, he invited to himself at the city of London Wilfrid and Ercenwold (elsewhere called Erkenwold and Earconwald, of whom see Bede, book 4, chapter 6) his own bishops. And when they came, the Archbishop wisely and purely revealed with confession before the Lord the course of his whole life, saying: And this above all presses me as a scruple, what I have committed against you, most holy bishop, consenting to kings who without cause of sin despoiled you of your own substance, and, your subjects mourning, drove you into a long exile (alas, O grief!) of every evil. Mabillon here reads exterminantes, but so he does not restore the sense, which seems besides mutilated from some other cause.

[36] And then (Theodore continues in Eddius): I confess to the Lord and to holy Peter the apostle, Yet that fault, such as it was, and be you, my holy bishops, witnesses, that I draw to your friendship, for the remission of my sin, all my royal friends and their princes everywhere, constraining them in every way, willing and unwilling. For I know that after this year the end of my life draws near, according to the Lord's revelation, and therefore I adjure you by the Lord and by St. Peter to consent to me, that while living I may appoint you the survivor and heir in my archiepiscopal see, because I have truly recognized you as the most learned of your nation in all wisdom and in the judgments of the Romans. Then holy Wilfrid the bishop said: May the Lord and St. Peter give you remission of every controversy committed, and I will be praying for your confession, a friend to you for ever. And now first send messengers with letters everywhere to your friends, that they may recognize our reconciliation in the Lord, and that I was once despoiled though innocent, and that by your adjuration in the Lord, and according to the precept of the Apostolic see, they may restore to me some part of my substance; and afterwards, God willing, we shall take counsel in a greater council, with your consent, who is worthy to receive the episcopal see after you.

[37] Then the Archbishop, after the compact of true peace was entered into, by a sincere confession, and by letters written to kings sent letters to Aldfrith king of the Northerners, by which he adjured him that, for the fear of the Lord and the precepts of the prelates of the Apostolic see, and for the redemption of the soul of king Ecgfrith, who before had driven our bishop, deprived of all things and innocent, from his country, he would deign to be reconciled with him under a bond of peace, for the salvation of many. And not only did the archbishop stir up this king to concord, but he diligently contrived to make friends for himself everywhere, as before enemies. For he sent his letters to Ælfled, the holy virgin and abbess, in which, commending it according to the authority of the Apostolic see, that she should without doubt enter into peace with the holy bishop Wilfrid: and also to Ethelred, king of the Mercians, adjuring him, and, in his own and in Christ's charity, according to what he had before in mind, he commanded him to receive him in the following words.

[38] To the most glorious and most excellent Ethelred, king of the Mercians, Theodore, for the restoration of St. Wilfrid to the see of York, by the grace of God archbishop, perpetual health in the Lord. Let therefore your admirable holiness know, my most beloved son, that I have peace in Christ with the venerable bishop Wilfrid, and therefore, dearest, with fatherly

love I admonish you, and in the charity of Christ I command you, that to his holy devotion, so far as your strength assists, God granting patronage, you may lend your aid as you have always done, as long as you live: because for a long time, bereft of his own substance, he has labored much in the Lord among the pagans. And therefore I, Theodore, a humble bishop, in decrepit age suggest this to your beatitude, because the Apostolic authority commends this as to holy men, that that above-named most holy man may in his patience, as Scripture says, possess his soul, and, (unmindful) of the injuries unjustly inflicted upon him, humble and meek, following his head the Lord Savior and seeking the remedy: and if I have found favor in your sight, though on account of the length of the journey it may seem hard to you, may my eyes see your pleasant face, and may my soul bless you before I die. Do therefore, my son, my son, concerning that aforesaid most holy man as I have besought you. And if you shall obey your Father, who is not far from departing from this world, it shall profit you much unto salvation. Farewell in peace, live in Christ, abide in the Lord, the Lord be with you.

[39] he abundantly repaired. The letters which St. Theodore gave to Ælfled and to king Aldfrith on the same subject are wanting. It is credible that they were of no less weight and efficacy; since, on the testimony of the same Eddius, Aldfrith the most wise king in the second year of his reign reverently invited to himself, according to the Archbishop's precept, the holy bishop Wilfrid from exile, and gave him back the monastery at Ripon and afterwards the see of York, and, the other bishops yielding, the whole province. Thus indeed St. Theodore was zealous to repair the injury done to Wilfrid, so that it may be doubted whether it were not expedient that he should so fall through human frailty as to rise again more gloriously through divine mercy. For as much praise and glory, if not more, accrue to him here from Christian lowliness of mind, from a sincere confession of sin, and from a public condemnation of his own excessive connivance and lukewarmness, as he could scarcely have obtained by other illustrious deeds. Certainly he who in all other things excelled as lofty showed himself here supreme in humble things. And hence let us return to the other things which St. Theodore did bravely and illustriously for the Catholic faith, and let us take up again the times from which we have departed rather far, that we might pursue that whole case of St. Wilfrid in a continuous series.

[40] He held three councils. The Acts of Twyford, That he might more and more consolidate the Catholic faith, which he was founding in England with so many and so great labors, and that the heralds of the Gospel might apply themselves with unanimous counsel to disseminating the divine doctrine, St. Theodore convoked various councils. Of these three are chief, of which Bede makes mention. The first was held at Hertford in the year of Christ 673, on the 24th day of September, in the first Indiction, in which, five bishops being present together with those who both loved and knew the canonical statutes of the Fathers, and several masters of the church, … those things which accorded with the unity of ecclesiastical peace … and which have been decreed and defined by the holy and approved Fathers … and canonically decreed of old to be observed were set forth, and were confirmed by all who subscribed. Ten canons of this council you have in the Life, number 12, among which one is about a synod to be gathered at least once each year. Another council Theodore convened at Hatfield by the mandate of Pope Agatho, brought to him by John the archcantor of St. Peter's, although its occasion and cause are referred in Bede to our saint alone, as its president. The third finally was convened by Theodore in the year 684 among the Ottadini by the river Alaunus, where is the town of Twyford, from which the council was called the council of Twyford, says Alford.

[41] The same author in his Annals at the year of Christ 684 wonders that the most illustrious Spelman, who collected all the other synods accurately enough, omitted that of Twyford, since it is everywhere said to have been no small one, which survive, are spurious: and several bishops came together at it. Bede makes mention of it in the Life of St. Cuthbert in these words: And not long after, a synod, no small one, being gathered in the presence of the most pious king Ecgfrith beloved of God, over which Theodore the archbishop of blessed memory presided, Cuthbert was chosen by the unanimous consent of all to the bishopric of the church of Lindisfarne. And book 4 of the History, chapter 28: It happened that, a synod, no small one, being gathered in the presence of king Ecgfrith, beside the river Aln in the place which is called Adtuisirdi, which means At the double ford, over which Theodore the archbishop of blessed memory presided. Whence I believe that Spelman was not ignorant of that synod, but that the reason why he did not mention it was, I believe, that he found no Acts of it which deserved a place in his Collection. Wilkins lately reported them in his own from the Monasticon Anglicanum, volume 1, page 46, but they are assuredly such as would readily give credit to no one, which our Henschen observed in volume 3 of March in the Life of St. Cuthbert, preliminary Commentary, §1, number 4: for the year of Christ 685 is prefixed, though it is established that the synod was held in the preceding one. There subscribe Cedd of the East Saxons and Ceadda of Lichfield, bishops, of whom the latter had departed from life thirteen years before, and the former even earlier. And these, to say nothing of others, are open indications of falsity. Moreover, from what Bede narrates as having happened about the time of this synod, what Godwin writes of Tumbert in his Catalogue of the Bishops of Durham is likely. Tumbert, he says, having been deposed by the synod gathered at Twyford (for what cause I do not know), Cuthbert was substituted for him.

[42] As regards the council of Hatfield, it is certain nor have we the complete Acts of the synod of Hatfield, that we do not have its complete Acts, since Bede says: And after many things of this kind which pertained to the confession of the right faith, this holy synod added also these things in its letters: We have received, etc. Which many things no one, so far as I know, has hitherto produced, unless one should wish that they were the Acts of the synod of Pope Martin which John had brought into England. Harpsfield, century 7, chapter 22, page 82, on Wilkins's testimony in his Notes, conjectures that by the same synod Mercia was divided into five episcopal sees, from Ranulf Higden writing: At which time (of the council of Hatfield), the province of the Mercians, which Sexwulf alone then governed, was divided into five parishes; one at Leicester, another at Worcester, the third at Lichfield, the fourth in Lindsey at Sidnacester, the fifth at Dorchester: but Putta remained at Hereford, having once been established by Sexwulf. Nor is the conjecture improbable, that St. Theodore took care that that should at length be done through councils which, while he attempted it by his own right, he found beset with countless difficulties everywhere. Certainly thus also above the division of bishoprics is ascribed to the synod of Twyford. To the council of Hatfield also there seems to be referred the confirmation of the privilege which St. Benedict Biscop had lately brought from Rome. Of it Bede in the History of the Abbots of his own monastery: Monks having been sent to Rome in the time of Pope Sergius of blessed memory, he (Ceolfrid) receives from him a privilege for the protection of the monastery like that which Pope Agatho had given to Benedict, which, laid open before a synod, was confirmed by the subscription of the bishops present together with that of the magnificent king Aldfrith; and how also that earlier one was publicly confirmed in synod by the king and bishops of his time is not hidden; for at the synod of Hatfield the king and John the archcantor were present, and without doubt Benedict also, who had lately received this privilege, and did not suffer that occasion to slip.

[43] in which the privilege of the monastery of Medeshamstede was not confirmed. The other bishops who were present at that synod Alford thinks can be recognized from the subscriptions of the privilege of the monastery of Medeshamstede. But that writing deserves no credit at all, for the reasons which Pagi alleges at the year of Christ 679, number 7; and for not a few others. In the same place must be set another which he substitutes there from the Monasticon Anglicanum, volume 1, page 67: for although it does not teem with so many little fables, it nevertheless is not free of those blemishes by which it manifestly betrays its own falsity. For there are read as subscribing Wilfrid, Waldhere of London, and Putta of Rochester, bishops: and yet at the time when the council of Hatfield was celebrated Wilfrid could not be present in England, who sat in the Roman synod held in the year 680 on the third day of Easter; nor did Waldhere come to the see of London before the year 687, in which Erconwald still held it, whom he afterwards succeeded; nor did Putta preside over the church of Rochester after the year 676, as Bede testifies, book 4, chapter 12. Then among the bishops Adrian thus subscribes: I, Adrian, Apostolic legate and companion and suffragan to the most reverend Theodore, which subscription appears to me altogether unusual, and not savoring of that age. All these things, and others which occur, seem to take away from it all credit. Meanwhile I believe that Agatho granted some privileges to the said monastery at Wilfrid's request, which were afterwards confirmed by Ethelred, and later by the bishops.

§3. The chronology of events from the expulsion of Wilfrid up to the Roman synod celebrated under Pope Agatho in the case of the English disturbances.

About the year of the council of Hatfield some things appear confused There remain other matters regarding the council of Hatfield which are intricate enough, and about which writers do not agree. There concur, namely, within a few years at least four councils, of which some in a manner depend on the others according to the things done: the Constantinopolitan, the great Roman, the second Roman, and that of Hatfield in England, of which we have now treated and shall treat again in the following §. Some confound both Roman ones, and fix that in the year 680 or 679; others bind the Roman in the same year 680 with that of Hatfield, which again others contend was celebrated in the preceding year, while others again throw the Roman back to 679, but that of Hatfield to the following. From these differing opinions great darkness is condensed upon that part of English history and upon the affairs of Theodore and Wilfrid, which (on Pagi's testimony in his Critique at the year of Christ 677, number 9) no one had sufficiently dispelled. And so Pagi himself strove to weave a chronology, and from it to illustrate the things which followed the expulsion of Wilfrid. Nor were his efforts vain, chiefly in those points where he had our Chifflet as guide. But since I cannot agree with him everywhere in the rest, it has seemed good, because they pertain most closely to the Acts of our St. Theodore, to investigate more accurately the epoch of Wilfrid's expulsion, and from it, together with the epochs of the councils that followed, to draw out some chronology.

[45] And so the expulsion of St. Wilfrid from the see of York seems to have fallen in the year six hundred and seventy-seven, [to be resolved from the order of events about those times. In the same year expelled] for Bede and all the other writers commonly who mention it bind to the same year the dissension that arose between that bishop and our St. Theodore, in which year they assert that a comet appeared for three months, which some even make the herald of those disagreements. Most manifestly Bede, book 4, chapter 12. In the year, he says, of the Lord's Incarnation

six hundred and seventy-seven (the common copies of Bede have 678), which is the eighth year of king Ecgfrith, there appeared in the month of August a star which is called a comet. In which year also, a dissension having arisen between king Ecgfrith himself and the most reverend prelate Wilfrid, that same prelate was driven from the see of his bishopric. And in the Epitome at the end of his History: In the year six hundred and seventy-seven a comet appeared: bishop Wilfrid was driven from his see by king Ecgfrith. Both events Ranulf Higden in the Polychronicon and other writers commonly who committed the British affairs of those times to writing likewise bind to the same year; so that it can scarcely be doubted that in the same year the comet was seen and Wilfrid was thrust from his own.

[46] And with Bede, who fixes the comet's appearance in the year 677, was St. Wilfrid, in which the appearance of the comet happened; not a few other writers also agree. Sigebert of Gembloux in his Chronography at the year of Christ 677, writing: From August for three months a star penetrating the heavens with its rays appeared from the East from cockcrow until morning, and a very great mortality followed from the East. Westminster in the Flowers of History: In the year of grace six hundred and seventy-seven Pope Donus sat in the Roman chair one year, three months, ten days; and the see was vacant ten months, fifteen days … In these days also a comet appeared for three months, and on each day in the morning shone like the sun. The Chronicle of Alberic published by Leibniz: In the year six hundred and seventy-seven Pope Agatho four years and a half … From August for three months a star penetrating the heavens with its rays, etc., as Sigebert, whom he cites. Florence of Worcester at the same year 677: There appeared in the month of August a comet star, in which year also, a dissension having arisen between king Ecgfrith himself and the most reverend prelate Wilfrid, that same prelate was driven from the see of his bishopric. Since each of these is taken from Bede and referred to the year 677, it is clear that the chronological note which the common copies of Bede here presented had been corrupted.

[47] There is added another testimony for the same year 677 from the Catalogue of the Prelates of York, namely in the year of Christ 677, which Labbe published from a manuscript of the Letters of Ivo, bishop of Chartres, volume 1 of the Library of Manuscripts, page 322: namely: Meanwhile, king Oswiu being dead, his son Ecgfrith succeeded to the kingdom, who after the blessed Etheldreda, whom he had first married as wife in name only, obtained Ermenburga in marriage, in whose heart the malignant enemy had made a lodging for himself, where, preparing the kindlings of hatreds and envy against blessed Wilfrid, he inflamed through the woman's tongue the king's mind even to the expulsion of the pontiff. But because the king could not drive the pontiff from his see without the consent of archbishop Theodore, he sent word to the archbishop that he should be present. The causes which the accusers had feigned being heard, Wilfrid was driven from his bishopric in the year from the Lord's Incarnation six hundred and seventy-seven, which is the twelfth year of his bishopric, and he was in exile for ten years. Which I have transferred hither a little more fully, because they make much also for what I said in the preceding § about the origin of the disagreements.

[48] but not in the following one, as certain faulty Moreover Pagi notes that here in the catalogue one must read 677, and not 678, as Selden had published in the Writers of England, page 75, from the Letter of Simeon of Durham, since the twelfth year of Wilfrid's bishopric, which is there assigned, cannot coincide with 678. I pass over the passage from Anastasius the Librarian's book On the Deeds of the Roman Pontiffs, which the aforesaid Chifflet urges for this epoch of ours of the comet, because, I think, little or nothing certain can be made out from it. For let us grant, though it is not certain on every side, that Donus ascended the Roman chair on the 1st of November 676; it will not thence rightly be concluded that what happened in the month of August when he had been elected, which are the words of Anastasius, must be brought back to the following year, since his election preceded his ordination by some months while it was being approved by the imperial exarchs; and if the comet's appearance had fallen in that time, the words of Anastasius would be true, and the comet must be bound to the year 676, in which, on account of this very passage, unless I am mistaken, Hermann Contractus placed it from Anastasius. But the things which we adduced before suffice to establish that in the same year must be set both the rising of the hostile star and the injury done to Wilfrid by Ecgfrith. And that it fell in the month of August of the year six hundred and seventy-seven, the most manifest testimonies of very many writers, which I have already adduced, attest; it remains therefore that we should hold Wilfrid to have been expelled from the see of York in the same year 677.

[49] copies of Bede have. Against their Against the epoch of St. Wilfrid's expulsion thus fixed some things seem to make, most of which have long since been repelled by the aforesaid Chifflet and Pagi. For that in the passages cited from Bede, both in the History and in the Recapitulation, one must read in the year 677 and not 678, as the common copies had it, Chifflet showed from his own manuscript codices of the best quality, and plainly proved by a testimony drawn from Bede himself. For the venerable author writes in book 4, chapter 5: In the year of the Lord's Incarnation six hundred and seventy, which is the second year from the time when Theodore came into Britain, Oswiu king of the Northumbrians was pressed by an infirmity of which he also died in the 58th year of his age … Who, dying on the fifteenth day of the Kalends of March, left his son Ecgfrith heir of the kingdom. Therefore the eighth year of Ecgfrith's reign begins in the month of February of the year 677 and ends in the same month of the following year 678, and accordingly what in the same place where 678 is faultily set is said to have happened — Wilfrid's expulsion — in the eighth year of Ecgfrith's reign, must be brought back to the preceding year, since the month of August of the year 678 can by no means coincide with the eighth year of Ecgfrith, and can coincide only with the preceding year of the common era. And this error being detected and corrected, the epoch is easily amended among those writers who transferred the same from Bede's History, faulty and corrupt in this part, into their own works.

[50] emendation the things sought Although there are those who raise a difficulty against the year 677, or against the emendation of Bede, from two other texts. The Saxon Chronicle has at the year of Christ 678: This year appeared a comet star: and bishop Wilfrid was driven from his bishopric by king Ecgfrith. And the Saxon Paraphrase of king Alfred comments thus on Bede's passage from book 4, chapter 5, of which in number 46: It was about the second year from the time when Æthelred king of the Mercians plundered the land of Kent, and this is the ninth year of the reign of king Ecgfrith, and there appeared in the month of August a star, etc. But in all copies of Bede's History, even the corrected ones, in the same chapter 12 a little before it is said: But in the year of the Lord's Incarnation six hundred and seventy-six, when Æthelred king of the Mercians, having brought a malignant army, was laying Kent waste … etc. Therefore the rising of the comet and the expulsion of Wilfrid must be sent back to the year 678, which are recorded to have happened about two years after the year 676, or after the devastation of Kent. But the passage of the Saxon Chronicle may seem doubtful. No mention is made there in the series of years of the year 677; for how easily could a unit have been added to this number by the drowsiness of copyists! And events of two years can be comprehended under the same note, nor does anything forbid our believing that that Chronicle was made to conform to a faulty copy of Bede. So that from it either little or nothing can be deduced.

[51] As to the Saxon version, the often-praised Pagi in his Critique, number 10, thinks from elsewhere prove nothing, that it must be called into doubt whether Bede, when he treats of Wilfrid's deposition from the see of York, expressed the epoch of the Lord's Incarnation, and says that he is moved by this, that it is not likely that king Alfred would have struck out the year of the Incarnation found in the History in order to substitute a strange epoch drawn from the depopulation of Kent for that earlier and most common one. It is a conjecture, and not itself likely enough, to which one may oppose another, since nothing is at hand from elsewhere from which anything certain may be dug out. I believe that in the codex which Alfred had in hand the year of the Incarnation was expressed, but faultily, as the common copies of Bede have it, the six hundred and seventy-eighth: I believe that the most learned king noticed that that year could not be reconciled with the eighth year of Ecgfrith's reign, whose beginning he had found marked in Bede about the fifteenth of the Kalends of March of the year 670, and therefore accommodated the later epoch of Ecgfrith's years to the first, or to the years of the Incarnation, and substituted the ninth for the eighth which he had found in Bede; whereas on the contrary, that the epoch of the Incarnation must be adjusted to Ecgfrith's eighth year, I demonstrated above in number 49 from Chifflet.

[52] And this opinion, unless I am mistaken, is much more likely than Pagi's conjecture: which defer that expulsion to the following year. for to wish to divine why in the Paraphrase something is explained in another way than it is found in the text appears to me altogether unusual and too weak a foundation for anything to be built upon: certainly in that Saxon Version, as is usual in a paraphrase, very many things are expressed with other notes than the Latin words of Bede, or even the sense, bear, from which, on the editor's testimony, it not rarely departs much. What wonder therefore if here we find substituted for the common chronological notes others, and those drawn more closely from the affairs of England? Meanwhile either suffices for lightening the difficulty, whether you follow Pagi's conjecture or mine: for if Alfred did not find a prefixed epoch, but added it from his own opinion, as Pagi suspects, that ought not to detain us against the open testimonies of so many other writers; but if he did find one and changed it (which I think), it follows from what I have adduced from Bede himself that he erred. The disagreements between St. Theodore and Wilfrid being therefore asserted for the year 677, I return to the series of events, about which I am compelled to desert Pagi as he departs from Chifflet.

[53] In this manner Pagi arranges his chronology. St. Wilfrid from the see of York He holds that Wilfrid was thrust from his see by St. Theodore in that year 677, in the month of January or the beginning of February, yet did not sail from England into Frisia before the end of autumn: at the year of Christ 679, number 11. He sets him, having set out thence in the month of February of the following year 678, before the middle of the month of March with king Dagobert II in Austrasia beyond the Rhine: at the year of Christ 678, numbers 8 and 14. Then he exhibits him at Rome with Pope Agatho in the month of October pleading his case before a council: ibid., number 10. Meanwhile Dagobert II is slain, number 12 and following. He assigns to the year 679 the Roman synod against the Monothelites, held on the third day of Easter, or the 5th day of April, ibid., number 15. In the same year he brings Wilfrid back, returning through Austrasia and Frisia, into Britain in the month of November; ibid., number 17 and following. He places the council of Hatfield in the following year 680 in the month of September:

ibid., number 26, and at the year of Christ 679, number 6. Finally he restores St. Wilfrid in the year 687 to the former dignity of the see of York after a ten years' exile: ibid., number 12, and at the year of Christ 677, number 12. Most of these seem incapable of being admitted: for some rest on mere conjectures, and those very slight, and not fewer are opposed to the manifest assertions of contemporary writers, which I try to show briefly, meaning to follow Wilfrid in his expulsion.

[54] he was not expelled in the months of January or February When Pagi wrote at the year of Christ 679, number 11, at the end, that Wilfrid, driven from his see in the month of January or February of the year 677, boarded ship only as that year was drawing to a close, it had slipped the learned man's memory what he had determined a few pages before: namely at the year of Christ 677, at the last number. With Malmesbury (he says) Bede agrees, book 5, chapter 20, where he says that Wilfrid boarded ship while the west wind blew and was driven to Frisia, and thence I gather that he was deposed at the beginning of autumn, namely in the month of September, and landed in Frisia before the Kalends of November. Thus he, and so he openly fixes St. Wilfrid's deposition from his see in the month of September, which a little later he brings back to January or the beginning of February. For he says in the cited number eleven: Moreover, since the ninth year of king Ecgfrith ends on the 15th day of February of this year of Christ (679), and the tenth begins, not only did his brother Elfwin perish before that day, but also in the year 677, on the same day on which Elfwin lost his life in this year (679), Wilfrid was driven from his see; who nevertheless only as the year was drawing to a close boarded ship, about to set out for Rome to pursue his appeal. Which is equivalent to this reasoning: In the same month and day two years before Wilfrid was rebuffed at court, on which Elfwin was slain in the year 679: but the latter's murder happened in the year 679 before the middle of February, in which Ecgfrith's ninth year ends; therefore Wilfrid also, two years before, in the month of January or the first days of February, was deposed from his see and suffered a rebuff at court.

[55] of the year of Christ 677, He had seen, namely, that some months must be granted to Wilfrid after he was thrust from the see of York, which he spent with Ethelred king of the Mercians, and elsewhere expended in consoling his monks and in ordering his affairs, before he sailed from England into Frisia; and he was troubled by the day of Elfwin's murder, which from the narration of Eddius and others must have been the anniversary of that on which the magnates of the court had insulted with guffaws Wilfrid, expelled and complaining of the injury done him; wherefore Wilfrid had threatened them with sorrow at hand from the sight of the corpse of the slain Elfwin, on that same anniversary day. But these things could not be reconciled with the chronology which he had already arranged: for the death of Elfwin is recorded in Bede in the ninth year of Ecgfrith's reign, which, beginning on the 15th of February of the year of Christ 678, ends on the same day of the same month of the following year 679: but since by his first opinion Wilfrid threatened the magnates with the punishment of their insolence in the month of September or October, in the same months must have happened the destruction of Elfwin, which on the same anniversary day would follow Wilfrid's prophecy. But those months cannot coincide with the ninth year of Ecgfrith and with the year of Christ 679, which epoch Bede in his Epitome, and all the other ancient writers of England commonly, ascribe to the same murder of Elfwin. Therefore the murder of Elfwin, and the injury done to Wilfrid by the courtiers, had to be thrown back to January and February of the year 679, which alone are the months that can run with Ecgfrith's ninth year; and Wilfrid's expulsion had to be brought back to the beginning of the year 677, so that in those months he could prophesy that sorrow would come upon the court from Elfwin's destruction, on some anniversary day which could fall only in those months.

[56] And thus indeed Pagi in some fashion loosens the knot by a silent retractation, but about the end of it, namely in November or December. but he ties another elsewhere. Bede and all the rest subjoin Wilfrid's deposition to the appearance of the comet; no one puts it before: whence it is not obscurely deduced that the latter preceded the former; nay, others record that the hostile star portended the disagreements between St. Theodore and Wilfrid. But in Pagi's chronology Wilfrid's expulsion preceded the comet's appearance by at least six whole months, and therefore the comet portended what had happened six months before. It is assuredly much safer to walk by Chifflet's way, where the several things, the natural sense of the words being everywhere preserved to the writers, succeed one another aptly in this order. In the month of November or December of the year 677, after the comet had been seen for three months, Wilfrid is deposed from his see in his absence: for he (Theodore) alone newly and irregularly ordained three bishops, found from elsewhere and not from the subjects of that parish, in the proper places of his bishopric, in the absence of our pontiff (says Eddius, chapter 23). Wilfrid was perhaps staying in the monastery of Medeshamstede, or elsewhere was free for the duties of his pastoral charge, when the ill-omened news was brought to him. Having received it, he returned to York, examined everything diligently, took counsel with friendly bishops and monks, and meanwhile the year 677 slipped away.

[57] At the beginning of the following year 678, in the month of January, St. Wilfrid approached the king and the Archbishop, Not in that year, however, from England asking what cause there was that, without any sin of offence, they should defraud him after the manner of robbers of his own substance, given by kings for God's sake. But they, to him thus protesting about the cause of his injuries, answered (Eddius goes on to narrate) a notorious word before all the people, saying: We ascribe to you no fault of crime in any harm-doing, but nevertheless we do not change the judgments passed concerning you. But that bishop of ours (Wilfrid), not content with such a deceitful judgment, with the counsel of his fellow-bishops rather chose the judgment of the Apostolic See: as Paul the apostle, condemned without cause by the Jews, appealed to Cæsar. And then our holy pontiff, turning from the royal tribunal, said to the flatterers rejoicing with laughter: On this anniversary day, you who now laugh at my condemnation through envy shall then weep bitterly in your own confusion. And so departing, after a month or two he set sail for Frisia: all of which cohere most aptly among themselves and agree with the statements of the writers: and thus Wilfrid's expulsion begins when bishops are placed in his see in his absence, and ends when he leaves Britain: nay rather, thus also the historians are reconciled, of whom some bind Wilfrid's expulsion to the year 677, others to the following.

[58] Pagi rises against this opinion in his Critique at the year of Christ 677, number 9, in these words: did Wilfrid sail into Frisia, but Thus Chifflet (about the emendation of the common copies of Bede) who nevertheless wrongly deferred Wilfrid's departure from England until the following year. Roundly enough: but would that he proved his own as solidly as he asserts it confidently. How little he here makes good, although it is abundantly clear from what I have already said, it will nevertheless be worth while to confirm our opinion further, and here and there to refute what he brings against it. And first indeed Eddius writes in chapter 23 that St. Wilfrid, when the court flatterers standing about the king hooted down his complaints, threatened them with the punishment of their envy hanging over them on this same anniversary day, and then goes on to narrate how wretchedly the holy man's prophecy fell out for them: And thus it came to pass according to the prophecy of the Saint: for on that anniversary day the corpse of the slain king Elfwin was carried into York; all the peoples, weeping bitterly, tore their garments and the hair of their heads. From these it is thus argued: Bede records the murder of Elfwin in the ninth year of Ecgfrith's reign, even in the most correct copies, and in the year of Christ 679. These two epochs cannot coincide except in the first two months of the year 679, as was shown above in number 55. Therefore St. Wilfrid must have been in England in January or February of the year 678, so that he truly foretold that on this anniversary day the death of Elfwin, which happened in one of those months of the year 679, would turn their petulant guffaws into mourning.

[59] in the springtime of the following one, Nothing seems simpler than that reasoning, and yet it does not please Pagi, because it delays Wilfrid in England for some months beyond his chronology. Nay rather, he contends that this is the source of the error into which all the more recent historians and chronologists have fallen who defer St. Wilfrid's expulsion to the year 678. Let us hear how he stops up this source. But (he says in number 14) Eddius by no means asserts this (that Elfwin's murder happened in the year next following the prophecy), but only that the anniversary day of his deposition would be for those who insulted him with a guffaw a day of sorrow and sadness, which would have been true even if Elfwin had been slain, or his corpse carried into the city, ten whole years after Wilfrid's deposition, on the same day on which he was cast down from his dignity. Certainly among the Sermons of St. Leo the Great we have four whose title, both in the printed editions and in most of the manuscripts, is On the anniversary day of his assumption to the height and burden of the Roman See, which no one will say were delivered on one and the same day recurring after the year of his ordination. And by this observation he blows to the winds the whole opinion of those authors.

[60] as is shown against Pagi, It is known to all who have turned over Lexicons even with their fingertips that an anniversary day is not only that which recurs when the first year has elapsed, but also that which recurs in the following years. But neither can Pagi deny that it properly signifies also the day recurring in the very next year, especially where no epoch of another year is read as added, as happens in that book of Eddius. He ought nevertheless to have proved the contrary, if he wished anything to be made out: for those whom he attacks rely also on the testimony of other writers, not altogether recent, who assert that Elfwin's death happened in the very next year, and that Eddius is to be understood of it. Eadmer in the Life of St. Wilfrid writes: But beholding some insulting his misfortunes with a foul enough guffaw, he said: O sons, may you pass long times in prosperity: but know that a hostile lot will very soon dissolve your joys: nor shall you see this year pass before you atone with bitter sorrow for those mockeries which you have against me. Which prophecy was made truth. Fridegod has the same; nor is Malmesbury less plain, book 3 On the Deeds of the Pontiffs of England, page 262, bringing in Wilfrid speaking thus: This derision which you now make of my departure shall be turned for you into great sorrow in the coming year, on this same day.

[61] and there the holy prelate But that all these ancient writers erred, let Pagi alone say. I judge that we must not depart from the open testimonies of those who touched the events more closely, and drew what they narrate perhaps also from other monuments which we lack, unless a manifest reason persuade it; and since he could not adduce such, their credit remains entire and force remains to our argument, and Wilfrid is set as sailing from England into Frisia in the springtime of the year 678,

whom I follow thither, since the things done there confirm our chronology also, which is to be carried on thence to the councils. Eddius therefore, after he has recorded that Wilfrid's coming into Frisia was most welcome to king Aldgisl, continues thus: Then at once our holy pontiff, with the king's leave, daily preached the word of God to the nations … then in that year, his preaching having been received, he baptized in the name of the Lord all the princes except a few, and many thousands of the common people. And chapter 27: After the pontiff beloved of God had wintered among the Frisians, having gained much people for God, when the springtime came he took up, with God's help, the journey he had begun to the Apostolic See with his companions. In Pagi's opinion scarcely more than three months can be granted to Wilfrid converting the Frisians to Christ, since he will have him land there about the Kalends of November and set out thence into Austrasia in the middle of February.

[62] But who would believe that so tiny a space of time is called a year by Eddius, with Aldgisl king of the Frisians in that year, no mention being made anywhere of any epoch to which it must be referred? Add to this that St. Wilfrid is thus exhibited as too prodigiously laborious, who in the space of three months, and those wintry ones, should have imbued many thousands of barbarians and almost all their princes with the saving mysteries of the faith. Which, although I do not deny that, with God cooperating in a special way, it could have been done, I shall nevertheless not admit that it was done unless it be asserted on undoubted testimony. Wherefore I rather believe that the holy prelate labored for the greatest part of the year in the conversion of the Frisians: which opinion Bede not obscurely favors, book 5, chapter 20: There therefore, he says, happily spending the winter with the new people of God (therefore already before claimed for Christ by baptism), he thus resumed the journey of coming to Rome. Before I hasten to Rome with Wilfrid, an error of Mabillon must here be corrected in passing, by which he adds helpers to the prelate of York in the first conversion of the Frisians, and so weakens the force of the argument which I have deduced from the short time spent in converting them. In century 4 of the Acts of the Saints of the Order of St. Benedict, part 1, page 691, on that passage of Eddius where he records Wilfrid's stay in Frisia, Mabillon appends this Note: Throughout all this interval Wilfrid labored much for the conversion of the Frisians together with St. Willibrord, as Fridegod sings. And indeed with Acca accompanying him, from Bede, book 3, chapter 13: who again in book 5, chapter 20, relates that Wilfrid spent the winter in Frisia with Willibrord.

[63] These things, I say, the often-praised writer has wrongly referred hither. he spent nearly a whole year, baptizing many of them For first, it is false that at this time Wilfrid labored together with St. Willibrord in Frisia. Mabillon himself, century 3, part 1, page 603, in his preliminary Observations, notes that St. Willibrord was born in the year of Christ 663, and therefore in this year he was in the fifteenth year of his age, nor could he labor together with St. Wilfrid, since, as is plainly said in Willibrord's Life, he did not sail into Frisia before the 33rd year of his age, which answers to the year of Christ 696. It is false, secondly, that Fridegod sings this: take the verses which bear on the matter.

After a little, giving to many the [] baptism of salvation,*

And Willibrord founded those strongholds which he holds,

Equalling so great a master in fervor of faith.

where he does not exhibit St. Willibrord rendering companion service to Wilfrid at this time, but afterwards treading in his footsteps. It is false, thirdly, that Acca was a companion to St. Wilfrid on this journey, since he (on the testimony of Richard of Hexham, On the State of the Church of Hexham, chapter 14) was nourished and instructed in boyhood in the clergy of the most holy Bosa, archbishop of York, beloved of God. Bosa was only in the year now past consecrated by St. Theodore to the see of York; therefore at this time Acca was at most in boyhood, and did not accompany St. Wilfrid to Rome.

[64] long before St. Willibrord had come thither. It is false, fourthly, that Bede in book 5, chapter 20, relates that Wilfrid spent the winter in Frisia with St. Willibrord. Behold his words … Honorably received (Wilfrid) by the barbarians and by their king Aldgisl, he preached Christ to them, and instructing many thousands of them with the word of truth, washed them from the filth of their sins in the Savior's font, and, what afterwards Willibrord, the most reverend pontiff of Christ, completed with great devotion, he himself first there began the Evangelical work. Unless I am much mistaken, afterwards denotes a future or succeeding time, and he who completes has something begun, and St. Willibrord is here said to have perfected afterwards the conversion of the barbarians which St. Wilfrid had begun. Fifthly, finally, it is false that what Bede writes in book 3, chapter 13, bears on this. The passage which entangled the most learned man in these errors is this: In short, the most reverend prelate Acca is wont to relate that when, going to Rome, he was staying with the most holy Willibrord, bishop of the Frisian nation, together with his own prelate Wilfrid, he often heard him, etc. These things, I say, are not to be referred to the present journey of St. Wilfrid, but to another later one, when, after fully 20 years, being again driven from his see, under the Pontiffs Sergius and John he returned to Rome by the same way, which Eddius and Richard testify, who alike assert that Acca was St. Wilfrid's companion on that journey. And of these more than enough; I return to the chronology.

§4. The epochs are fixed of the Roman council convened on account of the English disturbances, and of that of Hatfield celebrated in England under St. Theodore. The Penitential Book ascribed to him.

Before the great Roman council celebrated in the year 680 According to our chronology deduced thus far, St. Wilfrid spends the remainder of the year 678 among the Frisians, and in the following spring sets out through Austrasia for Rome to Pope Agatho, to plead his case and to sit in the great council convened against the Monothelites. This synod of 125 bishops was celebrated on the third day in holy Easter, as Eddius Stephanus says in the Life of St. Wilfrid, who there, on the same testimony of Eddius, appealing to the Apostolic See and by this power absolved, and set with 125 other fellow-bishops in the synod on the seat of judgment, on behalf of all the Northern part of Britain and the islands of Ireland … confessed the true and Catholic faith and strengthened it with his own subscription. Baronius and almost all the writers who before Pagi treated of the aforesaid synod bound it to the year of Christ 680. Baronius's critic brought it back to the preceding one with no reason at all, namely lest, according to his chronology, he should be forced to keep Wilfrid at Rome for nearly three years. Since Acts do not survive from which Pagi's new opinion can be certainly overturned, we shall use our own right, and shall follow the opinion of Baronius and of the rest, which the critic has attacked, much less stormed, with no arguments, setting this Roman council in the year 680. But before it certain things were done at Rome in the case of St. Theodore and Wilfrid which give rise to a difficulty.

[66] That St. Wilfrid pleaded his case at Rome in a council before Pope Agatho and was absolved, Eddius relates, another was convoked there, in which St. Wilfrid was heard, both in the words produced above and at length in chapter 29 of the Life of that holy bishop of York, and there, after he had described his coming to Rome, he says that Agatho gathered bishops and presbyters more than fifty, that with them he might deal with the disagreements that had arisen between Theodore and Wilfrid. Eddius then appends the Acts of that assembly. Bede also mentions the same matter in book 5, chapter 20, in these words: There therefore (in Frisia) happily spending the winter with the new people of God, he thus resumed the journey of coming to Rome, and, when his case was ventilated in the presence of Pope Agatho and of several bishops, he was by the judgment of all found to have been accused without crime and to be worthy of the bishopric. At which time the same Pope Agatho, when he was gathering at Rome a synod of 125 bishops against those who dogmatized one will and operation in the Lord Savior, ordered Wilfrid also to be summoned, and, sitting among the bishops, to declare his faith, etc. Malmesbury, On the Deeds of the Pontiffs of England, book 3, under Wilfrid, treats of the synod in which he was absolved, and there produces its Acts; which being recited, he thus continues: By these decrees the bishop (Wilfrid), glorying, was also by the Pope's order bidden to sit in the number of the 150 holy bishops who were carrying on the council against those who preach one operation in the two natures of our Lord Jesus Christ.

[67] Two councils therefore without doubt were held at the time when Wilfrid was at Rome. was convoked. Other Acts, That in which Wilfrid was absolved Pagi places a whole year before the other, and believes it to have been celebrated in the month of October of the year 678: whether rightly, we shall see below. Moreover the Acts of this council are current in two forms. The one Eddius and Malmesbury published in the places cited; the other Spelman inserted into his Collection of the councils of England, dug out, as he testifies, from an ancient Manuscript. I call them two, which most men have hitherto believed to be the Acts of the same synod and only torn apart from one another. And they stand both in the places cited and also in Labbe, volume 6, column 579; where what he collected from Malmesbury scarcely differs from Eddius's words. Before I go on to disclose my conjecture more at length, it will be worth while to hand the reader in a few words an analysis of both sets of Acts, if perchance they are not at hand. Spelman's Acts therefore (so I call those which he first published from a manuscript) begin thus: In the name of our Lord Savior Jesus Christ, in the reign of our lords the most pious Augusti, Constantine the elder emperor in the twenty-sixth year, after his consulship in the tenth year; and also of Heraclius and Tiberius, the new Augusti, his brothers, in the twenty-second, in the seventh Indiction, in the month of October, Agatho presiding … in the basilica of our Lord Jesus Christ which is called the Constantinian, there sitting … bishops: who then are enumerated, sixteen, together with 35 presbyters, all by their proper name.

[68] For these Malmesbury has: The most holy Pope Agatho convened a council of fifty, both bishops and abbots, from Eddius Stephanus and Malmesbury, in the basilica of the Savior which is called the Constantian. And like these Eddius. Then the Pontiff makes a speech in almost the same tenor in all of them, and teaches that he had called together the bishops that with them he might take cognizance of the disagreements that had arisen in England, the report of which he says in Eddius and Malmesbury that he had received both from the mouth of those who came and from the writings of others. In Spelman's copy the bishops Andrew and John answer: It is clear and established for all that the churches placed in the island of Britain need much pontifical success. First indeed, because there a dissension between the most holy archbishop Theodore and the other prelates of that province (perhaps has arisen is lacking) which, with God's help, the Apostolic authority alone can mitigate. These things in Eddius are much different; the same bishops indeed make a speech, but after some praises of the Roman See they report thus: But as regards what has been laid upon us by your Apostolic censure, before these days, while we sat

together with our fellow-bishops and fellow-servants, we read over the several writings which those sent from the island of Britain brought to your Apostolic Pontificate, both those which were sent in the person of Theodore, the most reverend archbishop formerly directed thither by the Apostolic See, or the reports of others with those same writings against a certain bishop who was, as they assert, running away, whom they judged to have come hither; and those which were offered by Wilfrid, the bishop beloved of God of the holy church of York, who, cast out from his own see by the aforesaid Most Holy one, appealing to the Apostolic See, has come thus far.

[69] others were published by Spelman They then praise Wilfrid's modesty, and assert that he was assailed by false accusations, and seek the Pontiff's sentence. You notice, unless I am mistaken, reader, that whatever Eddius recites pertains specially and solely to St. Wilfrid or to his disagreements with St. Theodore, whereas on the contrary in Spelman's Acts no mention is made of Wilfrid, none of his case. The rest proceed by the same path: in Spelman, Agatho answers that the execution must be pressed of those things which long before had been decreed by St. Gregory for Britain and established by synods and approved and confirmed by the Roman See. In Eddius the Pontiff says that Wilfrid is waiting before the doors asking that his petition be admitted, which then, with all assenting, is read out to the council by John the notary, and is fairly long, and wholly against the injury done him by St. Theodore. In place of these, in Spelman's Acts, Crescens, bishop of the church of Vinona, and Juvenal, bishop of Alba, said: All things being considered and discussed, both what we have learned from the report of the various comers and what could be gathered from the various utterances of the writings sent hither to the Apostolic See, urgently pressing, we have determined by common consent to promulgate this sentence of definition.

[70] from a Manuscript, which by not a few Whence by the authority of blessed Peter … we define and establish that each kingdom set in the British island shall have bishops of the provinces according to the measure of governance, so appointed that all together with the archbishop shall be reckoned as twelve prelates of churches, whom the archbishop, who for the time is decorated by this Apostolic See with the honor of the pallium, shall promote, and shall canonically ordain them in the priestly grade, and they shall be subject only to his ordination; this arrangement being interposed, that none of the bishops shall dare to thrust himself into the rights of another prelate, but each shall keep his own unimpaired and be zealous for admonishing and converting the peoples. It is further forbidden that clerics use arms, have harp-players, or permit a concert, jests, or games to be exhibited before them. It will be worth while to have observed here that all these statutes favor St. Theodore chiefly, who had striven with every effort to multiply bishops, and had expelled Ceadda, intruded by those whose part it was not to ordain a bishop, from the see which he held. But as much as they are adverse to the Archbishop, so much do they favor Wilfrid, the things which Eddius records to have followed the reading of the petition of the bishop of York: for there, after Agatho had again praised Wilfrid's modesty and patience, the whole synod … said.

[71] We establish and decree that Wilfrid, the bishop beloved of God, receive the bishopric which he lately had, the Acts of the same council saving the definition ordained above; and that those whom, with the consent of the council to be gathered there, he shall choose as helper bishops for himself, with whom he ought peaceably to live according to the rule established above, be ordained on being promoted by the most holy Archbishop, those being without doubt expelled who in his absence were irregularly sent into his bishopric. After this the Acts end with the usual clause. Wilfrid had asked in his petition that the bishops substituted in his place by Theodore should be driven out by Apostolic mandate. And if again in the same parish over which I presided, he says, he shall provide to appoint prelates, at least command such to be provided for promotion with whom I may be able, a peaceful and tranquil concord obtaining between us, unanimously to serve God; to which the council's answer chiefly looks. Whither these tend — saving the definition ordained above, and according to the rule ordained above — seems certain, namely to Spelman's Acts: unless Eddius, carried away by partisan zeal, passed over certain things less favorable to Wilfrid. However it be, here the synod ends in him and in Malmesbury.

[72] In Spelman's copy, after what I have recited, Agatho judges that it would be most salutary torn apart from one another if inquiry were made about the ecclesiastical statutes in England, about the series of the bishops, and about the faith of the Anglo-Saxons. Andrew of Ostia and John of Porto say: For it is true that it has been laid upon your Holiness that by Apostolic censure this decretal arrangement be directed thence thither by letters and by a prudent and fit and well-instructed man to Theodore, the most reverend and most holy bishop of the men of Canterbury, … that Theodore himself in those parts, by your holy authority and our synodal unity, may gather a council, and with all the faithful, the elders and those greater in birth of all Saxony, may hold a public and œcumenical synod. That counsel pleased Agatho and the assembled bishops, and they all began together unanimously to seek, and found, Christ favoring, a venerable man, John the archcantor of the church of the holy apostle Peter and abbot of the monastery of blessed Martin, who was directed from Rome into Britain by the command of Pope Agatho. There follows what good hope the fathers conceived from these decrees; then Agatho, giving the synod of blessed Pope Martin, written out, … to the aforesaid religious abbot John, that coming with him into Britain he might bring it to the blessed archbishop Theodore, not only for the testimony and confirmation of his legation, but also had charged that whatever holy Theodore the archbishop with the wise men … should have been able to find more profitable and more religious in Christ, they should strengthen and transcribe with the aforesaid authority.

[73] And thus Spelman's Acts end, in almost all things, have been believed. What is reported for the unity of the Acts is refuted, as is plain to one who considers, different from the others, from which nevertheless most men think they are only torn apart. Few are the things which can in appearance favor their opinion: namely the same number of bishops assembled in both, the same Andrew of Ostia and John of Porto making a speech once, certain things at the beginning expressed in the same words, and finally what Eddius writes about another ordinance and rule passed above, which they conjecture must be referred to Spelman's Acts. But it is not solidly argued from an almost identical number of those present, and from the same bishops interposing remarks, for the unity of the synod, since the same men could easily have been present at different ones, especially since all who in the preface in Spelman are enumerated by express name had sees near Rome, where accordingly they could be staying, or whither they could easily be summoned. The things which in both are set forth in the same words pertain not to the matter itself which was being handled, but to the introduction, which can be the same even in different synods. Nor do Eddius's alleged words effect anything, for they must be referred to Spelman's Acts, although these were framed a whole year before, unless perchance Eddius, as I hinted above, passed over some other decrees.

[74] and it is held that they are the Acts of a different council or session For my part I cannot bring myself to think that matters so disparate, of which there is not the least trace of the one in the other, were first bound together and then torn from one another. Nay, I believe that the affairs of England, at least those which pertain specially to Wilfrid, were not thoroughly known at Rome to Agatho and the bishops when the synod or Session whose Acts Spelman exhibits was celebrated; certainly they treat so generally of the disturbances arisen in England that Wilfrid is nowhere named there, much less is his case discussed. For indeed, if it had already been decided for Wilfrid before John was sent from Rome into England, why was nothing charged upon him? Why did John in the council of Hatfield, at which he was present, not only accomplish nothing for Wilfrid, but not even attempt it? There was surely there a place for pleading his case, if the Roman council had already before decided that the bishops among whom Theodore had divided the diocese of York should be expelled, and others substituted in council by Wilfrid's choice, as in our number 71 Eddius asserts. But if anything of the kind was attempted in the council of Hatfield, why did Bede, why did Eddius Stephanus himself, who so laboriously collected whatever redounds to St. Wilfrid's praise, omit it?

[75] in such a way that those which Spelman published were framed I repeat what I have said: I believe that John had already set out from Rome before Wilfrid's case was handled before the Pontiff, and therefore that the council or (which is the same to me) the Session whose Acts Spelman published was celebrated before the other, nay before Wilfrid had come to Rome. Certainly one of these seems to me to flow from the other. For neither is it credible that Wilfrid, if he had been present at Rome at the time of the earlier synod, would not have been heard or consulted: and that he was not, the deepest silence about him and his expulsion, which was the chief origin of the English disturbances, persuades me. And these things, which I have hitherto brought forward for distinguishing the synods or sessions, if they do not altogether certainly prove what I desire, certainly outweigh the reasons which others allege for uniting them. From my opinion therefore I go on to produce a chronology. At the time when Wilfrid was among the Frisians in the year 678, the first synod was convened at Rome — that, I say, whose Acts are in Spelman. Of the prefixed chronological notes, two, namely the tenth year after the consulship of Constantine and the seventh Indiction in the month of October, agree with this year of Christ 678; the rest disagree, both with these and all among themselves; therefore they must be brought back to these two, as Pagi contends, in which I readily agree with him.

[76] in the year 678, while Wilfrid was still in Frisia, The epoch of the Roman council thus far established I now set about to confirm further from the epoch of the council of Hatfield, about which again I am compelled to depart from Pagi. For he, to consult for his own chronology, defers it to the year 680; I contend that it must be bound to the preceding one: take the reasons. Bede in book 4 of the History, chapter 17, thus begins the Acts of the council of Hatfield celebrated under Theodore in the presence of John the Archcantor: In the reign of our most pious Lords Ecgfrith king of the Northumbrians in the tenth year of his reign, on the fifteenth day of the Kalends of October, in the eighth Indiction; Ethelred king of the Mercians, in the sixth year of his reign; and Aldwulf king of the East Angles, in the seventeenth year of his reign; and Hlothhere king of the men of Kent, in the seventh year of his reign. All these notes prefixed to the Acts of the council of Hatfield, if perhaps you except one, conspire upon the year of Christ 679. Moreover in book 4 of the History, chapter 18, Bede writes thus: There was present at this synod (of Hatfield), and likewise confirmed the decrees of the faith, the venerable man John, archcantor of the church of St. Peter and abbot of the monastery of blessed Martin, who had lately come from Rome by the command of Pope Agatho. Therefore the Roman council, from which John was sent in the month of October, was certainly celebrated in the preceding year and so in 678. But Pagi in his Critique at the year of Christ 679, number

6, wishes the synod of Hatfield to be torn away from almost all its prefixed chronological notes and deferred to the following year. Let us hear by what arguments he establishes his opinion.

[77] Bede, he says, uses the Constantinian Indiction, which has its beginning on the twenty-fourth day of September. and eleven months before the council of Hatfield, The Acts of the council of Hatfield testify that it was held on the 15th of the Kalends of October, or the 17th day of September, in the eighth Indiction. But this in Bede's reckoning begins on the 24th of September of the year of Christ 679, and therefore the 17th day of September of the eighth Indiction falls in the year 680, and by no means in the preceding one. It is true that Bede followed the Constantinian Indiction, and Pagi demonstrated this from his own words. But it is not here Bede's reckoning that is in question, but that of the council of Hatfield. For in the cited book 4, chapter 17, of the History he writes thus: Of which letters (framed by that synod) this is the beginning: In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ the Savior. In the reign of our most pious Lords, etc., which I have recited above. Whence it becomes clear that the authentic synodal letters themselves are exhibited to us by Bede, and therefore he is here wrongly reproached from his own peculiar manner of reckoning, against the most usual and common custom in England of beginning the Indictions from the month of September. Therefore it was not the eighth Indiction with the 17th day of September that deceived Baronius and others — which in this year (679) was in course from the Kalends of September — but Pagi's own inconsiderateness, when he represents the chronological notes ascribed by the synod itself as having been added by Bede and as to be taken from his manner of reckoning.

[78] Better does Pagi argue against the epoch of the council of Hatfield fixed above from other passages of Bede himself. which was convened in the year of Christ 679, in the same year of which He in the Recapitulation binds the synod of which we are treating to the year of Christ 680 in open words. Then Ethelred king of the Mercians began to reign only in the year of Christ 675, as the same Bede testifies, writing in the Epitome: In the year six hundred and sixty-five, Wulfhere king of the Mercians, after he had reigned seventeen years, dying, left the rule to his brother Ethelred. Whence it follows that the sixth year of his reign, which is assigned above among the chronological notes of the council, begins only in the year 680. I answer: as all the learned confess, and Pagi himself among them, the chronological notes of Bede are suspect, which some judge to have been much disfigured by copyists, others to have been added by a later interpolator and wrongly attributed to that historian. Little therefore or nothing can be made out from them against the epochs of the council, which it is clear Bede copied out from the synodal letter. Let us nevertheless grant that both these and those stand on the same degree of probability: it would still be illegitimate to fight from one passage or another against three or four others, and those linked together. But here in the same Bede the eighth Indiction stands for the year 679, as I have proved; the tenth year of Ecgfrith and the seventh of Hlothhere also conspire, nor does the seventeenth of Aldwulf disagree: there are added from elsewhere the suffrages of Henry of Huntingdon, of king Alfred in the Saxon Version, of the abbot of Jorval, and of almost all the other ancients for the year 679: the passages contrary to so many epochs must therefore be corrected, and the council of Hatfield under St. Theodore remains fixed in the year of Christ 679, but the Roman one bound to the preceding.

[79] Wilfrid was heard and absolved at Rome. Difficulties raised In the same year in which St. Theodore convoked a synod in England, St. Wilfrid was heard and absolved at Rome. For he, in my chronology, after he had preached for about a whole year in Frisia, in the springtime of the year 679 made his way into Austrasia beyond the Rhine to king Dagobert II, by whom he was most kindly received, and, not many months having been spent there, was sent to Rome through Champagne or Liguria with his companion and guide Deodatus, Dagobert's bishop, as Eddius speaks. Against Pagi it is not worth while to prove that Wilfrid could have met Dagobert king of Austrasia in the year 679; for it is known that that king's murder, which he binds to the year 678, is very probably deferred by not a few to the year 680. From Deodatus, whom Dagobert gave to Wilfrid as a companion, it is also argued against our chronology. In the Roman council whose Acts Spelman published, among other bishops is numbered Deodatus of Toul. Him they will have to be the same as Dagobert's bishop who had conducted Wilfrid to Rome; whence they infer that the prelate of York had arrived there before Spelman's synod was celebrated. That the Deodatus of Toul is the same to whom Dagobert entrusted Wilfrid on the journey is a conjecture which I do not care to oppose; but certainly it is illegitimately inferred thence that, while Wilfrid was still in Frisia, Deodatus was not at Rome. As though indeed he could not have returned thence into the Gauls to a council convoked there, and, when it had been celebrated, come back with Wilfrid to the great synod.

[80] against this chronology are resolved One difficulty remains, and not the least, which can be raised against the order of events deduced thus far in two sections. St. Wilfrid in the Catalogue of the Prelates of York published by Labbe in the Library of Manuscripts, from which I excerpted the words in number 47, is said to have been in exile for ten years. The holy prelate was driven from his see in the year 677, or, if you take his departure from England as the beginning of the exile, in 678; therefore by the reckoning of the aforesaid Catalogue he must be said to have been restored to his see in the year 687 or the following. And this Pagi admits without scruple in his Critique at the years of Christ 677 and 687; there are nevertheless some things which seem to persuade that Wilfrid's restoration to his see must be drawn out longer. Bede in several places binds St. Theodore's death to the year 690, and with him about this epoch all the writers whom I have seen agree, so that it cannot without rashness be called into doubt. Eddius Stephanus, where he narrates the peace made between those holy bishops, brings in our St. Theodore speaking thus to St. Wilfrid: For I know that after this year the end of my life draws near, according to the Lord's revelation, whence it seems to follow that St. Theodore, dying in the year 690, was reconciled to St. Wilfrid in the preceding year 689. But now before that reconciliation the bishop of York had not yet been restored to his own see, for at the same time Theodore wrote for Wilfrid to king Ethelred, as we noted in number 39: and Ethelred, after receiving the Archbishop's letters, restored to Wilfrid many monasteries and regions of his own right, enriched with which he lived for some time honorably in exile, says Eddius; therefore he had not yet then recovered his see; and thus either St. Theodore's prophecy about the end of his life impending in the next year was false, or Wilfrid was in exile more than ten years.

[81] The same Eddius indeed writes: Aldfrith the most wise king in the second year of his reign reverently invited St. Wilfrid to himself according to the Archbishop's precept, St. Theodore's predictions and first granting him the monastery with its adjoining possessions at Hexham: and after an interval of time, according to the judgment of the most blessed Agatho, Prelate of the Apostolic See, and of the holy synod, restored his own episcopal see in the city of York … but these do not wholly remove the difficulty. The second year of king Aldfrith coincides indeed with the year of Christ 687, and thus Wilfrid's exile could in some manner be said to have ended after ten years, when he was recalled to a part of his possessions, although he had not yet recovered all of them and with them his own see of York. But what was that precept of the archbishop according to which Aldfrith invited Wilfrid to himself? I should have suspected that Theodore, long since repenting of the deed, had pleaded with the kings for the bishop of York, yet more efficaciously when he now saw his death at hand: that Theodore's precept to Aldfrith, by which Wilfrid received a part of his goods, and by which he is said to have been already brought back from exile, regards the earlier times, but that Theodore's later letters brought it about that he afterwards received the see of York: but Wilfrid stands in the way, in number 36, praying Theodore to intercede with his friends that they may restore some part of his substance.

[82] I stick fast: if you extend Theodore's prophecy about his own death so broadly that after this year means the last times of my life are at hand, as Eadmer did, the divine revelation asserted will add little weight among hearers to the prophecy of an old man broken by countless labors and asserting that he will die after a year, if that after may be extended to three or four more. Or is Wilfrid's discourse perhaps of other friends of Theodore than of the kings, from whom he had already received something? Whatever be the case, to a prophecy about St. Theodore's death certainly more restricted must be referred what Bede has in book 5, chapter 8. In the year, he says, six hundred and ninety of the Lord's Incarnation, Theodore the archbishop of blessed memory, an old man and full of days, that is, of eighty-eight years, died; which number of years he himself, long since taught by the revelation of a dream that he would have, was wont to foretell to his own people. Now some things remain to be said about St. Theodore's writings. Bale, in his Writers of Britain, Century 13, enumerates them thus: A Penitential Summa, 1 book; The canons of the earlier Fathers, 1 book; The ordinances of his clergy, 1 book; On the faith against Eutyches, 1 book; Certain Commentaries, 1 book; Letters to divers persons, 1 book.

[83] Where he found each of these there is no leisure to investigate. Some Chapters and Decrees of St. Theodore are alleged by Burchard, the Penitential book was attributed to St. Theodore Ivo, Gratian, and Thomas Rudborne in the Greater History of Winchester; others occur elsewhere also. Besides those which are attributed to him from the councils over which he presided, among his Works, if there are any others, most celebrated is the Penitential book inscribed with his name. It was of old distinguished in the Church. At the year of Christ 676 Regino, abbot of Prüm, writes in his Chronicle: Theodore the archbishop describes with wonderful and discriminating consideration the judgments of sinners, namely for how many years one ought to do penance for each sin. The same Regino, concerning the things which a bishop or his ministers ought to inquire into in his district or territory through the villages, districts, and parishes, in chapter 95 or the last, teaches that the parish priest is to be asked: Whether he has the Roman Penitential, or that published by bishop Theodore, or by the venerable presbyter Bede. Whence you may make out that in Regino's age the Penitential book of St. Theodore was much celebrated. In the Chronicles of Ralph de Diceto and John Brompton almost the same things are found as in Regino. Martène, or rather Barre, in the new edition of d'Achery's Spicilegium, volume 1, page 486, and Mabillon in his preliminary Observations to the Life of St. Theodore affirm that his Penitential book was praised by Bede.

[84] and was of old most celebrated in the Church. D'Achery in volume 9 of his Spicilegium, in the Preface, number 6, had reported these words of Bede about Theodore: He wrote wonderfully the judgments of sinners, namely for how many years one ought to do penance for each sin,

which I have nowhere been able to find, nor any mention of the Penitential book in the places cited by Mabillon and Barre. In the Penitential published by Spelman and again inserted by David Wilkins into his Collection of the councils of Great Britain, volume 1, column 115, which some attribute to Egbert bishop of York, others to Bede, it is said in chapter 2: The holy and pious bishop Theodore established this lesson as an example and teaching for all those who wish to amend their offences before God, and said: We read in the Penitential that penance is to be done for capital crimes for a year or two or three on bread and water: and for lesser crimes for a week or a month. But these are ambiguous enough, and not sufficient to prove that the Penitential book was composed by Theodore, nor do I find anywhere in Bede a plainer testimony for this matter. Whence some doubt clings to me whether perchance among the very many Greek books which he brought with him into England there may have been some Penitential book of the Easterns, to which, because St. Theodore sometimes used it and cited it several times in his Decrees, the name of Theodore as author may have clung. For I do not know whether it could have seemed advisable to the Archbishop, a Greek and on that account in some measure suspect to the Pontiff, to bring into the West the use of penitential rules, which as yet had had no place in the Latin church — which nevertheless very many later writers ascribe to his praise.

[85] Today some Chapters Whatever be the case, it is abundantly clear from Regino that a Penitential book under the name of our St. Theodore was distinguished in the Church. Morin in the Preface to his manuscript codices of Penitentials says that he had read Spelman alone as testifying that he had seen a manuscript Penitential of St. Theodore in the famous library of St. Benedict at Cambridge. Baronius, however, in his Annals at the year 51, number 24, writes: But as regards things strangled, in the ancient Penitentiary of Theodore, which we have among us in manuscript, we find a penalty enjoined on those who should have presumed to eat things strangled. Of the Penitential which Spelman had seen at Cambridge he begins thus: Since it is longer than can be conveniently inserted here, nor is leave readily granted to transcribe the whole codex, we shall append only the Chapters, or rather the headings of the Chapters; which he presently performs in volume 1 of the Councils of England, page 155, enumerating seventy-eight Chapters. Moreover from these words of Spelman it is abundantly clear how small a part of the aforesaid manuscript Work we have. D'Achery, a lover of antiquity, groaned indeed that Spelman did not publish the book entire and allowed so celebrated a monument to slip from the literary world. He himself, to repair the loss as far as he could, selected from Burchard, Ivo, and Gratian, and also from a Corbie and a Saint-Germain manuscript Penitential, and reduced to order 120 Chapters to be inserted into his Spicilegium, volume 9. These Chapters, further divided and increased by twenty later ones, with one or two interposed, corrected from an ancient codex of seven hundred years, and illustrated with notes from Martène's sheets, Barre reprinted in the Spicilegium, volume 1, page 486, where, as in d'Achery, they are inscribed with the name of St. Theodore, yet in such a way that they are called his Chapters, not the Penitential book.

[86] Under the title of Theodore's Penitential, James Petit published in two volumes at Paris in the year 1677 what he could scrape together from various manuscripts, are current under the name of St. Theodore whose work I do not have at hand. Ceillier in volume 17 of his History of Sacred Writers treats of it at length, and affirms that most of what Petit scraped together is found among d'Achery's Chapters. Of the same work of Petit, Cave and Oudin also treat at no small length under Theodore, where one may see them set at one another and quarrelling childishly. Whatever therefore has hitherto been published can be held only for shreds, nor do we have entire the much-praised Penitential book of St. Theodore, if the Cambridge manuscript codex which Spelman saw is genuine. Cave seems to have sought it in vain, and certainly fears that it survives nowhere in England. Mabillon at the end of part 1 of century 3 of the Saints of the Order of St. Benedict, in his Additions, writes: Hedda was familiar and dear to Theodore. Proof of it is what is read in the manuscript Penitential of the college of Corpus Christi in the university of Cambridge, in which after the Answers of Gregory the Great to Augustine the following are subjoined:

You now, holy watchman,

Hedda, loving prelate, I beseech,

rich glory of pontiffs,

for me your pilgrim,

pour out prayers for Theodore.

From which words I gather that Theodore's Penitential book was dedicated to our Hedda. Thus Mabillon. This aforesaid manuscript Penitential book, if it is not published, could be examined by those who blame Spelman's negligence.

[87] Of what authority is, and of what sort is, the manuscript codex which the cited Baronius praises I do not know; that also could be inquired into, and thus Oudin's doubt removed; among which certainly some things for I hardly doubt that it is preserved in the library of Vercelli. For the rest, the Chapters which I have hitherto praised are such that they seem a patchwork sewn together from canons, ritual and penitential Rules, and from the shreds of so uncertain a workshop, that I judge they can only wrongly — at least all of them — be ascribed to our St. Theodore. Chapters 10 and 26 in Barre are diametrically opposed to d'Achery's 7 and 14, and that with such ambiguity that you would scarcely dare to determine which to prefer to the other. Theodore also is cited among them in the third person, as adding weight to a Rule. Nor will any sound man, I think, attribute to St. Theodore without scruple what I subjoin. Chapter 140 in Barre, which in d'Achery was 113, has it thus: A layman from whom his wife has departed may, with the bishop's consent, after two years take another; if she has been led into captivity by force, after a year he can take another. In the same place 143, in d'Achery 116: He whose wife has committed fornication may dismiss her and take another; but it is not lawful for a woman to take another who has committed fornication. Add what I find in Barre alone, 31: He whose wife an enemy has carried off, and who cannot recover her, is permitted to take another; it is better than to fornicate: for if afterwards the wife return, he ought not to receive her if he has another. She herself shall take another husband, if she had one before. And finally, welded together, unless I am mistaken, from Martène's Chapters 84 and 111, Petit's second, cited by Noël Alexandre in his Ecclesiastical History, century 7, chapter 4, article 10: A fornicating presbyter, if after it has been discovered he shall have baptized, let those whom he baptized be baptized again. If any ordained presbyter finds that he has not been baptized, let him be baptized and ordained again, and all whom he had before baptized.

[88] are wrongly ascribed to the holy and most learned Prelate These things indeed, manifestly contrary to the Gospel and to the decrees of the Church, savor too openly of Greekish errors to be believed prescribed to the English by St. Theodore, with Adrian looking on. Our holy Archbishop presided over the council of Hertford, where this is the tenth canon concerning marriages: That it be lawful for none to have any but a lawful marriage; that none commit incest; that none leave his own wife, except, as the holy Gospel teaches, for the cause of fornication. But if anyone shall have driven out his own wife, joined to him in lawful matrimony, if he rightly wishes to be a Christian, let him be joined to no other, but so remain, or be reconciled to his own wife. Behold the Catholic and true doctrine of St. Theodore concerning divorces and second marriages, drawn, as far as appears, from canon 17 of the council of Milevis, which is found also in the Code of the Canons of the African Church. As alien as that which is contained in the spurious Chapters is from this, so manifest is it that these are wrongly attributed to our holy Prelate. But of these enough for our purpose; now I collect the deeds of the holy man from Bede's History.

* Wilfrid

THE LIFE

By the venerable Bede

Excerpted from the Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation.

Theodore, archbishop and confessor, at Canterbury in England. (S.)

By the venerable Bede.

PART 1.

St. Theodore is ordained bishop by Pope Vitalian and is sent into England. His labors and cares at the beginning of his episcopate. From book 3, chapters 29 and 30, and book 4, chapters 1 and 2.

Wighard being dead, Pope Vitalian The most noble kings of the English, both of the province of the Northumbrians and Egbert of the men of Kent, having taken counsel between themselves what should be done about the state of the church of the English (for Oswiu ^a had truly understood, although brought up by the Scots, that the Roman was the Catholic and Apostolic Church), took, with the choice and consent of the holy church of the English nation, a good man and fit for the episcopate, a presbyter by name Wighard ^b, of the clergy of bishop Deusdedit, and sent him to Rome to be ordained; that, having himself received the grade of the archiepiscopate, he might be able to ordain Catholic prelates throughout all Britain for the churches of the English. But Wighard, coming to Rome, was carried off by death before he could be consecrated to the episcopate, and letters of this kind were sent back to king Oswiu in Britain. To the most excellent lord, his son Oswiu king of the Saxons, Vitalian, bishop, servant of the servants of God. We have received the desirable letters of your excellency, reading which we have learned his most pious devotion and most fervent love, which he has for the sake of the blessed life. And because, by the protection of the Lord's right hand, he has been converted to the true and Apostolic faith, hoping that, as he reigns in his own nation, so also he may in the future reign together with Christ … Wherefore it behooves your highness, being a member of Christ, in all things to follow perpetually the pious rule of the prince of the Apostles, whether in celebrating Easter, or in all things which the holy apostles Peter and Paul handed down, who, as two lights of heaven illumine the world, so their doctrine daily enlightens the hearts of believing men …

[2] Finally, a teachable man and a prelate adorned in all things, writes to Oswiu king of the Northumbrians according to the tenor of your writings, we have by no means been able ^c to find at present, on account of the length of the journey. For assuredly, when such a fitting person shall have been found, we shall send him instructed to your country, that he himself both by living voice and through the divine oracles may, by the divine assent, root out all the tares of the enemy from all your island. The little gifts sent by your highness to the blessed prince of the Apostles we have received for his eternal memory, and we give him thanks, and continually pray God with the clergy of Christ for his safety. And so he who offered these gifts has been taken from this light and is laid at the thresholds of the Apostles, for whom we are greatly saddened, since he died here … And so, greeting your excellence with fatherly affection, we continually pray the divine clemency to deign to help you and all yours in all good works, that you may reign with Christ in the age to come. May the grace from above keep your excellence safe. At the same time, over the province of the East Saxons, after Swithelm ^d, reigned the kings Sighere ^e and Sebbi ^f, though themselves subject to Wulfhere ^g king of the Mercians. Which province, when it was being pressed by the disaster of the aforesaid ^h mortality, Sighere with his part of the people, the Sacraments of the Christian faith being left behind,

turned to apostasy. For both the king himself and very many of the common people or of the nobles, loving this life and not seeking the future one, or even not believing in it, began to restore the shrines which had been abandoned and to adore images, as though by these they could be defended from the mortality. But his colleague and coheir of the same kingdom, Sebbi, kept the faith he had received, with all his own, with great devotion, and completed a faithful life with great happiness (as we shall say in what follows ⁱ).

[3] When king Wulfhere learned this, namely that the faith of the province had in part been profaned, The East Saxons, who had fallen away from the faith, are converted by Jaruman. he sent to correct the error and to recall the province to the faith of truth bishop Jaruman ^k, who was the successor of Trumhere ^l: who, acting with much skill — according to what a presbyter who had been his companion on the journey and fellow-worker in the word used to tell me, for he was a religious and good man — traversing all places far and wide, brought back both the people and the aforesaid king to the way of justice; so that, the shrines and altars which they had made being forsaken or destroyed, they opened the churches and rejoiced to confess the name of Christ which they had contradicted, desiring rather to die in him with the faith of the resurrection than to live among idols in the filth of unbelief. These things being thus done, the priests and their teachers themselves returned home rejoicing. In the aforesaid year of the aforesaid eclipse ^m and of the plague that presently followed, in which also bishop Colman, overcome by the unanimous purpose of the Catholics, returned to his own people, Deusdedit ⁿ, the sixth bishop of the church of Canterbury, died on the day before the Ides of July: and Erconbert, king of the men of Kent, dying in the same month and on the same day, left the seat of his kingdom to his son Egbert, which he, having received it, held for nineteen years.

[4] Vitalian, Wighard being dead, whom the English had sent to be consecrated, Then, the bishopric ceasing for no small time, there was sent to Rome by him together with Oswiu king of the Northumbrians, as we said briefly in the preceding book, Wighard the presbyter, a man most learned in ecclesiastical disciplines, of the race of the English, they asking that he be ordained bishop of the church of the English: gifts being likewise sent to the Apostolic Pope, and vessels of gold and silver not a few. When he came to Rome, over which Apostolic See at that time Vitalian presided, after he had laid open the cause of his journey to the aforesaid Apostolic Pope, not long after both he himself and almost all his companions who had come with him were destroyed by a plague coming on. But the Apostolic Pope, having taken counsel about these matters, diligently sought whom he might send as archbishop to the churches of the English: now there was in the monastery of Niridanum ^o, which is not far from Naples in Campania, an abbot Adrian [p], an African by nation, diligently imbued with the sacred letters, instructed in monastic and at the same time ecclesiastical disciplines, and most skilled alike in the Greek and Latin tongue. Him the Pope, having summoned to himself, ordered, when he had received the episcopate, to come to Britain. And he, answering that he was unworthy of so great a grade, said that he could show another whose erudition and age were more fitted for undertaking the episcopate.

[5] Adrian and Andrew refusing the episcopal burden, And when he offered to the Pontiff a certain monk from a neighboring monastery of virgins [q], by name Andrew, he was judged by all who knew him worthy of the episcopate; but the weight of bodily infirmity stood in the way of his being made a bishop. And again Adrian was urged to undertake the episcopate, who asked for a respite, if perchance he might in time find another who might be ordained bishop. There was at that time at Rome a monk known to Adrian, by name Theodore, born at Tarsus of Cilicia, a man instructed in secular and divine literature, in Greek and Latin, upright in morals, and venerable in age, that is, having sixty-six years of age. Offering him to the Pontiff that he might be ordained bishop, Adrian obtained it: yet with these conditions interposed: that he himself should conduct him into Britain, because he had already twice visited the parts of the Gauls for various causes, and on that account had greater knowledge of making this journey, and was sufficiently provided with possession of his own men; and that, being a fellow-worker with him in doctrine, he should diligently take heed lest he should introduce anything contrary to the truth [r] of the faith, after the manner of the Greeks, into the church over which he should preside. And he, being ordained subdeacon, waited four months until his hair should grow, so that he could be tonsured into a crown. For he had had the tonsure after the manner of the Easterns [s] of the apostle St. Paul.

[6] ordains St. Theodore bishop of Canterbury, who through the Gauls He was ordained by Pope Vitalian in the year of the Lord's Incarnation six hundred and sixty-eight, on the seventh day of the Kalends of April, a Sunday. And thus, together with Adrian, on the sixth of the Kalends of June he was sent into Britain. And when they had come together by sea to Marseilles, and then by land to Arles, and had delivered to John [t] the archbishop of that city the commendatory writings of the Pontiff Vitalian, they were detained by him until Ebroin the Mayor of the palace granted them leave to go wherever they wished. Having received this, Theodore set out to Agilbert bishop of the Parisians, and was kindly received by him and kept for a long time. But Adrian made his way first to Emmo of Sens, and afterwards to Faro of Meaux, bishops, and was well with them for a good while: for the impending winter had compelled them to stay quietly wherever they could. When trustworthy messengers had told this to king Egbert, namely that the bishop whom they had asked from the Roman Prelate was in the kingdom of the Franks, he at once sent thither Redfrid his prefect to bring him. And when he had arrived, he took Theodore with Ebroin's leave, and conducted him to the port whose name is Quentawic [u]; where, wearied by infirmity, he stayed for some little while. And when he had begun to recover, he sailed into Britain.

[7] But Ebroin detained Adrian, because he suspected that he had some legation from the emperor to the kings of Britain against the kingdom of Gaul, he sets out into England; where presently to apostolic labors of which he then himself bore the greatest charge. But when he had truly found that he had and had had nothing of the kind, he released him and permitted him to go after Theodore. And as soon as he came to him, he gave him the monastery of blessed Peter [w] the apostle, where the archbishops of Kent are wont to be buried. For the Lord Apostolic had commanded Theodore as he departed that he should provide in his diocese and give him a place in which he might conveniently live with his own. Now Theodore came to his church in the second year after he was consecrated [x], on the sixth day of the Kalends of June, a Sunday; and he spent in it twenty-one years, three months, and twenty-six days. And presently, having traversed the whole island, wherever the nations of the English dwelt (for he was most gladly received and heard by all), he disseminated the right order of living and the canonical rite of celebrating Easter, Adrian in all things accompanying and cooperating. And he was the first among the archbishops to whom the whole church of the English consented to give their hands.

[8] And because both were abundantly instructed, as we have said, in sacred and at the same time secular letters, [he gave himself, becomes famous for learning, and obtaining the highest authority] a company of disciples being gathered, rivers of saving knowledge daily flowed forth to water their hearts: so that they handed over to their hearers the discipline even of the metrical art, of astronomy, and of ecclesiastical arithmetic, amid the volumes of the sacred writings. A proof is that there survive to this day some of their disciples who know the Latin and Greek tongue as well as their own in which they were born. Nor ever at all, in which they were born, do they know. Nor ever at all, from the time when the English sought Britain, were there happier times, since, having most brave and Christian kings, they were a terror to all the barbarian nations, and the prayers of all hung upon the newly heard joys of the heavenly kingdom, and whoever desired to be instructed in the sacred readings had ready at hand masters to teach them. Moreover the sounds of singing in church, which hitherto they had known in Kent alone, from this time they began to learn throughout all the churches of the English: and the first master of singing, except James [y], of whom we have spoken above, for the churches of the Northumbrians was Eddi surnamed Stephen, invited from Kent by the most reverend man Wilfrid, who was the first among the bishops who were of the English nation to learn to hand on to the churches of the English the Catholic manner of living.

[9] And so Theodore, going over all things, ordained bishops in convenient places, he appoints bishops in various places. and, with the help of these too, corrected the things which he found less perfect. Among whom, when he argued that Ceadda [z] the bishop had not been rightly consecrated, he himself answering with a most humble voice said: If you know that I have not rightly received the episcopate, I gladly depart from the office: since indeed I never thought myself worthy of this, but, bidden for obedience' sake to undertake it, unworthy as I was, I consented. But he, hearing the humility of his answer, said that he ought not to lay down the episcopate: but he himself completed his ordination anew by the Catholic manner. Now at the time when, Deusdedit being dead, a bishop of the church of Canterbury was being sought and was being sent to be ordained, Wilfrid also was sent from Britain into Gaul to be ordained [aa]. And since he returned before Theodore, he too in Kent ordained presbyters and deacons until the Archbishop should come to his see. But he, coming, presently in the city of Rochester [bb], where, Damian [cc] being dead, the bishopric had now long been vacant, ordained a man instructed rather in ecclesiastical disciplines and content with simplicity of life than vigorous in the affairs of the world, whose name was Putta [dd], and chiefly skilled in singing in church after the manner of the Romans, which he had learned from the disciples of the blessed Pope Gregory.

ANNOTATIONS.

a man chosen for the office of the episcopate, by name Wighard … desiring that he be ordained bishop for him at Rome, so that, having a prelate of his own nation and tongue, he might the more perfectly imbue with the words or the mysteries of the faith the peoples subject to him, inasmuch as he would receive these, namely, not through an interpreter, but at once by the tongue and hand of a man known to him and of his own tribe. Foreigners, namely, had hitherto been almost all the bishops of Canterbury, and the kings hoped that it would be more useful to their peoples and more welcome to the whole clergy if they had one of their own countrymen as prelate. For the rest, on the testimony of the younger Leland, Wighard was much commended for his letters, and wrote various little works, of which even the titles have perished.

p. The Deeds of St. Adrian Bolland illustrated on the 9th day of January, on which he is inscribed in the sacred calendars. Since his deeds cohere much with the Acts of St. Theodore, see Bolland's Notes. But why Ortelius in his Thesaurus calls St. Adrian bishop of Neridanum I should not easily say.

q. Who that Andrew was, or what the neighboring monastery of virgins, is not sufficiently clear from elsewhere.

r. Concerning the caution employed by Vitalian, see the preliminary Commentary, §1, number 14, where I said that the phrase contrary to the faith seems to be explained a little more mildly, so that Vitalian feared, not indeed that he should spread Greekish errors in the faith through England, but that he should bring Greek rites and the like into that church, whence discords would arise.

s. Of this tonsure I have treated briefly in the preliminary Commentary, number 13. Concerning the tonsure of the Scots, about which too there was long dispute, there is a most beautiful passage in Eddius, chapter 45, where among other things he brings in Wilfrid protesting in these words: Did not I also … take care that I should root out the venomous shoots of the Scottish planting, and turn them, by changing, to the true Easter and to the tonsure in the manner of a crown, which formerly was shaven on the hinder part of the head with the crown bared, according to the manner of the Apostolic See?

t. Besides what I have said of John, bishop of Arles, in the preliminary Commentary, number 16, Bolland notes some things in his Annotations, letter k, where also more about the things which occur in this and the following number; which consult if you please.

u. Quentavicus or Quentovicus, as it were Quantia-vicus, was once a noble emporium, so called from the river Quantia or Cantæia, from whose mouth it was a mile and a half distant. Moreover the Quantia is a river of Picardy, rising in Artois about the western borders of the territory of Aubigny. Presently, its channel curving toward the south, it turns back toward the west and cuts through Hesdin-le-Neuf, whence, increased by some streams, it washes Montreuil, and three miles thence to the west plunges into the British Ocean. Between Montreuil and the nearest shores of the sea, on the left of the Quantia, is about midway the monastery of St. Judoc, in the vernacular Saint Josse, on whose northern side the inhabitants assert that many ruins, relics of the ancient Quentavicus, are still to be seen.

w. Of the monastery of St. Peter more may be seen at the 6th of January, where St. Peter its abbot is treated of, and in Bede, book 1, chapter 33.

x. Bolland notes at letter k that Westminster wrote wrongly that Theodore came into England two years after his consecration, because in the year 669 the sixth day of the Kalends of June fell on a Sunday, but not in the following year six hundred and seventy. More correctly Bede here: in the second year: for Theodore had been consecrated by Vitalian on the 26th of March, or the seventh of the Kalends of April. Obscure is the passage in the same author, book 4, chapter 5: In the year of the Lord's Incarnation six hundred and seventy, which is the second year from the time when Theodore came to Britain, Oswiu king of the Northumbrians was pressed by an infirmity of which he also died. For if Oswiu died on the 15th of February, on which day his memory is in the English Martyrology, it is not easily understood how he died in the second year from the time when Theodore came to Britain, unless he be reckoned to have come already then, when he set out on the journey to Britain, or unless Bede here reckons civil years.

y. Of him Bede thus, book 2, at the end of the last chapter: But he (Paulinus) had left in his church of York James the deacon, a man certainly ecclesiastical and holy …, who, since he was most skilled in singing in church … began to be to many also a master of ecclesiastical chant, after the manner of the Romans or of the men of Canterbury.

z. Of this expulsion of Ceadda from the see of York see the preliminary Commentary, §2, number 28. Ceadda had been consecrated, Deusdedit being dead, to whom he had come to be ordained, by Wini bishop of the West Saxons. This man had simoniacally bought the see of London for money from Wulfhere king of the Mercians, as Malmesbury writes On the Deeds of the Pontiffs of England, book 2, at the beginning, and On the Deeds of the Kings of England, chapter 3.

aa. After St. Colman had yielded the see of York, St. Wilfrid was unwilling to be ordained to it by Scottish and British bishops, because they were held cut off from the communion of the Apostolic See and schismatic. Therefore he sailed into Gaul, and there was consecrated by St. Agilbert, eleven other bishops standing by, in the year of the Lord 664. And thence in the following year, or at the beginning of the next, he returned into Britain. But the see of York being occupied by St. Ceadda, he withdrew to the monastery of Ripon, whence, being summoned by Egbert king of the men of Kent, he ordained presbyters in Kent and among them Putta.

bb. What is here written Rofi, elsewhere Roffi, Rhofi, Roffa, and Rofa, is a town, according to Malmesbury, too narrow in site, but which, placed on a height, is washed by a very swift river, and is not accessible to enemies without peril. Today it is called Rochester, and is a city of southern England in Kent on the river Medway, which five English miles below discharges itself into the estuary of the Thames: midway between Canterbury to the east and London to the west, 20 miles distant from each. So Baudrand in his Lexicon.

cc. He was the fifth bishop of Rochester, of whom William produces nothing in his series except the name. From Gervase and Bede, book 3, chapter 20, it is established that he was of the race of the West Saxons and was ordained by Deusdedit.

dd. Almost the same about him Malmesbury and others. He had learned ecclesiastical chant perhaps from Paulinus or from James the deacon. The latter is certainly said to have survived down to Bede's times, book 2, chapter 16.

PART 2.

St. Theodore celebrates councils, and ordains bishops in various places: he divides dioceses. From book 4, chapters 5, 6, and 12.

King Oswiu being dead, In the year of the Lord's Incarnation six hundred and seventy, which is the second year from the time when Theodore came into Britain, Oswiu king of the Northumbrians was pressed by an infirmity of which he also died in the fifty-eighth year of his age: who at that time was held by so great a love of the Roman and Apostolic institution that, if he were saved from his infirmity, he purposed even to come to Rome and there to end his life at the holy places, and asked that bishop Wilfrid should become his guide for the journey, a not small donation of moneys being promised. Who, dying on the fifteenth day of the Kalends of March, left his son Ecgfrith heir of the kingdom. In the third year ^a of whose reign Theodore convenes a council of bishops together with those who, the Catholic of the Fathers

statutes both loved and knew, and with several Masters of the Church. And when these had likewise been gathered together, he began diligently, with the spirit that became a Pontiff, to teach that those things must be observed which accorded with the unity of ecclesiastical peace. Of which synodal action this is the text.

[11] In the name of our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ, St. Theodore convokes a synod, the same our Lord Jesus Christ reigning for ever and governing his Church, it pleased us to come together according to the custom of the venerable canons, being about to treat of the necessary business of the Church. And we came together on the 24th day ^b of the month of September, in the first Indiction, in the place which is called Heorutford ^c. I indeed Theodore, though unworthy, appointed by the Apostolic See bishop of the church of Canterbury, and our most reverend fellow-priest and brother Bisi, bishop of the East Angles, were present; with whom also our brother and fellow-priest Wilfrid, bishop of the nation of the Northumbrians ^d, was present by his own legates: there were present also our brothers and fellow-priests Putta, bishop of the castle ^e of the men of Kent which is called Rochester, and Leutherius ^f, bishop of the West Saxons, and Winfrid ^g, bishop of the province of the Mercians.

[12] And when, coming together into one, each of us had taken his seat according to his rank: where ten by unanimous consent I ask, said I, most beloved brethren, for the fear and love of our Redeemer, that we all treat in common for our faith, that whatever things have been decreed and defined by the holy and approved Fathers may be kept incorrupt by all our people. These and very many other things which pertained to charity and to preserving the unity of the Church I set forth. And when I had finished my address, I asked each of them in order whether they consented to keep those things which have been canonically decreed of old by the Fathers. To which all our fellow-priests answering said: It pleases all excellently that we too should all with eager mind most gladly keep what the canons of the holy Fathers have defined. To whom I at once produced the same book of canons ^h, and from that same book showed before them ten chapters which I had marked in various places, because I knew them most necessary for us, and asked that these might be more diligently received by all.

[13] chapters are framed The first chapter: That we all in common keep the holy day of Easter on the Sunday after the fourteenth moon of the first month.

2. That no one of the bishops invade the parish of another, but be content with the governance of the people entrusted to him.

3. That monasteries consecrated to God — that it be lawful for none of the bishops to disquiet them in anything, nor to carry off anything of their goods by violence.

4. That the monks themselves do not migrate from place to place, that is, from monastery to monastery, except by the dismissal of their own abbot; but let them remain in that obedience which they promised at the time of their conversion.

5. That no cleric, forsaking his own bishop, run about at random wherever he pleases, nor, coming anywhere, be received without commendatory letters of his own prelate. But if he has once been received, and, being invited, is unwilling to return, both the receiver and he who has been received shall lie under excommunication.

6. That pilgrim bishops and clerics be content with the gift of hospitality offered, and that it be lawful for none of them to perform any priestly office without the permission of the bishop in whose parish he is known to be.

7. That a synod be gathered twice a year. But since various causes hinder, it has pleased all in common that it be gathered once a year on the Kalends of August in the place which is called Clofeshoh ⁱ.

8. That no one of the bishops set himself before another through ambition, but that all acknowledge the time and order of their consecration.

9. A chapter was treated in common, that more bishops should be added, the number of the faithful growing ^k. But of this matter we have for the present kept silence.

10. Concerning marriages. That it be lawful for none to have any but a lawful marriage; that none commit incest; that none leave his own wife, except, as the holy Gospel teaches, for the cause of fornication. But if anyone shall have driven out his own wife, joined to him in lawful matrimony, if he rightly wishes to be a Christian, let him be joined to no other, but so remain, or be reconciled to his own wife.

[14] These chapters therefore having been treated in common and defined, to which all subscribe; so that henceforth no scandal of contention may arise from any of us, or one thing be published for another, it has pleased that each of us should confirm by the subscription of his own hand what has been defined ^l. Which sentence of our definition I dictated to Titillus the notary to be written. Done in the month and Indiction written above. Whoever therefore shall attempt in any way to lessen this sentence, framed according to the decrees of the canons, and confirmed also by our confession and by the subscription of our hand, and to break it, let him know himself separated from every priestly office and from our society. May the divine grace keep us safe, living in the unity of his holy Church.

And this synod was held in the year from the Lord's Incarnation six hundred and seventy-three, in which year Egbert ^m king of the men of Kent had died in the month of July, his brother ⁿ Hlothhere succeeding to the kingdom, which he held eleven years and seven months. But Bisi, bishop of the East Angles, who is reported to have been in the aforesaid synod, was himself the successor of Boniface ^o, whom we have mentioned above, a man of much sanctity and religion. For Boniface having died after seventeen years of his episcopate, he was himself made bishop in his place, Theodore ordaining him. While he was still surviving, but hindered by a most grievous infirmity from administering the bishopric, two were chosen and consecrated bishops in his place, Æcci and Baduini [p]: from which time until today that province is wont to have two bishops.

[15] Not long after these things, Theodore the archbishop, offended by Winfrid bishop of the Mercians through the desert of a certain [q] disobedience, then in various places deposed him from the bishopric not many years after he had received the bishopric, and in his place ordained as bishop Sexwulf [r], who was the builder and abbot of the monastery which is called Medeshamstede in the region of the Gyrwe [s]. And Winfrid, being deposed, returned to his own monastery which is called at Barrow [t], and there ended his life in the best manner of living. Then also for the East Saxons, over whom at that time presided Sebbi and Sighere, whom we have mentioned above, he appointed Earconwald [u] as bishop in the city of London, whose life and manner of living, both in the episcopate and before the episcopate, is reported to have been most holy, as even now the signs of heavenly powers are a proof. The fourth prelate of the West Saxons was Leutherius. Since indeed the first was Birinus [w], the second Agilbert [x], the third was Wini. And when Coinwalch [y] had died, in whose reign that same Leutherius was made bishop, the under-kings took the rule of the nation, and held it divided among themselves for about ten years: and while they reigned, he died, and Hædde [z] discharged the bishopric in his place: he was consecrated by Theodore in the city of London. In the time of whose episcopate, the under-kings being conquered and removed, Cædwalla [aa] took the rule, and when he had held it two years, at length, pricked by love of the heavenly kingdom, he left it, the same prelate still governing the church, and going to Rome, there ended his life, as is to be told more fully in what follows.

[16] But in the year of the Lord's Incarnation six hundred and seventy-six, when Ethelred king of the Mercians, he ordains bishops. having brought a malignant army, was laying Kent waste, and defiling the churches and monasteries without regard for piety or divine love, he destroyed also in the common ruin the city of Rochester, in which Putta was bishop, though at that time absent. When he learned this, namely that his church, all its goods being carried off, was despoiled, he turned aside to Sexwulf prelate of the Mercians, and, having received from him the possession of a certain church [bb] and of a not large little field, there ended his life in peace, doing nothing at all about restoring his bishopric: because, as we said above, he was more industrious in ecclesiastical than in worldly matters; but serving God in that church alone, he turned aside wherever he was asked, to teach ecclesiastical chants. In whose place Theodore consecrated Wichelm [cc] bishop in the city of Rochester. But when he, after no long time, withdrew from the bishopric for want of means, and retired to other places, he substituted Gefmund [dd] as prelate in his stead.

[17] Disagreements with St. Wilfrid. In the year of the Lord's Incarnation six hundred and seventy-seven [ee], which is the eighth year of the rule of king Ecgfrith, there appeared in the month of August a star which is called a comet, and remaining three months it rose in the morning hours, and presented as it were a lofty column of radiant flame: in which year also, a dissension having arisen between king Ecgfrith [ff] himself and the most reverend prelate Wilfrid, that same prelate was driven from the see of his bishopric, and two bishops were substituted in his place to preside over the nation of the Northumbrians, namely Bosa [gg], who should govern the province of the Deirans, and Eata [hh], who should govern that of the Bernicians. The latter having his episcopal chair in the city of York, the former in the church of Hexham [ii] or of Lindisfarne, both taken into the grade of the episcopate from the college of the monks. With whom also Eadhæd [kk] is ordained bishop in the province of Lindsey, which most recently king Ecgfrith, Wulfhere having been overcome in war and put to flight, had obtained. And this province received him first as its own prelate, as second Ethelwin, as third Eadgar, as fourth Cyneberht, whom it has at present. For before Eadhæd it had as prelate Sexwulf, who was also at the same time bishop of the Mercians and of the Middle Angles, whence also, being expelled from Lindsey, he remained in the government of those provinces. Now Eadhæd, Bosa, and Eata were ordained at York by archbishop Theodore: who also, three years after Wilfrid's departure [ll], added to their number two prelates, Tumbert [mm] to the church of Hexham, Eata remaining at that of Lindisfarne, and Trumwine [nn] to the province of the Picts, which at that time was subject to the rule of the English. Eadhæd, returned from Lindsey because Ethelred had recovered the province [oo], he set over the church of Ripon.

ANNOTATIONS.

had reigned, he himself had reigned for 12 years, died on the 8th of the Ides of February. From that reckoning, if Egbert had died in the year 672, Hlothhere would have begun his 13th year in the month of July of the year 684. Therefore substitute the 2nd Indiction, and reckon the years of Ecgfrith with the 7 months neglected (which I should not dare to do), or for 3 put 4, and you will with Alford and the rest bind the synod to the year 673.

p. In Malmesbury Heta, elsewhere Æcca; he sat at Dunwich. Bedwin, who is also called Badwini, Baldwin, and Eadwine, had his episcopal see at Elmham or North Elmham, in the county of Norfolk, and clothed holy Osyth with the sacred veil, as is narrated in her Life.

q. A conjecture from the events of that time, exceedingly probable, I gave in the preliminary Commentary, §2, number 29. He presided over the Mercians about three years, having been ordained in the year 672 or the following.

r. To Sexwulf the care of building that monastery, which was afterwards called Peterborough, Peada and afterwards Wulfhere, kings of the Mercians, had committed. When it was built he was given as its first abbot, and thence was taken by Theodore to the pastoral infulæ.

s. The people who dwelt in the marshy parts in the county of Northampton.

t. That is, At the wood, in the province of Lindsey, says Bede, book 4, chapter 3. Winfrid, who is called Wulfrid by Eddius, sailed in the year 678 into Gaul, perhaps to complain of the injury to the Roman Pontiff. But by the enemies of St. Wilfrid bishop of York, deceived by the error of the name, he was seized and despoiled of everything, and wretchedly left naked on the ground. Eddius narrates the affair in chapter 14.

u. His Acts illustrated you have in our work at the 30th day of April.

w. Among the Saints St. Birinus is venerated, inscribed in the Roman Martyrology on the 3rd day of December. His outstanding praises Malmesbury briefly gathers in On the Deeds of the Pontiffs, book 2.

x. Agilbert, who is not rarely written also Ægilbert, Aglibert, Aglebert, born in Gaul and there ordained bishop, about the year 641 crossed into Ireland, and thence set out to the East Saxons, where he also obtained an episcopal see for fully ten years; then being expelled in the year 664, in the assembly of Whitby he overcame St. Colman in the famous discourse about Easter, and a little after returned to his fatherland. See what was said above at letter f.

y. Coinwalch, elsewhere Kenewalchius, held the kingdom of the West Saxons for fully 30 years, and died about the year 673.

z. Hædde, elsewhere called Headda and Hedde, is venerated on the 7th day of July, at which day he was treated of in our work.

aa. The beginning of Cædwalla's reign Alford sets in the year 686. His name is read inscribed in some more recent Martyrologies on the 20th of April. Our elders judged that his ancient cult was not sufficiently proved, wherefore he was left among the Prætermissi at that day.

bb. On this Wharton, volume 1 of the Anglia Sacra, page 424: Sexwulf therefore, who succeeded Winfrid, in order to comply with Theodore, established an episcopal see at Hereford in the year 676, and set over it when established Putta, on whom he bestowed so tiny a part of his diocese. From Godwin, unless I am mistaken, he gathered this, and he from Malmesbury, in whom, On the Deeds of the Pontiffs of England, book 4, Putta is set as the first bishop of Hereford. But is he the same as the one of Rochester? I much doubt it: certainly Bede does not persuade it, and Gervase in his Chronicle altogether dissuades it, where he relates that he died a few years after leaving his see. But Malmesbury himself also writes: Putta … retired to Sexwulf … By the gift of whose liberality having obtained a country church and a little field, he peacefully spent what was left of his life. From which he does not seem to have been afterwards moved to another see.

cc. Of Wichelm, whom Malmesbury names Quichelm, the rest is obscure.

dd. Gebmund ruled the church of Rochester for several years, for he did not die before the year 693.

ee. That one must read seventy-seventh and not seventy-eighth, as the common copies of Bede have it, was shown in the Commentary, §3, number 49.

ff. Bede, wherever he mentions those disagreements, casts the cause and the fault upon king Ecgfrith, scarcely making mention of St. Theodore. Most attribute Bede's silence to reverence toward so great a Prelate. See the preliminary Commentary, §2, number 32 and following.

gg. To Bosa, who is also called Bossa and Boza, Henschen somewhat timidly gave a place among the Saints, at the 9th day of March, and attributed to him only the title of Blessed. Some bind his death to the year 686; but if Malmesbury truly narrates, in On the Deeds of the Pontiffs of England, book 3, that Bosa was substituted when Wilfrid was again expelled from his see, he must have survived until the beginning of the eighth century, or at least the end of the other, especially since it is hinted that he died a little before Wilfrid's second restoration.

hh. Eata, who is also Æta, is inscribed in some more recent and English Martyrologies at the 26th day of October, where it will have to be considered whether he is to be placed among the Saints. Richard, Prior of Hexham, records his death in the year 685. Meanwhile correct this passage of Bede, where in inverted order the latter, the former has been set: for Bosa sat at York, Eata in the see of Hexham.

ii. Lindisfarne, to the English Holy island, that is, the Sacred Isle, is situated on the coast of Northumbria, and lies over against the river Lindus, whence it drew its name. Of it Bede, book 3, chapter 3: When therefore the bishop (Aidan) came to him, the king (Oswald) granted the place of the episcopal see in the island of Lindisfarne, where he himself asked. Which place indeed, when the tide recedes, twice a day is washed about by the waves of the sea like an island, and twice, the shore being laid bare again, is rendered contiguous to the land. A circuit of six English miles Baudrand ascribes to it in his Lexicon.

kk. The province of the people of Lindsey, called by the Anglo-Saxons also Lindisch and Lindissi, is, if we believe Martinière in his Lexicon, to the Britons of today Lincolnshire. He refutes Baillet in the same place, and asserts that Bede writes that the province which he calls Lindissi stretched from the river Humber southward to the sea, and had a city named Lindocolina. If these things are true, I am readily led to believe that Lindissi was the present county of Lincoln, and Lindocolina, Lincoln the present head of the county.

ll. Namely in the year 680, or at the beginning of the following.

mm. Elsewhere he is called Trumbert, and held the bishopric for a very short time, being deposed in the synod of Twyford. For the rest, some have made a difficulty for themselves about the place of that bishopric. Lubin in his Notes on the Martyrology, Table 1, page 9, judges that Augulstadia or Hagulstadia was a city situated in the island of Lindisfarne, of which at letter ii: to which opinion Baudrand also in his Lexicon inclines. But that is altogether alien from the truth, for how could so small an island have had two episcopal sees? Bede

indeed in the Life of St. Cuthbert, chapter 16, suspects that it must have seemed strange to some that there, besides the bishop's see, an abbey is recorded to have been. For he says: Nor let anyone wonder that in the same island of Lindisfarne, small as it is, we have said that there is a place both, as above, of the bishop, and now of the abbot and of the monks: for in truth it is so, for one and the same dwelling of the servants of God holds both together, nay holds all as monks. But the error of those authors is more openly refuted by Richard, Prior of Hexham, who flourished in the twelfth century and wrote On the Old and New State of his own Church, which Selden published in his Collection, column 289 and following. There Agulstadia or Hagulstandia, to the inhabitants Hestoldesham and Herham, is said to be situated in the province of the Northumbrians, not far from the river Tyne to the south. It had first been a villa, which queen Etheldreda had ceded to St. Wilfrid. There Wilfrid had founded and adorned a most ample monastery (on the testimony of Eddius and others), which St. Theodore raised into an episcopal see on the model of that of Lindisfarne, and set Tumbert over it. Consult, if you please, the Monasticon Anglicanum, volume 2, page 9 and following. Moreover the church of Hexham seems to have been about 15 miles from York, says Harpsfield, page 97.

nn. The Picts, a most warlike nation, inhabited the southern part of present-day Scotland. See the preliminary Commentary on the Life of St. Ninian, apostle of the Picts, on the 16th of September.

oo. Concerning the bishopric of Lindsey, since at that time the sees of bishops were wont to be changed with the kingdoms, very many things were done in a few years. When Wulfhere was growing old, and in the last years of his reign, 673 or the following, king Ecgfrith had snatched away the province of Lindsey. Sexwulf in the year 676, Ethelred reigning after Wulfhere, was given as bishop to the Mercians, Winfrid being expelled: then in the following year the province of Lindsey was snatched from his jurisdiction, where Eadhæd was consecrated bishop, and had his see at Sidnacester, which city, according to Alford, was situated where the river Trent washes the town of Gainsborough. Then in the ninth year of Ecgfrith's reign and at the beginning of the year of Christ 679, a grievous battle having been joined, Ethelred as victor recovered the province of the people of Lindsey and joined it to the kingdom of the Mercians: whence Eadhæd was compelled to withdraw. And in the same year, after the council of Hatfield, with king Ethelred consenting, the most ample dominions of the Mercians were divided into five episcopal sees, and Ethelwin sat in the province of Lindsey, whence Eadhæd had departed, who moreover was set over the church of Ripon in the county of York. There was, namely, there a famous monastery which St. Wilfrid had built, of which Bede, book 3, chapter 5, and Eddius often.

PART 3.

Theodore presides over the council of Hatfield, and, affairs in England being most illustriously carried out, dies holily. From book 4, chapters 17, 18, 21, and book 5, chapter 8.

A synod being gathered at Hatfield, by the care At these times Theodore, hearing that the faith of the Church at Constantinople was much disturbed by the heresy of Eutyches, and desiring that the churches of the English over which he presided should continue immune from such a stain, having collected an assembly of venerable priests and of very many teachers, diligently inquired of what faith each of them was, and found the unanimous consent of all in the Catholic faith: and this he took care to commend by synodal letters for the instruction and memory of those who should follow. Of which letters this is the beginning.

[19] In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ the Savior, in the reign of our most pious lords Ecgfrith king of the Northumbrians, and under the presidency of St. Theodore, in the tenth year of his reign, on the fifteenth day of the Kalends of October, in the eighth Indiction; Ethelred king of the Mercians, in the sixth year ^a of his reign; and Aldwulf king of the East Angles, in the seventeenth year of his reign; and Hlothhere king of the men of Kent, in the seventh year of his reign: Theodore presiding, by the grace of God archbishop of the island of Britain and of the city of Canterbury, and there sitting with him the other bishops of the island of Britain, venerable men, the most holy Gospels being set forth, in the place which is named by the Saxon word Hetfeld ^b, treating together, we have set forth the right and orthodox faith, as our Lord Jesus Christ Incarnate handed it down to his disciples, who in his presence saw and heard his words, and as the Symbol of the holy Fathers handed it down, and generally all the holy [] and universal synods, and the whole choir of approved doctors of the Catholic Church. Following these therefore, we, piously and orthodoxly, according to their divinely inspired doctrine, professing, believe in concord and confess according to the holy Fathers, properly and truly, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, a Trinity consubstantial in unity, and a unity in Trinity, that is, one God in three subsistences or consubstantial persons, of equal glory and honor.*

[20] And after many things of this kind which pertained to the confession of the right faith, in which against the heresy of the Monothelites this holy synod added also these things in its letters: We have received the holy and universal five synods of the blessed Fathers acceptable to God; that is, of those who were gathered at Nicæa, three hundred and eighteen, against the most impious Arius and his dogmas; and at Constantinople a hundred and fifty, against the madness of Macedonius and Eudoxius and their dogmas; and at Ephesus, the first, of two hundred, against the most wicked Nestorius and his dogmas; and at Chalcedon, of two hundred and thirty, against Eutyches and Nestorius and their dogmas; and again at Constantinople, where they were gathered in a fifth council, in the time of Justinian the younger, against Theodore and Theodoret, and the letters of Ibas and their dogmas against Cyril. And a little after: And the synod which was held in the city of Rome, in the time of the most blessed Pope Martin, in the eighth Indiction, in the reign of the most pious Constantine in his ninth year, we have received, and we glorify our Lord Jesus Christ as they also glorified him, adding nothing nor taking anything away, and we anathematize with heart and mouth those whom they anathematized, and those whom they received we receive; glorifying God the Father without beginning, and his only-begotten Son, generated from the Father before the ages, and the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son ineffably, as those whom we have recorded above preached, the holy Apostles and Prophets and Doctors. And we all have subscribed, who with archbishop Theodore have set forth the Catholic faith.

[21] the Catholic faith was set forth There was present at this synod, and likewise confirmed the decrees of the Catholic faith, the venerable man John, archcantor ^c of the church of St. Peter and abbot of the monastery of blessed Martin, who had lately come from Rome by the command of Pope Agatho, under the guidance of the most reverend abbot Bisi ^d, bishop, surnamed Benedict, whom we have mentioned above. For when that same Benedict had built a monastery in Britain in honor of the prince of the Apostles, near the mouth of the river Wear ^e, he came to Rome with Ceolfrid ^f, the fellow-worker and companion of that same work, who after him was abbot of the same monastery (which ^g he had also been accustomed to do often before), and was honorably received by the Pope Agatho of blessed memory: and he sought and received from him, for the safeguarding of the liberty of what he had made, a letter of privilege ^h confirmed by Apostolic authority, according as he knew that king Ecgfrith had wished and had given leave, by whose grant, and by his bestowing the possession of the land, he had made that monastery. He received also the aforesaid abbot John to be conducted to Britain, that in his monastery he might teach the yearly course of singing as it was performed at St. Peter's at Rome; and abbot John did as he had received the Pontiff's command, both by teaching the singers of the aforesaid monastery with living voice the order and rite of singing and reading, and also by committing to writing those things which the circle of the whole year required in the celebration of the feast days, which are preserved to this day in the same monastery, and have already been transcribed by many round about.

[22] and established in England: But that same John not only taught the brethren of that monastery, but from almost all the monasteries of that province those who were skilled in singing flocked to hear him. And many took care to invite him to places where he might teach. But he himself, besides the charge of singing and reading, had received also another in his instructions from the Apostolic Pope, that he should diligently learn of what faith the church of the English was, and returning to Rome should report it. For he brought with him at his coming also the synod of blessed Pope Martin ⁱ, celebrated at Rome not long before with the consent of a hundred and five bishops, chiefly against those who preached one operation and will in Christ, and lent it to be transcribed in the aforesaid monastery of the most religious abbot Benedict. For such men had at that time much disturbed the faith of the church of Constantinople, but by the Lord's granting they were already then betrayed and vanquished. Whence Pope Agatho, wishing to learn, as in other provinces so also in Britain, what the state of the church was, and how chaste it was from the contagions of heretics, enjoined this business on the most reverend abbot John, sent to Britain. Wherefore, a synod having been gathered for this in Britain, as we have said, the Catholic faith was found inviolate in all, and a copy of it was given him to carry to Rome. But he, returning to his fatherland, not long after he crossed the ocean was seized by an infirmity and died, and his body was, by his friends, for the love of St. Martin, over whose monastery he presided, carried to Tours and honorably buried. For he had been received in the kindly hospitality of that church when he was going to Britain, and had been much asked by the brethren that on returning to Rome he should come by that way and turn aside to that church.

[23] Finally, there he received helpers for the journey and for the work enjoined; these and other things being illustriously done, and although he died on the journey, nonetheless the copy of the Catholic faith of the English was carried to Rome and was most gladly received by the Apostolic Pope and by all who heard or read it. In the ninth year of Ecgfrith's reign ^k, a grievous battle having been joined between him and Ethelred king of the Mercians beside the river Trent ^l, Elfwin, the brother of king Ecgfrith, was slain, a youth of about eighteen years, much beloved by both provinces. For king Ethelred had his sister, who was called Ostrith, as wife. And when it seemed that matter for a sharper war and a longer enmity had arisen between the kings and the fierce peoples, Theodore the prelate beloved of God, relying on divine help, by his salutary exhortation utterly extinguished the fire of so great a peril that had begun; so much so that, the kings and peoples being reconciled to one another, no man's life was given for the slain brother of the king, but only a due fine of money to the avenging king. Whose covenants of peace lasted long thereafter between the same kings and their kingdoms.

[24] But in the year next after that in which Cædwalla died at Rome, Theodore dies holily. that is, the six hundred and ninetieth of the Lord's Incarnation, Theodore the archbishop of blessed memory, an old man and full of days, that is, of eighty-eight years, died; which number of years he himself, long since taught by the revelation of a dream that he would have, was wont to foretell to his own people. Now he remained in the episcopate twenty-two years, and was buried in the church of St. Peter, in which of all the bishops of Canterbury

the bodies are laid, of whom, together with the partners of that same grade of his, it can rightly and truly be said that their bodies are buried in peace, and their name shall live unto generations and generations. For, to speak briefly, the churches of the English took as much spiritual profit in the time of his prelacy as they had never been able to before. Whose person, life, age, and death an epitaph also of his monument [m], in thirty-four heroic verses, plainly and clearly discloses to all who come thither; of which the first are:

Here in the tomb the holy Prelate rests with his body,

Whom now the Pelasgian tongue calls Theodore.

Prince of pontiffs, happy, and the highest priest,

He set forth clear doctrines to his disciples.

And the last:

For September had its nineteenth day,

When the spirit goes out from the prison of the flesh.

Happy, ascending to the gracious fellowship of the new life,

Joined to the angelic citizens in the citadel of heaven.

ANNOTATIONS.

The situation of St. Theodore's tomb you have in the Plate in volume 6 of May in the Deeds of St. Augustine, bishop of Canterbury; of St. Theodore and of the six predecessors of his laid there, there is an old Quatrain:

Seven Primates are there for the English, and Fore-fathers;

Seven Rulers, and seven Wains through the heavens;

Seven are the Stars, by these shines this floor of the cell;

Seven Cisterns of life, and seven Lamps.

read Sanctæ*