Ceolfrid

ON ST. CEOLFRID, ABBOT OF JARROW AND WEARMOUTH IN ENGLAND,

NEAR LANGRES IN CHAMPAGNE OF GAUL.

In the year DCCXVI.

HISTORICAL COMMENTARY.

Ceolfrid, abbot of Jarrow and Wearmouth in England, near Langres in Champagne of Gaul. (S.)

BY C. S.

§ I. An account of the two monasteries over which he presided as abbot: his deposition and translation marked with various error in the Martyrologies: his translations, and the honorable esteem of the ancients concerning him.

[ ] The Venerable Bede, in book 1 of the History of the abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow, hands down that both these monasteries were founded, St. Benedict Biscop founded two monasteries as the 7th century was drawing to its end, by St. Biscop, who was surnamed Benedict. And of the Wearmouth one indeed, at the very opening of his book, he says this: "The religious servant of Christ Biscop, surnamed Benedict, by the breathing of heavenly grace built a monastery in honor of the most blessed Peter, prince of the Apostles, near the mouth of the river Wear to the north, with the help and by the grant of land of the venerable and most pious king of that nation (the Northumbrians), Egfrid." He connects the date of that foundation with "the year from the Lord's Incarnation six hundred and seventy-four, in the second Indiction, but in the fourth year of the reign of King Ecgfrid." Some years after, the same St. Biscop founded another monastery out of the same king's munificence in honor of St. Paul the apostle beside the river Tyne, "in the place which is called in Girvum," as the praised Bede has it in book 5 of the Ecclesiastical History of the nation of the Angles, who was born in the territory of that monastery, and was brought up in that same monastery, and lived as a monk in it.

[2] Now both were situated in the kingdom of Northumbria, or in the present bishopric of Durham; in the kingdom of Northumbria, that of Wearmouth the first namely at the mouth of the river Wear, or Vedra, in English Were, on the left bank of the river's mouth; the other on the right of the Tyne, distant about five miles from the first. Of both there now survives either nothing or little beyond the names; for Bede's Wire-mutha, on Camden's testimony in his Britannia, is now called Monks Were-mouth, that is, the mouth of the Vedra which belonged to the monks; but Girvum, Jarrow. Further, the holy founder built that monastery of the blessed Paul the apostle only on this condition, that "one peace and concord of both places, the same perpetual familiarity and favor should be preserved; that, just as, for example, the body from the head, through which it breathes, is not

able to be torn away, and cannot forget the head of the body, without which it does not even live, so no one should attempt by any effort to disturb from one another the monasteries of the first Apostles, bound together in brotherly fellowship"; so says Bede in the History of the abbots of both. And this brotherly fellowship was so far at heart to St. Biscop that when about to die he set St. Ceolfrid, who presided over Jarrow, over both monasteries — or, as we can more rightly say (says Bede in the same place), over one monastery of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul set in two places.

[3] and that of Jarrow, famous for the number and sanctity of its monks, Hence also the same venerable writer, in book 5 of the History of the nation of the Angles, chapter 22, as though both had been only one, calls the venerable Ceolfrid "abbot of the monastery of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul, which is at the mouth of the river Wear, and beside the river Tyne in the place which is called in Girvum." From what has been said correct William of Malmesbury, when in book 4 of the Deeds of the pontiffs of the Angles he speaks thus, as if those two monasteries had stood on both banks of that same river Vedra. For he says in the same place: "He (St. Benedict Biscop) fringed both banks of the river Wear, which among the Northumbrians is held of no small fame, with monasteries under the name of the apostles Peter and Paul." Correct, I say, these words; for of these monasteries one was situated at the mouth of the Vedra, the other five miles thence on the Tyne; unless you prefer to suspect with our Bolland, in his St. Benedict Biscop, that he wrote so perhaps because various churches were erected by him in villages on both banks of the Vedra. Of their size one may conjecture from the number of the monks, whom Bede, one of them, testifies to have been nearly six hundred at the end of St. Ceolfrid's life. And that they flourished no less in virtue than in the number of their nurslings, their first presidents are an argument, of whom we have already given in our Work St. Benedict Biscop the founder at the day XII of January, and his two co-abbots in the monastery of Wearmouth, St. Easterwine at the VII of March and St. Sigfrid at the XXII of August, and finally the holy and venerable Bede, the most worthy disciple of SS. Benedict and Ceolfrid and a light of the Church, at the XXVII of May.

[4] whose abbot St. Ceolfrid today But today their abbot, the disciple of the same St. Benedict, and his vigorous helper in founding both monasteries, first abbot of the men of Jarrow, and likewise the holy founder's first successor in the governance of both, St. Ceolfrid comes to be commemorated, who on the Roman journey which as an old man he had undertaken for religion's sake, near the city of Langres in Champagne of Gaul, on this very day, as Bede teaches, died a blessed death, and on the next day was entombed. Various Martyrologies announce him on this and other days, but not without faults. John Wilson, in the English Martyrology of both editions, mentions him today, and in the later edition has it thus: "At Langres in Burgundy (rather, in Champagne of Gaul), the deposition of St. Ceolfrid, confessor and abbot of Wearmouth in the kingdom of the Northumbrians, and master of St. Bede, who, having set out for Rome to obtain privileges for his monastery, died on his return at Langres in the year of Christ DCCXVII, and there his body, buried with great solemnity in the cathedral church of that same city, is kept in great veneration to this day." Then he speaks of his letter, which is extant in Bede, and of the church built by him, of which we shall treat in their places.

[5] Observe here in passing that it is falsely said that St. Ceolfrid died while returning from Rome; is announced by some at Langres, since he departed this life at Langres not on the return but on the journey toward the City, and that in the year of Christ 716, not 717, as Wilson has it. It is also false that he, buried in the cathedral church of Langres, is kept there today: for he was buried outside the city in the church of the monastery of the holy Twins or Triplets, martyrs, whence his relics were afterward translated into England. These things being observed, I proceed to the other martyrologists. On the same day Andrew Saussay announces him in the Gallican Martyrology, likewise not without errors: "On the same day," he says, "at Langres, of St. Ceolfrid, priest and confessor, who, the teacher of the venerable Bede, and abbot of the monastery of the holy apostles Peter and Paul in England (where that notable writer wrote out his volumes under him), being now advanced in age, went to Rome for devotion's sake, and, when he had venerated the footsteps of the Apostles, on the return, when he had come to Langres, there, his strength being exhausted but full of virtues, he died, in the forty-fourth year of his priesthood (rather, the forty-seventh or eighth), in the twenty-fifth of his abbatial office (rather, the thirty-fifth). But being buried in the church of the Triplet martyrs, he shone forth with wondrous flashes of glory."

[6] More briefly and more rightly Ménard has it on this same day in the Benedictine Martyrology: where he died on his pilgrimage, "At Langres, in the church of the holy Twins, the deposition of Bl. Ceolfrid, abbot of Jarrow in England, conspicuous for learning and sanctity." Rightly too Ferrari, in the General Catalogue of the Saints, says in the same place: "At Langres in Gaul, of St. Ceolfrid, abbot"; but in the Annotations he wrongly makes him abbot of Glastonbury. About the day Castellanus also agrees in the universal Martyrology, where, among the Saints of Gaul — namely because he died and was buried in it — he says thus: "At Urbatum (so in the margin he calls in Latin the place of the holy Twins, which in French he calls Saint-Geome) near Langres, St. Ceolfrid (in French S. Soufroy), abbot of St. Peter's of Wearmouth in England." Thus far the martyrologists, who have announced St. Ceolfrid either at Langres, where he died, or in the monastery of the holy Twins, where he was buried. Further, the city of Langres, also called Andemantunum, on Baudrand's testimony in the Lexicon, is a city of Celtic Gaul in Pliny and others, now called by the natives Langres, an ample city in Gallic Champagne, episcopal under the archbishop of Lyons, situated on a hill at the sources of the river Marne.

[7] But where the monastery of the holy Twins or Triplets was, and was buried. and to whom it was dedicated, Bede himself in the praised History of the abbots, book 2, sets forth thus: "He (St. Ceolfrid) was buried on the morrow at the first milestone to the south of that same city (Langres), in the monastery of the Twins … Now the Twin martyrs, in whose monastery and church he was laid, are Speusippus, Eleusippus, Meleusippus, who, brought forth at one birth of their mother, born again in the same faith of the Church, together with their grandmother Leonilla left to that place a worthy memorial of their martyrdom." Of those Saints we have treated in our Work at the day XVII of January; but about the praised monastery the Gallia Christiana, reprinted and enlarged, volume 4, column 652, may be consulted, where its various condition at various times is treated, and it is said to be now a conventual Priory of Canons Regular of the Order of St. Augustine, distant one mile, or a little more, from the city of Langres, and is written in French Saint Jome; Castellanus, just cited, called it Saint-Geome. So much about the monastery in which some announce him, because the Saint, having died near Langres, was buried in it, as I have said from St. Bede, and as we shall see again below.

[8] Others announce him on this and other days at Glastonbury, But because his sacred relics were long ago translated thence first to the monastery of Wearmouth, and thence afterward to that of Glastonbury in England, others have announced him at Glastonbury, and there have not been wanting those who, led into error by this, have even believed that he was abbot of Glastonbury. Among the Usuardine Auctaria in our Sollier, the Rosweyde codex mentions him at the aforesaid day XXV of September thus: "In the monastery of Glastonbury, of Saint Ceolfrid." The Altemps one in the same place: "At Glescovia, of Saint Ceolfrid, abbot and confessor." Molanus in the later editions: "At Glastonbury, the deposition of Saint Ceolfrid, abbot and confessor." Arnold Wion agrees, in book 3 of the Tree of Life, saying on this same day: "At Glastonbury, the birthday of St. Ceolfrid, abbot and confessor, conspicuous for learning and piety." Dempster in the Scottish Menology mentions him only in England, in this manner: "In England, of Ceolfrid, abbot, who is held by some to be a Scot, and companion of St. John surnamed the Master, who crossed with him from Gaul into England, and, famous in life, rested as archbishop of Canterbury." David Camerarius, in book 3 of the Piety of the Scots, likewise reckoning him among the Scots, makes him abbot of Glastonbury, and commemorates him on the day XXIX of September in these words: "On this same day, Ceolfrid, abbot of Glastonbury. Of him the letters of Pope Sergius and others."

[9] to which his body was at one time translated, At Glastonbury Gabriel Bucelin also sets him down in the Benedictine Menology on the day XXV of September, but so distinguishes his abbey, the place of his death, and the places to which he was translated, that it is plain he is announced there for no other cause than that his relics were last translated thither. Wherefore it will be helpful to have heard him. "At Glastonbury in England, the birthday of St. Ceolfrid, abbot and confessor. Ceolfrid, disciple of St. Benedict the Englishman, a most choice abbot, a monk of the monastery of SS. Peter and Paul, being bidden for the exceptional sanctity of his life to succeed his most holy master in the honor of the abbacy, deserved to have as son and disciple that great doctor of the holy Church, the Sun, as Bellarmine says, of the West, the venerable Bede, thenceforward the eternal herald of his sanctity and its most happy emulator. Setting out for Rome for religion's sake, and that he might there finish an age worn out with labors, and pour out his holy soul at the feet of the Apostles, being forestalled by the law of death, he blessed Langres with a most fortunate death in the year of Christ DCCXVII, of his age the LXXIV, of his priesthood the XLIV, of his abbatial rule the XXXV. Whose sacred relics were afterward carried into England to his own monastery; thence at last, when the Danes were laying England waste, they were translated to Glastonbury." So he.

[10] falsely thinking, Of this translation Saussay makes mention in the Gallican Martyrology at the day XXVI of October in these words: "The translation of St. Ceolfrid, abbot of Glastonbury in England, who, having died at Langres in Gaul as he was returning from the Roman pilgrimage, and having been buried in the church of the holy Triplets, was thereafter sought back by his countrymen, and, shining in the tomb with frequent prodigies, was carried back to his own monastery with much veneration." Thus he there, in which more than one error lies. For first indeed, besides the error about the Saint's death on the return from Rome, he makes him abbot of Glastonbury, whereas nevertheless it is established that he was abbot of Jarrow and Wearmouth, that is, of the double monastery of SS. Peter and Paul, Saussay himself agreeing above in no. 5. Secondly, he has confused a twofold translation: for from what has been said the first was made from the monastery of the holy Triplets to that of Wearmouth; the second from this to Glastonbury. But from ignorance of the former both errors followed of themselves. For since he knew that the Saint's body, at the request of his monks, had been carried away from the praised monastery of Langres, and knew besides that it afterward rested at Glastonbury, he judged that that same body had been translated from the said monastery to that of Glastonbury, and therefore that the monks by whom it had been sought back were of Glastonbury, and so

that St. Ceolfrid was their abbot.

[11] At the same day XXVI of October Molanus also mentions St. Ceolfrid in the Auctaria of Usuard in Sollier, that he was abbot of Glastonbury. where is read: "At Glastonbury, the deposition of Ceolfrid, abbot and confessor." With him agree the author of the German Martyrology, which is commonly called Canisius's, Dempster in the Scottish Menology, and Philip Ferrari in the General Catalogue, following Molanus. Ferrari however in the same place, in the Annotations, falsely makes him abbot of Glastonbury, and doubts whether this is the same as the one whom he himself had announced on the day XXV of September as having died at Langres in Gaul; or whether the body of the abbot of Glastonbury was ever translated to Langres. But neither part is to be doubted: for on both days the memory of one and the same St. Ceolfrid, abbot of Wearmouth, not of Glastonbury, is marked; and in the first place indeed his birthday or death near Langres is marked; but in the last, his translation, made not to Langres but from the monastery of Wearmouth — whither it had earlier been carried from the one at Langres — to that of Glastonbury on account of fear of the Danes; and since the aforesaid martyrologists were ignorant of this, they referred his deposition to two days, and some of them made him abbot of another monastery than the one whose he had been.

[12] Further, the aforesaid twofold translation William of Malmesbury, in book 1, chapter 3 of the Deeds of the kings of the Angles, It is obscure when each translation was made, handed down in few words thus: "The relics of his bones in later years (from the territory of Langres, where he had set down before that he died) were carried to the monastery (of Wearmouth), then in the time of the Danish devastation, with the bones of the blessed Hilda, to Glastonbury." The time at which the first translation was made is plainly unknown; but certainly it had not yet happened when St. Bede wrote the often-mentioned History of the abbots, since in this he expressly mentions the Saint's burial in the church of the holy Twins or Triplets, but nothing about a translation. If it please one to guess, perhaps it was done afterward by the efforts of those monks who, having accompanied their holy Abbot on that Roman journey, when some went on to Rome and others returned to England, remained at the tomb of the Deceased, as we shall say below from the same Bede. William of Malmesbury, in the Antiquities of the church of Glastonbury, referred the second translation to the middle of the 8th century, writing thus: "When the Danes were harassing Northumbria, Tica, abbot of those parts, migrating under pretext of peace from the north to the west, withdrew to Glastonbury, and governed that same church by an abbot's right in the year of the Lord's Incarnation DCCLIV.

[13] "But for many years the northern region lay open to the plunder of the pirates, yet that it was made, while meanwhile other parts of England suspected nothing hostile. He certainly brought with him rich hostages of his dwelling there, namely the relics of Aidan, bishop of Lindisfarne, the bodies of SS. Ceolfrid, Benedict, Estrepinus, Hetbert, Selgfrid, abbots of Wear … These relics therefore, placed above the altar, added not a little of reverence to the place." Others soon to be cited placed the same translation a whole century later; nor do I know which is the more right. The monastery of Glastonbury was situated in southern England, in the present county of Somerset, and long flourished, until, on Camden's testimony in his Britannia, "they (the monks) were driven out of it by Henry VIII; and the monastery, which had already grown into a little town, being pulled down and leveled with the ground, shows by its ruins how great and how magnificent it was." For the rest, the place itself is now called by the English Glastembury or Glassenbury. That St. Ceolfrid's bones — whom he calls Colfrid — rested there John Bromton also writes in his Chronicle, where he says: "Thither (to Glastonbury) were translated the bodies of the holy abbess Hilda, of Colfrid, abbot of Jarrow, and some bones of Aidan the bishop, which King Edmund brought."

[14] is proved from the testimonies of writers. The writers of the Monasticon Anglicanum also agree, who in volume 1, pages 3 and 4, treating of the Saints resting in the church of Glastonbury, among other things say: "There rest the bones of St. Aidan, bishop of Lindisfarne, … of Coelfrid the abbot, of Boisil the abbot, of the venerable Bede, … and of the holy confessors Benedict, surnamed Biscop, Hesterpinus (that is, Easterwine), Sigfrid and Herbert, abbots of Wear … from the gift of King Edmund the Elder." By Edmund the Elder they designated the holy king and martyr of this name, whom English writers have handed down as having been, in the year of the Lord 870, while fighting against the Danes, captured by them and, bound to a stake, pierced with arrows. And so if they mean that St. Ceolfrid's bones were sent to Glastonbury by this holy king, the time and occasion of the translation will rightly agree; but these things I cannot confirm from any other source.

[15] The esteem of Ceolfrid among his contemporaries Whether Ceolfrid was ever venerated with an ecclesiastical Office, I have not ascertained; yet of a sufficient cult, such that it be lawful to treat of him with the title of Saint in our Work, it seems established enough from what we have already said above and are about to say. Certainly the venerable Bede called him, after his death, no less than SS. Easterwine and Sigfrid, "a venerable and holy man." How great an esteem, too, of his sanctity his successor in the abbacy Hwetbert had is clear from the commendatory letter which he gave him, when he had already entered on the Roman journey in which he died, to be carried to Pope St. Gregory II, and in which he speaks thus: "Then also we entreat your Paternity that what we have not deserved to do, you may zealously fulfil toward him as the office of a last piety, knowing for certain that, although you have his body, yet both we and you have his spirit, devoted to God, whether abiding in the body or loosed from the bonds of the flesh, as a great intercessor and patron for our offenses before the heavenly goodness." So Hwetbert in Bede. Nor was the veneration of his companions on the said journey less, some of whom, setting aside the love of their fatherland, remained at his tomb.

[16] and among the ancients, and his title of Saint. "For not easily," says St. Bede, "could anyone hold back tears, seeing his companions, some, their Father being lost, pursuing the journey they had begun, some, changing the purpose with which they had desired to go to Rome, returning rather home, to announce that he was buried here, some, out of an inextinguishable affection for their Father, remaining at the tomb of the Deceased among men whose very language they did not know." Bede indeed does not explain whether even then some sacred veneration or cult of any sort was exhibited to him by them; yet this, on account of the Man's holiness and of the other things said above, is much more likely. Miracles done at his tomb there Simeon of Durham also writes in the Deeds of the kings of the Angles, where he has these words: "Whose blessed body was buried in the church of the holy martyrs Speusippus, Eleusippus, and Meleusippus, where many signs and healings are known to have been wrought, by the gift of Him who is wont both to help His Saints while they contend in the present, and to crown them as victors in the time to come." Alcuin too, in letter 49 to the Brethren of the church of Wear and Jarrow, in André du Chesne's Paris edition of his Works, honors him with the title of sanctity, saying: "Keep most diligently the observance of the Regular life which the most holy fathers, namely Benedict and Ceolfrid, established for you, so that with them you may deserve to have as your reward the land of blessing." And again in the same place: "You have holy Fathers, who begot you, as helpers, if you will be doers of their precepts." Nor ought it to detain us that Bede did not mention him in his Martyrology; since neither St. Benedict, nor St. Easterwine, nor St. Sigfrid, of whom we have already treated, did he reckon in it. See what was said in the Commentary on St. Sigfrid at the day XII of August. I pass over other ancient writers who mentioned Ceolfrid with great praise of sanctity.

§ II. The Saint's Life, to be gathered from Bede: the time of his birth and his native place: the earlier deeds of his life uncertain: his priesthood: his deeds with St. Benedict for founding the monastery of Wearmouth.

[ ] St. Bede wrote the Saint's deeds We have already often praised the History of the abbots of the double monastery of SS. Peter and Paul, that is, of Wearmouth and Jarrow, written by St. Bede. This he himself reckoned among his own Works at the end of the Ecclesiastical History of the nation of the Angles in Chifflet's Paris edition, which I use, in these words: "The History of the abbots of this monastery in which I rejoice to serve the heavenly goodness — Benedict, Ceolfrid and Huaetbert — in two little books." This little work, torn into two fragments, Edward Maihew published in the Benedictine Trophies of England in the year 1625; of which, since Sir James Ware, knight, was ignorant, he published it from an ancient manuscript codex of the Cottonian library at Dublin in Ireland in the year 1664 in a continuous series, and illustrated it with a preface and some annotations; but since few copies of it had quickly been sold in France, Louis Billaine, a Paris bookseller, reprinted it in the year 1666, and then Mabillon, cutting off Ware's Preface and Annotations, in the second Benedictine Century, page 1002 and following, reviewed it again from the same Ware and Maihew. Ware confesses that in his manuscript some things are read as very faulty through the fault of an unskilled copyist; and since these are more correct in Mabillon's edition, I have judged that this should be followed. In the Paris edition of Ware which I mentioned, this title is prefixed to the whole little Work: "Here begins the Life of the holy abbots of the monastery at Wearmouth and Jarrow — Benedict, Ceolfrid, Easterwine, Sigfrid and Whetbert — composed by Bede, priest and monk of that same monastery"; which title Ware, when he had found it in the ancient Cottonian codex which he published, ascribed to Bede himself as the author. But he would more rightly have attributed it to the writer of that codex; both because Bede himself, as reported just now, called this little Work not "the Life of the Saints," etc., but "the History of the abbots," etc.; and because he wrote it while Hwetbert was alive, whose beginnings of rule only he mentions, and therefore does not seem to have wished at that time to write his Life as of a Saint.

[18] in the History of the abbots of his monastery: Hwetbert Further, from this History some things have already been given by us at the day VII of March, in St. Easterwine, and the XXII of August in St. Sigfrid, and others will have to be given in the Supplement of our whole Work at the day XII of January, where, when St. Benedict Biscop was treated, it was wanting. Many things about our St. Ceolfrid also are contained in it; but, as is wont in Histories, not all in a continuous series, but many also scattered, and therefore it has seemed better to me to write a historical Commentary, and to insert in it, in their places, as the order of the deeds requires, what Bede recorded with great praise about that most excellent Man. Besides, since in the same History not a few things are said about St. Benedict in which Ceolfrid had a great part — as one who by his counsel and labor helped him in founding both monasteries and in prescribing Rules — it will be needful to say many things about him too, and this the more because the praised History, as I said, had not yet reached my elders when they treated of that holy abbot. For the rest, it is not necessary, for the credit and authority of this venerable writer, most celebrated in the whole world,

to say anything here; yet this one thing it will be helpful to have observed for the present argument, that he was the disciple and monk of this same St. Ceolfrid whose deeds he narrates, as we shall see in the course of it. Arnold Wion, in the Tree of Life, book 3, praises another biographer of his in these words: "Before him (Bede), Wichbert the Deiran had committed the same (the Life of St. Ceolfrid) to writing in DCCXXIV." Reckoning the same biographer among the writers of England at the year just cited, John Pits attributes to him "one book On the Life of Ceolfrid."

[19] seems to have written nothing about him but a letter. That his Life was written by him Dempster also asserts, in book 3 of the Ecclesiastical History of the nation of the Scots, no. 235, under St. Ceolfrid: but since he says it was written to Pope Gregory II, and Pits asserts that that Wichbert was St. Ceolfrid's successor in the abbacy of the monastery of Wearmouth and Jarrow, I can scarcely doubt that by "the Life" they designate the letter which the latter gave to the former, as he was setting out for Rome, commendatory to St. Gregory II, on the testimony of the venerable Bede in the History of the abbots, in which he recites part of it, which we too shall reprint from it. If however another Life of him by Wichbert, Hwetbert, or Huwetbert, abbot of that place, is extant anywhere, he will do us a welcome service who is willing to communicate it to us, that it may be published in the Supplement: for although St. Bede is as good as many, yet since he proposed to himself to write not Lives but the History of the abbots of his monastery, he set down in writing about him only those things which pertained more nearly to the monastery, omitting doubtless many other of his deeds which would serve to illustrate his life. Thus in book 5 of the Ecclesiastical History of the nation of the Angles, chapter 22, he relates his letter to Naiton, king of the Picts, and his dealings with St. Adamnan, abbot of Iona, for taking up the Catholic observance of Easter and the Roman tonsure of the head, of which he does not mention so much as a word in the History of the abbots. Other writers, more recent than he, who have written of our holy Abbot I shall praise in their places. And so I begin to set forth the Saint's deeds.

[20] The venerable Bede, in the praised History of the abbots, signifies not obscurely The Saint, born in England about the year 643, that he was near of kin by some connection of blood to his holy father Benedict Biscop, when he writes that the latter "appointed as his successor the abbot Ceolfrid, … a man namely near to him not so much by the tie of the flesh as by the fellowship of virtues." Now St. Benedict Biscop was, on the testimony of the same Bede in the same place, "sprung of a noble … stock of the nation of the Angles … and a servant of Oswy, king of the Northumbrians"; whence one may conjecture a like distinction of Ceolfrid's family. "Henry Sinclair in his native History made St. Ceolfrid a Scot," says the Dempster praised above; who nevertheless, however devoted to the Scots, rightly dissenting here from this assertion of his, confesses with others that he was an Englishman. There are those who say he was born in Bernicia, which to Camden is that part of the kingdom of the Northumbrians which extended beyond the Tyne as far as the Scottish firth. The year of his birth we dig out from Bede; for since he writes that he died on the day XXV of September in the year of Christ 716, "when he was seventy-four years old," he must be said to have been born in the year 642 or 643.

[21] Of his deeds before the monastery of Wearmouth was begun Bede has handed down nothing; was likely a monk at Canterbury but I strongly suspect that he was a monk in the monastery of SS. Peter and Paul at Canterbury. Receive the reason why I so think. St. Benedict Biscop, who, leaving his fatherland, had put on the monk's habit in the monastery of Lérins, and had been exercised there for two years in the monastic institutions, setting out thence for Rome, was sent back into Britain by Pope Vitalian, together with St. Theodore, consecrated archbishop of Canterbury. Returned to his fatherland, he governed the praised monastery of the holy Apostles for two years, and then handed it over to St. Adrian. Then, having returned to Rome, and thence come back into Britain, he went to Ecgfrid, king of Northumbria, and, munificently endowed by him, built the monastery of Wearmouth, with the help of Ceolfrid, who, as Bede has it, "from the first time when Benedict began to found his monastery in honor of the most blessed Prince of the Apostles, … was at hand to him as an inseparable companion, fellow-worker, and teacher of Regular and monastic institution." Now no more probable and more likely reason seems able to be assigned why Benedict should straightway have chosen him as companion and helper in building the monastery and in sanctioning monastic laws, and why Ceolfrid should have obeyed him, than that each had had the other's virtue clearly seen from monastic life together: and in no monastery can they more likely be said to have dwelt together than in that of Canterbury, over which Benedict, as we have said, had presided as abbot for two years.

[22] Besides this, because St. Benedict, soon after his return to his fatherland, began to build the praised monastery with his Companion St. Ceolfrid, under Benedict Biscop: he was ordained priest about the year 670. one may also suspect whether he did not attach himself as companion to his holy abbot as he set out for Rome from the monastery of Canterbury. This suspicion is assuredly not without likelihood; and thus Ceolfrid would also have been the fitter for teaching others the discipline which Benedict had determined to establish in his monastery: for that he wished to introduce the Roman rites into it will be established from what is to be said. For the rest, that this Roman journey of St. Benedict happened in the year of Christ 671 was said in the Commentarius prævius to that Saint's deeds at the day XII of January. Now let us proceed from conjectures to more certain things. St. Ceolfrid was already a priest when he joined himself as companion to St. Benedict for founding the said monastery. For since, on Bede's testimony, he ended his days in the year of Christ 716, having discharged the degree of the priesthood forty-seven years, he must have been initiated in that Order in the year 669 or 670; and that in the 26th or 27th year of his age, since, on the testimony of the same venerable writer, he died at seventy-four. From the same reckonings, finally, it follows that he numbered about thirty-one or thirty-two years of his age when in the year 674 he founded with his master St. Benedict the monastery of Wearmouth, of which we must now treat.

[23] St. Benedict founds the monastery of Wearmouth "Having entered Britain (St. Benedict," says Bede in the History of the abbots), "he thought he should confer with the king of the West Saxons, Coynwalh by name, whose friendship he had before more than once enjoyed, and by whose benefits he had been helped. But since he himself was at that same time carried off by an untimely death, at length, turning his foot to his native nation and the soil in which he was born, he went to Ecgfrid, king of the region beyond the Humber; he recounted all that he had done since as a youth he left his fatherland; he did not conceal with what desire of religion he burned; he disclosed what he had learned of Ecclesiastical, what of monastic institution at Rome or round about, how many divine volumes, how great relics of the blessed Apostles or of the martyrs of Christ he had brought; and he found so great a favor of familiarity with the king that forthwith, bestowing on him land of seventy families out of his own, he ordered him to make a monastery there for the first Shepherd of the Church." Ware here in the Annotations says: "By 'land of seventy families' I understand land of seventy hides, or carucates: for Bede's Saxon translator so expounds the word FAMILIA in book 4, chapters 3, 13, 16, and 23 of Bede's Ecclesiastical History. The ancients reckoned a carucate a portion of land sufficient for the tillage of one plough in any given year." Consult also Du Cange in the Glossary at the word "Familia," where it is likewise said to be "a portion of land sufficient for the maintaining of one family, and destined to that purpose." Matthew of Westminster at the year 703 says that only sixty families were given to Benedict by Ecgfrid, but Florence of Worcester also has seventy at the year 672.

[24] in the year 674, These things being observed, I return to Bede, who to the words just given subjoins this about the building of the monastery: "Which was done, as I have recorded in the proem, at the mouth of the river Wear, to the north, in the year from the Lord's Incarnation six hundred and seventy-four, in the second Indiction, but in the fourth year of the reign of King Ecgfrid." These chronological notes are right, for both the 2nd Indiction was then running, and Ecgfrid had from the year 670 succeeded to the kingdom of the Northumbrians or of Northumbria, according to Bede's own chronology in the Ecclesiastical History. Nothing about the monastery's situation need be added here either, since enough has been said of it above in no. 1 and the two following. "And no more than the space of one year (Bede goes on) having intervened after the founding of the monastery, Benedict, crossing the Ocean and seeking Gaul, asked for masons who should make him a church of stone after the Roman manner, which he always loved; he received them, he brought them. And he showed such zeal in the work, for love of the blessed Peter in whose honor he was making it, that within the circle of one year from the laying of the foundations you might have seen, the roofs being set on, the solemnities of the Masses celebrated there." Why Bede says a church of stone was made after the Roman manner we gather from book 3 of the History of the nation of the Angles, chapter 25, where he writes of Finan the bishop: "In the isle of Lindisfarne he made a church fit for an episcopal see, which nevertheless after the manner of the Scots he composed wholly not of stone but of hewn oak, and thatched it with reed." He therefore opposed the manner of the Romans, who built churches of stone or rock, to the manner of the Scots, who were wont to build them of wood. Now let us go on with Bede.

[25] "As the work drew near completion, he sent messengers to Gaul who should bring glass-makers — craftsmen namely hitherto unknown to the Britains — to lattice the windows of the church and of its porticoes and upper rooms. And it was done, and they came; nor did they only complete the work asked of them, but they also made the nation of the Angles from that time know and learn a craft of this kind: a craft indeed not ignobly fitted either for the clear enclosures of a church or for the manifold uses of vessels. But also all things which pertained to the ministry of the altar and of the church — namely vessels or vestments — because he could not find them at home, the religious purchaser took care to bring from regions across the sea." Thus far of the foundation of the monastery of Wearmouth, with St. Ceolfrid as his helper and companion. in which, although Bede here mentioned St. Benedict alone, St. Ceolfrid, on the testimony of Bede himself praised above, had a great part, and which I have therefore judged the more must be reported here, because, as I said above, when it was written about St. Benedict in our Work, this History of the abbots had not yet reached my elders.

[26] The monastery being built and adorned in this manner, SS. Benedict and Ceolfrid The same, having set out for Rome, among other things set out for Rome, that they might seek thence other ornaments and safeguards for their church. Bede here too mentions Benedict alone; but afterward he expressly assigned Ceolfrid to him as a companion, saying: "But this Ceolfrid, whom Benedict appointed abbot, from the very first beginnings of the founding of the earlier monastery was at hand to him as a most vigorous helper in all things, and went with him at a suitable time to Rome for the sake both of learning what was necessary and of praying

there." He repeats the same in the Ecclesiastical History, book 4, chapter 18. What further each of them did at Rome, receive from Bede's History of the abbots. "And that he might bring from the Roman borders those things too which could not be found even in Gaul, the untiring provider (St. Benedict) of ornaments and safeguards for his church, having completed that fourth journey after the setting in order of his monastery according to rule, returned heaped with a manifold greater increase of spiritual merchandise than before. First, that he brought an innumerable store of books of every kind. Secondly, that he brought an abundant grace of relics of the blessed Apostles and of the martyrs of Christ, that would profit many churches of the Angles. Thirdly, that he delivered to his monastery the order of chanting, of singing psalms, and of ministering in the church according to the manner of the Roman institution, having namely asked and received from Pope Agatho John, archcantor of the church of the blessed Apostle Peter and abbot of the monastery of the blessed Martin, whom he might bring to the Britains as the future master of his monastery, a Roman to the Angles.

[27] "Who, arriving there (John in Britain), not only handed down by living voice to those learning the things Ecclesiastical which he had learned at Rome, they obtain a privilege for the immunity of their monastery but also left not a few committed to writing, which to this day are kept in the library of that same monastery for the sake of memory. As a fourth gift Benedict brought no worthless one — the letter of privilege, received from the venerable Pope Agatho with the leave, consent, desire, and exhortation of King Ecgfrid, by which the monastery which he made should be rendered perpetually safe and free from every intrusion whatsoever from outside. As a fifth, the pictured images of holy things, which he brought to adorn the church of the blessed Peter the apostle which he had built: namely the image of the blessed Mother of God and ever Virgin Mary, together with those of the twelve Apostles, with which he might gird the middle vault of that same church, a boarding being carried from wall to wall; images of the Gospel history, with which he might decorate the southern part of the church; images of the visions of the Apocalypse of the blessed John, with which he might likewise adorn the northern wall, so that all entering the church, even those ignorant of letters, whichever way they looked, might either contemplate the ever lovely aspect of Christ and of His Saints, though in an image, or might recall with a more watchful mind the grace of the Lord's Incarnation, or, having as it were before their eyes the peril of the last judgment, might remember to examine themselves more strictly."

[28] from St. Pope Agatho, Of the same Roman journey Bede again makes mention, as I said, in book 4 of the Ecclesiastical History, chapter 18, on occasion of the synod of Hertford celebrated in England. "There was present," he says, "at this synod, and likewise confirmed the decrees of the Catholic faith, the venerable man John, archcantor of the church of St. Peter and abbot of the monastery of the blessed Martin, who had lately come from Rome by the command of Pope Agatho, under the guidance of the most reverend abbot Bisi the bishop (that is, Biscop), surnamed Benedict, whom we mentioned above. For when the same Benedict had built a monastery in Britain in honor of the Prince of the Apostles beside the mouth of the river Wear, he came to Rome with the fellow-worker and companion of that same work, Ceolfrid, who after him was abbot of that same monastery (which he had also been wont to do more often before), and was honorably received by Pope Agatho of blessed memory, and asked and received from him, as a safeguard of the liberty of what he had made, a letter of privilege confirmed by Apostolic authority, according to what he knew King Ecgfrid to have willed and given leave for; by whose grant, and by his bestowing of the possession of the land, he had made that monastery. He received also the aforesaid abbot John, to be brought to Britain, that he might teach in his monastery the yearly course of chanting as it was performed at St. Peter's at Rome: and abbot John did as he had received the Pontiff's command," etc.

[29] and they return to Britain, where that privilege is confirmed in a synod. As regards the time of the deeds, Florence of Worcester referred that Roman journey of SS. Benedict and Ceolfrid, and the obtaining from Pope St. Agatho of John the archcantor and the privilege of immunity, to the year of Christ 676, by a manifest error certainly, since St. Agatho assuredly did not ascend the Apostolic Chair before the middle of the year 678. Hence Pagi, in the Critique of Baronius at the year of Christ 679, no. 8, judged that Benedict with Ceolfrid indeed went to Rome in the year 676; but that only in the year 678, after the privilege had been obtained from Agatho, then Pontiff, did he return to England with John the archcantor. But since the man of Worcester prematurely bound the beginning of St. Agatho's Pontificate to the year 675, it must rather be said that from this error the other about St. Benedict's journey arose; nor can anything certain be hammered out here from so erroneous a passage. This one thing can be said with certainty, that he returned to England before the council of Hertford, which was proved in the Commentarius prævius, §4, at the day XIX of this month of September to have been celebrated by St. Theodore, archbishop of Canterbury, on the XV of the Kalends of October of the year 679. For at this council was present that John, who "had lately come with them from Rome," as the Bede just cited has it. Of the same synod we judge Bede to speak when he says below in the History of the abbots that the king and the bishops publicly confirmed the aforesaid privilege in a synod.

§ III. The monastery of Jarrow founded, and St. Ceolfrid set over it as abbot: the Rule prescribed for both monasteries: St. Bede instructed by him: St. Sigfrid substituted for St. Easterwine.

[ ] SS. Benedict and Ceolfrid found the monastery of Jarrow, Ecgfrid, king of Northumbria, when he saw St. Benedict so piously, prudently, and happily using his munificence, gave him other estates beside the river Tyne — now called by the English Tyn — in the bishopric of Durham, and willed that he should build another monastery there. And he, obeying the pious will of the king, founded about five English miles from the monastery of Wearmouth, beside the said river, another in honor of St. Paul, which from the place that was called In Girvum was named of Jarrow, and set St. Ceolfrid over it as its first abbot. But let us hear Bede himself in the History of the abbots. "Therefore King Ecgfrid, delighted not a little by the venerable Benedict's virtue, industry, and religion, took care to increase the land which he had given him for building the monastery (of Wearmouth) — because he saw that he had given it well and fruitfully — by the granting of a possession of forty families more, where, after a year, when monks had been sent, nearly seventeen in number, and Ceolfrid, priest, set over them as abbot, Benedict, by the counsel, nay, by the very command of the aforesaid King Ecgfrid, built the monastery of the blessed Paul the apostle, on this condition only, that one peace and concord of both places, the same perpetual familiarity and favor should be preserved; that, just as, for example, the body cannot be torn from the head through which it breathes, and cannot forget the head of the body, without which it does not even live, so no one should attempt by any effort to disturb from one another the monasteries of the first Apostles, bound together in brotherly fellowship.

[31] "But this Ceolfrid, whom Benedict appointed abbot, over which St. Ceolfrid is set as abbot. from the very first beginnings of the founding of the earlier monastery was at hand to him as a most vigorous helper in all things, and had gone with him at a suitable time to Rome for the sake both of learning what was necessary and of praying." Thus Bede; on which Mabillon in the Annotations observes that in Florence of Worcester too, at the year 682, the aforesaid donation of Ecgfrid is called land of forty families; and therefore Matthew of Westminster at the year 703 must be corrected, where he has sixty. Forty also, with us, Simeon of Durham reads in the History of the kings of the Angles, in which he borrowed many things from Bede's History of the abbots. What is designated here by the word "family," consult above, no. 23. Nor do I know whence the cited man of Worcester learned that those first colonists of Jarrow with St. Ceolfrid, whom Bede said were nearly seventeen in number, were twenty-two in number. Further, that St. Ceolfrid had the greatest part in the building and completing of this monastery, Bede declares below, saying of him: "By Benedict's bidding and equally by his help, he founded, completed, and governed the monastery of the blessed Paul the apostle for seven years." But how much both this and Wearmouth grew during his lifetime may be gathered from this, that about the time of his death monks together to the number of nearly six hundred were reckoned in those two monasteries, on the testimony of Bede, who was one of them.

[32] The year of the monastery's founding Matthew of Westminster in the Flowers of the Histories assigns as 681 from the birth of Christ, saying: "In the year of grace DCLXXXI the monastery at Jarrow was founded." in the year of Christ 682, as is shown from Bede Florence of Worcester placed its beginnings one year later; and to one or the other they certainly must be referred. For first, St. Ceolfrid "founded, completed, and governed" it for seven years before he was set over both monasteries, which we shall prove below to have been done in the month of June of the year 689. But subtracting seven years hence we shall arrive at the year 682 assigned by the man of Worcester. Again, the Saint is said in Bede to have died on the XXV of September of the year 716, "discharging the office of abbot, first in that of Jarrow, then in both monasteries, for thirty-five years together"; which, if we subtract them as completed from the year 716, will yield the year 681; but if as uncompleted, the year 682; and that they must be taken as uncompleted we gather from what has been said, because if he had founded it as early as the year 681, he would have counted from its beginning not seven years only, as Bede asserts, but rather eight, when in the month of June of the year 689 he was set as abbot over both monasteries.

[33] and from a certain monument of the dedication of the church, William Camden, in his description of the bishopric of Durham, brought forward the old inscription of the dedication of the church of Jarrow, which he declared was in his own time still read on the wall of that same church, and in which mention is made of the time of Ceolfrid's prelacy. This I here transcribe from him letter for letter.

THE DEDICATION OF THE BASILICA

OF S. PAUL ON THE VIII KL. MAL. I *

IN THE XVI YEAR OF KING ECFRID.

AND OF CEOLFRID, ABB. OF THE SAME

CHURCH, BY GOD'S AUTHORITY

ITS FOUNDER, IN THE IIII YEAR.

The death of Oswy, king of the Northumbrians, whom his son Ecgfrid succeeded in the kingdom, the venerable Bede in book 4 of the History of the nation of the Angles, chapter 5, set down "in the year of the Lord's Incarnation six hundred and seventy, … on the fifteenth day of the Kalends of March," and accordingly the sixteenth year of Ecgfrid's reign was running on the VIII of the Kalends of May of the year 685, having begun two months before. And so in this year that dedication was made; at which time, according to what was said above, St. Ceolfrid could have begun the fourth year of his rule, as the inscription has it, provided he began it before the XXIV day of April of the year 682. Thus far on Camden's credit.

[34] which is reported in more than one way; yet its foundations could James Ware, in his annotations to the History of the abbots of that place, reviewing the same inscription, for "in the XVI year of King Ecgfrid" reads "in the XV year," and the writers of the Monasticon Anglicanum agree, volume 1, page 97, where also for "the VIII of the Kalends" they have "the VIIII of the Kalends of May," citing in the margin Leland's Collectanea. According to these, the dedication of the praised church would have been made in the year 684, on whose XXIV or XXIII day of April Ecgfrid began the fifteenth year of his reign

; and the beginning of St. Ceolfrid's rule would have to be thrown back to the year 681. Mabillon, in the Annotations to the Life of St. Benedict Biscop and his successors, that is, to the History of the abbots, recites that inscription from Ware and the Monasticon Anglicanum, and observes that in Bolland, namely in the Commentary on St. Benedict Biscop, the XVI year of Ecgfrid is read; but which reading is to be preferred he does not indicate. But in the Benedictine Annals, at the year 685, no. 44, agreeing with Ware, he connects the XV year of King Ecgfrid with the year of Christ 685; which cannot be, Pagi in the Critique at the year 682, no. 12, rightly shows, because Ecgfrid had already ended the XV year of his reign in the month of February of the year 685. Pagi adds in the same place: "This epigraph was written in that same year (685) on the XXIV day of the month of April, and therefore in the XVI year of his reign, then begun." But I do not know what dialectic Pagi is using here, for he proves the year of Christ 685 from nothing else than the XVI year of King Ecgfrid marked in the same epigraph in Bolland from Camden, which year, as we have said, is read otherwise by others.

[35] I, who have not been permitted to consult that tablet, or stone, as Ware has it, have been begun from the year 681. The Rule for both monasteries set in the wall of the church, leave it to the English to inquire which reading is true. Meanwhile, however, Camden's reading will appear to me the more likely; because according to Ware's, St. Ceolfrid must have spent more than eight years in founding and governing the monastery of Jarrow when in the month of June of the year 689 he was set over both monasteries, whereas nevertheless Bede attributes only seven years to him in that same work. I judge therefore that the date of the monastery of Jarrow must be referred to the year 682, yet in such a way that I would not deny that some foundations of it had been laid as early as the year 681. But of these things enough for now. That a Rule was handed down to both monasteries by their founders SS. Benedict Biscop and Ceolfrid the thing itself warns us, and Alcuin, the master of Charlemagne, expressly teaches, in the letter to the brethren of Wear and Jarrow, which in André du Chesne's Paris edition of his Works is the 49th, and is extant there at column [ ] and following. "Keep most diligently the observance of the Regular life," says Alcuin to them, "which the most holy fathers, namely Benedict and Ceolfrid, established for you, so that with them you may deserve to have the eternal reward of blessing. This is your praise, this your honor among men, and your recompense with God."

[36] What further this Rule was, he subjoins in the same place, going on thus: prescribed by them was the Benedictine one, "Let the Rule of St. Benedict be expounded in the assembly of the Brethren in their own tongue, that it may be understood by all; to whose ordinance let each one correct his own life, so that what you vowed before the altar may be inviolably kept by you." Lest however you doubt whether by Benedict here that great patriarch or Biscop is designated, it will be helpful to have recited Biscop's own words from the History of the abbots. The venerable Bede in it brings him in addressing his monks thus: "Beware much always, Brethren, never to seek yourselves a father according to birth, nor from outside from elsewhere; but, according to what the Rule of the great abbot Benedict of old, according to what the decrees of your privilege contain, seek out in the assembly of your congregation by common counsel him who according to merit of life and doctrine of wisdom is proved fitter and worthier for performing such a ministry." In like manner the praised Bede writes of St. Ceolfrid: "He decreed it more useful, giving a precept to the Brethren, that according to the statutes of their privilege, and according to the Rule of the holy abbot Benedict, they should themselves choose from among their own a father who was fitter." Consult also, if you please, Mabillon in the Preface to Century 1, no. 88, and elsewhere in the Annals. These things do not permit us to doubt that the Rule of the great St. Benedict was handed down by SS. Benedict Biscop and Ceolfrid to their monasteries.

[37] It is not so certain whether the same founders did not add something to the Benedictine from the Rules of others. to which nevertheless it is likely that some things from other Rules were added. Certainly Bede in the same place says this of St. Benedict Biscop: "Benedict used often to confirm the Brethren who came to him about keeping the Rule which he had established: 'For you must not think,' he said, 'that these decrees which I have established for you I have, untaught of heart, brought forth of my own. For from seventeen monasteries, which amid the long courses of my frequent pilgrimage I found the best, I learned all these things, and delivered them to you to be wholesomely observed.'" And that a joining of Rules of this kind was not unusual Mabillon maintains, in the Preface to the first Benedictine Century, no. 104, where for this argument he praises Charlemagne's diploma, in which he orders that the monastery of Farfa should enjoy the same privilege "as the other monasteries of Lérins, of Agaunum, and of Luxeuil, where the ancient Rule of the fathers Basil, Benedict and Columbanus, or of the other Fathers, is seen to be kept." However it be, it cannot be doubted that the praised monasteries are among those seventeen which St. Biscop says he surveyed; certainly Lérins was one of them, in which namely, shorn as a monk, he had been exercised for two years. It is therefore likely that St. Biscop prescribed for his monasteries to be kept what he had found best in this and in the others, accommodated to the Rule of the great abbot Benedict.

[38] Benedict sets out for Rome: St. Bede To this also belongs what Clement Reyner, in the Benedictine Apostolate in England, disputation 1, page 33, records of a book written by St. Benedict in these words: "He composed a notable book, in which, comparing all the other Rules of monks with the Rule of St. Benedict, he taught that the perfection of them was contained in the latter; of which book manuscript copies are extant, both elsewhere and at Fleury, whence we hope it may at some time be brought into the light." So Reyner; but I have not yet seen that book published. John Pits, on the Writers of England, reckoning it among his Works, calls it "the Concord of Rules, one book." I return to the history. St. Biscop, when Ceolfrid had been set over the men of Jarrow as abbot, and holy Easterwine — of whom we have said it was treated in our Work at the day VII of March — had been appointed his co-abbot in the monastery of St. Peter or of Wearmouth, set out for the fourth time from Britain to Rome. It is likely that on this occasion St. Bede passed from the monastery of Wearmouth to that of Jarrow into St. Ceolfrid's discipline, in which he also spent the remainder of his life amid exercises of piety and sacred studies. But since so great a disciple as this is no small praise of St. Ceolfrid, it will be helpful to have said something here on this subject.

[39] is handed over to St. Ceolfrid to be brought up in the monastery of Jarrow The venerable writer at the end of the History of the nation of the Angles commemorated thus his two masters by whom he had been trained when younger: "These things about the ecclesiastical History of the Britains … have I, Bede, servant of Christ and priest of the monastery of the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, which is at Wearmouth and Jarrow, set in order. Who, being born in the territory of that same monastery, when I was seven years old, was given by the care of my kinsfolk to be brought up by the most reverend abbot Benedict, and then by Ceolfrid; and passing all the time of my life from then in the dwelling of that same monastery, I gave all my labor to meditating the Scriptures," etc. So he in the 59th year of his age, but of Christ 731. The year of St. Bede's birth our Henschen did not rightly assign in his deeds at the day XXVII of May, where, following Turgot, he composed it with the year of Christ 677. But now the most received opinion is that that great light of England was brought forth to the world in the year of Christ 673, as our Sollier in the Preface to Usuard's Martyrology, article 2, has already acknowledged. And so, since Bede himself writes that at seven years old he was handed over to the abbot Benedict to be brought up, this must have been done in the year 681, in which at most the foundations of the monastery of Jarrow could have been begun.

[40] and by his bidding, To Benedict, as we have said, was joined as companion in the abbatial office of the monastery of Wearmouth St. Easterwine, who governed it when he had set out for Rome. When Easterwine had departed this life after a rule of four years, St. Sigfrid was substituted, Benedict not yet being returned. And yet nevertheless Bede mentions neither Easterwine nor Sigfrid, but only Benedict and Ceolfrid, as the abbots to whom he was handed over as a boy to be brought up: whence one may conjecture that he was the disciple of neither of those, at least so long as Benedict was away. It is therefore likely that Benedict, when because of the Roman pilgrimage which he was planning he could not himself have the care of his beloved disciple Bede, committed him to Ceolfrid, a holy and learned man, that he might diligently cultivate the boy's excellent disposition in piety and letters in his monastery of Jarrow. Trained by this holy Abbot, the holy disciple says himself at the end of the Ecclesiastical History: "Amid the observance of Regular discipline and the daily care of chanting in the church, I have always found it sweet either to learn or to teach or to write." But how much he advanced in virtue and learning under that master, the venerable man's sanctity and his pious and learned Works testify to the whole world more clearly than needs to be set forth at length.

[41] By the same Ceolfrid's command he was promoted to the sacred Orders of the diaconate and the priesthood, [he is initiated in the diaconate and priesthood: Sigfrid is substituted for Easterwine.] as he testifies in the same place: "But in the nineteenth year of my life," he says, "I received the diaconate, in the thirtieth the degree of the priesthood, both by the ministry of the most reverend bishop John, at the bidding of the abbot Ceolfrid." These things about St. Bede I have thought should be inserted here to the glory of his holy Master and abbot, and on that occasion I have departed from the chronology of the events, which I now resume. St. Benedict Biscop returned from his last Roman journey into Britain not before the year of Christ 685; for he found King Alfrid — who in the same Bede, book 4 of the Ecclesiastical History, chapter 26, is said to have been slain in war in that year on the XIII day of the Kalends of June — slain before he returned, as he has it in the History of the abbots. The things done by St. Ceolfrid in the meantime the venerable historian has not handed down, except the election of St. Sigfrid, whom he with the other monks, when St. Easterwine had been carried off by plague, appointed abbot in the monastery of Wearmouth, or rather co-abbot to the absent Benedict. And this election not only did not displease Benedict on his return, but even soothed the grief which he had conceived from St. Easterwine's death. "There was also," says Bede, "a solace, in that he learned that in Easterwine's place a man equally most reverend and most gentle from that same monastery, namely Sigfrid the deacon, had presently been substituted by the election of his Brethren together with that of his co-abbot Ceolfrid."

*. that is, "Maii"

§ IV. The governance of both monasteries taken up by the Saint and vigorously discharged: a privilege obtained from the Roman Pontiff: his conversation with St. Adamnan: the Picts brought to the canonical Easter and the Roman tonsure.

[ ] Benedict and Sigfrid, lying sick, Ceolfrid We have come to the year of Christ 689, in which St. Ceolfrid

was set as abbot over both monasteries by SS. Benedict and Sigfrid themselves and by all the Brethren. That they should do this the infirmity of both persuaded, from which they recognized themselves unfit to govern and near to death. The matter, as it was done, Bede narrates thus: "But when each abbot (Benedict and Sigfrid), wearied by long infirmity, saw that he was now near to death, and would not be fit to govern the monastery (for so great an infirmity of the flesh affected them, that the power of Christ might be made perfect in them, that when on a certain day, as they desired to see and address one another before they should depart from this world, Sigfrid was carried on a litter to the chamber where Benedict too lay on his own pallet, and when they had been laid by the hands of their attendants in one place, and the head of each was set on the same pillow, it was a pitiable spectacle; nor had they strength enough to be able to join their mouths, set near, to kiss one another; but even this they fulfilled by brotherly service) — Benedict, having taken counsel with him and with all the Brethren, summoned the abbot Ceolfrid, whom he had set over the monastery of the blessed Paul the apostle, a man namely near to him not so much by the tie of the flesh as by the fellowship of virtues, and set him over both monasteries as father, all favoring and judging this most useful, deeming it wholesome in every way for preserving the peace, unity and concord of the places, if they should have perpetually one father and ruler," etc.

[43] with the consent of all the monks set over both monasteries, "After this," Bede goes on in book 2, "two months having rolled by, first the venerable abbot Sigfrid, beloved of God, having passed through the fire and water of temporal tribulations, was brought into the refreshment of everlasting rest." That he died on the day XXII of August in the year 689 was shown in his deeds on the said day; whence it follows that St. Ceolfrid entered upon the governance of both monasteries in the month of June of that same year in the manner we have just said. Further, Benedict did not long survive Sigfrid; for thereafter, "other four months being added (after the latter's death), Benedict, conqueror of vices and excellent accomplisher of virtues, being overcome by infirmity of the flesh, came to his last, and died on the day before the Ides of January." There was then running the year of Christ 690, not 703, as my elders at the day XII of January in St. Benedict, being destitute of more accurate documents, judged. But this error our Cuper corrected before me in St. Sigfrid. For the rest, St. Ceolfrid, so long as Benedict remained among the living, was only his co-abbot and helper, though with the right of succeeding him; on which office he must have spent about seven months, namely from June of the year 689 to the day XII of January of the following year. And hence it is plain that the year which Bede attributes to him in that office must be taken as uncompleted, when, reviewing the years of St. Benedict's rule, he says: "Sixteen years, as we have said, he governed the monastery; the first eight by himself without the taking on of another abbot; the remaining as many with venerable and holy men, Easterwine, Sigfrid, Ceolfrid, helping him with the name, authority and office of abbot; the first four years, the second three, the third one."

[44] which he governs excellently, increasing it with furnishings Benedict therefore being dead, Ceolfrid, the worthy son and successor of so great a father, undertook to govern both monasteries alone with no less care and vigilance than he had. "Ceolfrid," Bede subjoins, "a man industrious in all things, keen of wit, untiring in action, ripe in mind, fervent with zeal of religion, first (as we have also mentioned above), at Benedict's bidding and equally by his help, founded, completed, and governed for seven years the monastery of the blessed Paul the apostle, and then presided with skilful rule for twenty-eight years over both monasteries, or, as we can more rightly say, over one monastery of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul set in two places, and all the excellent works of virtue which his predecessor began he himself took care no less diligently to complete. For indeed, among the other necessaries of the monastery which in a long time of ruling he found must be provided, he also made several oratories; he enlarged the vessels of the altar and of the church, and the vestments of every kind; the library of both monasteries, which the abbot Benedict began with great earnestness, he himself doubled with no less industry; so that he added three Pandects of the new translation to the one of the old translation which he had brought from Rome; of which one, returning to Rome as an old man, he took with him among other things for a gift, and two he left to the two monasteries; giving also a codex of the Cosmographers of wondrous workmanship, which Benedict had bought at Rome.

[45] "Land of eight families beside the river Fresca he procured from King Aldfrid, most learned in the Scriptures, and with goods, and obtains for it a privilege of immunity into the possession of the monastery of the blessed Paul the apostle: which order of procuring Benedict himself, while he yet lived, had settled with that same King Aldfrid; but before he could complete it, he died. But for this land afterward, when Osred was reigning, Ceolfrid, a worthy price being added, received land of twenty families in the place which in the tongue of the inhabitants is called At the estate of the Elder-tree, because this seemed nearer to that same monastery." The death of Aldfrid, king of the Northumbrians, Bede in book 5, chapter 19 of the Ecclesiastical History refers to the year of Christ 705; but Osred, whom he there hands down to have succeeded his father as a boy of about eight years, he writes in chapter 23 to have been slain in the year 716, which was also Ceolfrid's year of death; between which years accordingly that exchange of estates must be said to have happened. But as in these things the holy Abbot emulated his holy founder, so also he willed after his example to fortify his double monastery with letters of the Apostolic See, and to confirm it in religious liberty.

[46] To this end, monks being sent to Rome (the words are Bede's), "in the time of Pope Sergius of blessed memory *, from St. Pope Sergius, which is confirmed by the king and by a synod. he received from him a privilege for the protection of his monastery, after the pattern of that which Pope Agatho had given to Benedict; which, being brought to the Britains and laid open before a synod, was confirmed by the subscription of the bishops present together with that of the magnificent king, in the same manner in which it is well known that the earlier one too (which, having set out for Rome with St. Benedict, he had obtained from St. Agatho) was publicly confirmed by the king of his own time (Ecgfrid) and the bishops in a synod." The deeds of Pope St. Sergius I, of whom mention is here made, you have illustrated by us at the day IX of September, where it was said that he sat in the Roman Chair of St. Peter, which he had ascended from the year 687 or 688, until 701 or 702; but that Ceolfrid began in the year 690 to preside alone over both monasteries we proved just now. But in what year he received the aforesaid privilege from St. Sergius is unexplored; nor is the synod in which it was confirmed any better ascertained.

[47] William of Malmesbury, in book 1 of the Deeds of the kings of the Angles, chapter 3, recites a fragment of a letter of the same Sergius to Ceolfrid, On this occasion the same Pontiff asked of St. Ceolfrid, in which this Pontiff may be seen to have made mention of the said privilege then asked and obtained, in these words: "Favoring therefore with the closest devotion the opportune and worthy petitions of your solicitude, which is to be embraced," etc. In the same letter he asks Ceolfrid to send Bede to him at Rome. "We exhort," he says, "the goodness of your religiousness, beloved of God, that, since certain heads of ecclesiastical causes have arisen which are not without examination to be made known more at large, and we have need of men imbued with the art of letters for conferring, … you delay not to send without any tarrying the religious servant of God Bede, priest of your venerable monastery, to the thresholds of the princes of the Apostles." But this letter suffers its own difficulties, which, since they have already been discussed by us in the Commentary on the praised St. Sergius, § VII, I refer the reader thither. Two things only I observe here: first, that the word "priest," which creates the greatest difficulty — because Bede is commonly believed not yet to have been initiated in that Order in the time of Sergius's Pontificate — is altogether absent from the most ancient codex of the Cottonian library, written out in Anglo-Saxon characters, on Ussher's testimony in David Wilkins, volume 1 of the Councils of Great Britain, page 63, in the Annotations.

[48] [that Bede be sent to him at Rome. Witmer hands himself over to his discipline and dies holily.] This being laid down, nothing stands in the way of St. Sergius's having toward the end of his Pontificate understood from Ceolfrid's monk-legates the eminent knowledge and erudition of St. Bede, and having given those letters for the sending of him to himself, to be carried to Ceolfrid by the same monks. The other thing which I wished observed is that St. Bede was never sent to Rome. Consult the Commentary on that same St. Sergius, at the place just cited; where also the cause of this, the said Pontiff's death, has been probably assigned. That under the same holy Abbot the monastery of Wearmouth was increased by a learned and pious man, and by estates, is read in the praised Bede. "In his times," he says, "handing himself over to the monastery of the blessed Peter the apostle which he governed, a veteran and religious servant of Christ, learned in all knowledge both secular and of the Scriptures, Witmer, gave to that same monastery by right of perpetual possession land of ten families, which he had received in possession from King Aldfrid, in the place of the estate which is called Daldum." Who this Witmer was I have not learned from elsewhere; but that he was a man of great holiness the venerable writer sufficiently indicated both here and afterward, when, mentioning among the first cares of Hwetbert, who had succeeded St. Ceolfrid when he set out for Rome, the translation of the bones of SS. Easterwine and Sigfrid, he subjoined: "But he (Hwetbert) did these things on Sigfrid's birthday, that is, on the eleventh of the Kalends of September, on which day also it happened by the wondrous providence of God that the venerable servant of Christ Withmer, whom we mentioned above, departed, and that in the place where the aforesaid abbots (SS. Easterwine and Sigfrid) had first been buried, he himself, who had been their imitator, was laid." Let us return to Ceolfrid.

[49] He treats with St. Adamnan about the Easter and the tonsure of the Scots, He, following the Roman Church with no less zeal and observance than his holy founder and predecessor Benedict Biscop, endeavored to bring to her unity and rites the Scots and Picts, who differed from her in the time of celebrating Easter and in the tonsure of the head. Among them was St. Adamnan or Adomnan, abbot of the monastery of Iona, and accordingly primate and head of the whole Congregation of St. Columba; who, when, discharging an embassy to Aldfrid, king of the Northumbrians, he had visited him, not only himself laid aside the Scottish error about the time of Easter, but, being made a herald of that same Roman observance, though his monks vainly resisted, called back from that same error a very great part of the Scots in Ireland and some of the Britons in Britain. But as regards St. Adamnan, I shall add no more here, because we have said enough about him on the XXIII day of this month of September in his historical Commentary, §2, where also we set forth at greater length his conversation with St. Ceolfrid about the Scottish tonsure and what followed upon it: which accordingly consult, if you please.

[50] and, being asked by Naiton, king of the Picts, The Scottish error about the time of Easter was then followed also by the Picts, whose king Naitan or Naiton, being taught better things from the reading of the sacred books, determined that he too would bring the Roman cycles into his kingdom. But that he might the more effectually persuade his nation of it, he had recourse to St. Ceolfrid, and asked that he would write him a letter upon this matter with which he might confute the arguments of those who resisted. Besides, he asked that he would discourse also of the manner of the tonsure, and that he would send him architects who should build a church of stone after the manner of the Romans in his kingdom. All this we have from the venerable Bede, whose words from book 5 of the Ecclesiastical History, chapter 22, I subjoin. "At that time Naitan, king of the Picts, who inhabit the northern parts of Britain, being admonished by frequent meditation of the ecclesiastical scriptures, renounced the error by which he had hitherto been held with his nation in the observance of Easter, and brought himself and all his people to celebrate the Catholic time of the Lord's Resurrection. And that he might do this, and accomplish it with greater authority, he sought help from the nation of the Angles, whom he knew to have long since established their religion after the example of the holy Roman and Apostolic Church.

[51] "Accordingly he sent legates to the venerable man Ceolfrid, a learned letter on the same subject abbot of the monastery of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul, which is at the mouth of the river Wear and beside the river Tyne in the place which is called Ingyrvum, over which he himself after Benedict (of whom we have spoken above) most gloriously presided; asking that he would send him letters of exhortation with which he might the more powerfully confute those who presumed to observe Easter not at its own time: and at the same time about the manner or rationale of the tonsure with which it were fitting to be marked; save that he himself was in these matters imbued in no small part. And he asked that architects be sent him who should make a church of stone among his nation after the manner of the Romans; promising that this should be dedicated in honor of the blessed Prince of the Apostles, and that he himself too with all his people would always imitate the manner of the holy Roman and Apostolic Church, so far at least as, being so far separated from the speech and nation of the Romans, they could learn it." The holy Abbot complied with the pious zeal and requests of King Naitan, rejoicing indeed that an occasion had been offered him of deserving well of the Church of God.

[52] He sent him therefore architects, and wrote a long and learned letter, and sent architects to him: by this letter, in whose first part he discoursed much about Easter, and taught that it must never be celebrated on the fourteenth moon, or the fourteenth day of the first month of the Mosaic year, even if the Lord's day fall on it, but on the Lord's day which next follows the fourteenth moon, by Apostolic tradition. In the other part of the same letter he disapproves the Scottish tonsure on this head, that Simon Magus was believed to have worn it, and warns that the Roman is altogether to be preferred to it, which he affirms to be that of St. Peter, prince of the Apostles, and much commends for other mystical reasons. Yet he does not so attack the Scottish one but that he confesses that "the difference of tonsure does not hurt those whose faith in God is pure and whose charity toward their neighbor is sincere." And again, "Nor indeed," he says, "must you think that I have pursued these things as if I judged that they are to be condemned because they have this tonsure, if in faith and works they favor Catholic unity: nay rather I confidently profess that very many of them have been holy and worthy of God, of whom is Adamnan, the excellent abbot and priest of the Columbans." Then he subjoins the conversation which he had with this holy abbot upon that matter, and which we have recited from him at the day XXIII of this month in his historical Commentary, §2, where also you will find more about the same controversy of the tonsure, which for that reason need not be repeated here.

[53] The former part of the letter also I do not reprint, because it is rather long, which Du Pin ill understood, and whose beginning and can be read entire in the venerable Bede at the place cited above. But whoever reads this will acknowledge with me that the holy Abbot speaks far otherwise of the necessity of celebrating Easter after the Roman manner than of changing the Scottish tonsure, and therefore that Elias Du Pin strayed much from the Writer's mind when in volume 6 of the New Ecclesiastical Library, page 44, under Ceolfrid, he says: "In this letter he treats of the difference of the tonsure of clerics and of the celebration of Easter, and confesses that these differences are of little moment, and that peace ought not to be disturbed on their account." So he, wrongly and against the author's mind extending the Saint's milder words about the Scottish tonsure also to the Paschal controversy, which certainly was of far greater moment. Yet I have judged that I should not do amiss if I reported here its opening and its end. Bede therefore in the same place goes on thus: "Favoring whose (King Naitan's) religious wishes and prayers, the most reverend abbot Ceolfrid sent the architects whom he asked, and letters written in this manner: 'To the most excellent and most glorious lord king Naitan, Ceolfrid the abbot, greeting in the Lord. The Catholic observance of the holy Easter, which thou hast sought of us, O king devoted to God, with religious zeal, we busy ourselves most promptly and most gladly to lay open to thy desire, according to what we have learned from the Apostolic See. For we know it granted from heaven to the holy Church, as often as the very lords of affairs bestow their labor upon learning, teaching, and guarding the truth.

[54] "'For truly one of the secular writers said altogether rightly, that the world would be in a most happy state if either kings were philosophers or philosophers reigned. And if a mortal man of this world could rightly understand that of the philosophy of this world, that is, of the state of this world, and could deservedly say it; how much more is it to be wished by the citizens of the heavenly fatherland, sojourning in this world, and to be prayed for with all the strength of the mind, that, the more each has power in the world, so much the more he strive to hearken to the commands of Him who is Judge over all, and by examples together with authority may train those also who are committed to him to observe these things. There are therefore three rules set down in the sacred Writings, by which the time appointed us for celebrating Easter may in no wise be changed by any human authority,'" etc. Finally he concluded his letter with these words: "'But now I admonish thy prudence also, O king, that thou strive in all things to keep, together with the nation over which the King of kings and Lord of lords has set thee, those things which accord with the unity of the Catholic and Apostolic Church. For thus it comes to pass that, after receiving the power of a temporal kingdom, the most blessed Prince of the Apostles himself may gladly open to thee and thine, with the rest of the elect, an entrance also into the heavenly kingdom. May the grace of the eternal King keep thee unharmed, reigning for a longer time, unto the peace of us all, most beloved son in Christ.'"

[55] [read in the assembly of the nobles of the Picts, King Naitan orders the Roman Easter and tonsure to be observed.] Thus far St. Ceolfrid in the letter, which with how great applause it was received by the king, and what a happy effect it obtained, is manifest from what Bede presently subjoins. "This letter," he says, "when it had been read in the presence of King Naiton and of many learned men, and had been diligently interpreted into his own language by those who could understand it, he is reported to have rejoiced much at its exhortation, so that, rising from the midst of the assembly of his nobles, he bent his knees to the ground, giving thanks to God that he deserved to receive such a little gift from the land of the Angles. 'And indeed I knew before,' he said, 'that this was the true celebration of Easter; but I now so recognize the reason of this time to be observed that I seem to myself to have understood altogether too little of these things before. Whence I openly profess, and testify before you who sit here present, that I will observe this time of Easter perpetually with my whole nation, and I decree that all clerics who are in my kingdom ought to receive this tonsure, which we have heard is full of reason.' Nor was there delay; what he had said he accomplished by royal authority. For straightway by public command the nineteen-year Cycles of Easter were sent throughout all the provinces of the Picts to be transcribed, learned, observed, the erroneous Cycles of eighty-four years being everywhere blotted out. All the ministers of the altar and the monks were shorn into the crown, and the corrected nation rejoiced as though newly made subject to the discipleship of the most blessed Peter, prince of the Apostles, and to be guarded by his patronage."

[56] About the time at which these things were done there is no agreement among more recent writers. This letter of Ceolfrid Cardinal Baronius, in volume 8 of the Annals at the year of Christ 699, no. 7, bound them to this year and the following, Michael Alford agreeing in volume 2 of the Annals of England. Pagi in the Critique at the year just cited, no. 3, only observes that Ceolfrid's praised letter was written in an uncertain year. Ussher, in the chronological Index to the Beginnings of the British churches, assigns the time which passed between the years 710 and 716. Mabillon, in the third Benedictine Century, part 1, in the annotations to St. Ceolfrid, referred the same letter to about the year 710, but in the Annals to 715. Henry Spelman, in the Councils of Great Britain, volume 1, preferred to assign the year 714, though doubtfully, which Labbe with Cossart, volume 6 of the general Collection of councils, and David Wilkins in the enlarged edition of the councils of the same Great Britain, volume 1, also retained. But Henry Noris, afterward a Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church, contends in Dissertation 3 on the Paschal Cycles that that letter was written about the year 709. Of the opinions brought forward, Baronius's is improbable; Ussher's too vague, and therefore the rest of the others must be examined.

[57] The praised Noris asserts that his opinion is proved from Bede's own Ecclesiastical History. and the accession of the Picts to the Roman rites, For he observes that Bede in chapter 21 of the same book 5 treats of the death of St. Adrian the abbot, which from the fifth year of King Osred and from the other chronological notes ascribed he sets down at the year 709. "Then Bede," he says, "having narrated the death of the abbot Adrian, begins the next chapter, XXII, thus: 'At the same time Naitan, king of the Picts,'" etc. Noris therefore maintains that St. Ceolfrid's letter and Naitan's accession with his Picts to the Catholic observance of Easter must be set about the year 709, because Bede placed these at the same time at which he had said in the preceding chapter that St. Adrian died. But by this argument nothing is proved. For, to pass over that in the editions of the praised Ecclesiastical History of Cambridge of the year 1644 and of Paris of the year 1681 by Chifflet one reads not "at the same time" but "at that time," Bede in chapter 21 treats not of St. Adrian's death alone, but also narrates many things about Acca, bishop of Hexham, who had succeeded St. Wilfrid, deceased in the year 709, and whose deeds down to the time at which he was writing he there ran through. Nothing therefore compels us to bind those things which he relates in the following chapter about St. Ceolfrid

and about Naitan and the Picts, to say that they were done about the year 709, since the words "at that time" allow some latitude, and by what has been said need not necessarily be referred to the first or second year of that episcopate.

[58] Nay indeed, there is a reason why we should take them a little more widely. which the men of Iona too embraced in the year 716, For Bede begins chapter 23, which next follows, thus: "Nor long after, those also who inhabited the island of Iona, monks of the Scottish nation, with the monasteries that were subject to them, were brought, by the Lord's providing, to the canonical rite of Easter and of the tonsure"; namely, as he presently subjoins, "in the year from the Lord's Incarnation seven hundred and sixteen." Now it is not much less likely that by the words "nor long after" about six years are here designated, than that the words "at that time" alleged above must be referred to the year of the abbot St. Adrian's death. For first indeed Bede above in chapter 21 narrates many things about Acca, later by many years than Adrian's death, and then begins the following chapter 22 with these words: "At that time Naitan, king of the Picts," etc. Then in that whole chapter he records nothing except the letter and the architects asked of St. Ceolfrid by King Naitan, and these together with the letter sent him by that same Saint, and the accession of the Picts, presently following upon the royal command, to the canonical Easter and the Roman tonsure. And having narrated these things, he subjoins the accession of the men of Iona also to the same rites, beginning chapter 22: "Nor long after, those also who inhabited the island of Iona," etc.

[59] are more probably referred to the year 714 or 715. Secondly, because the monastery of Iona "held the citadel in … all the monasteries of the Picts … and presided over the governing of their peoples," as we have from Bede's History, book 3, chapter 3, it would have been difficult for the monks of Iona, with the monasteries subject to them, to persist in their error for six years after King Naitan's decree and the unanimous consent of the Picts, without the most immediate danger of losing their primacy over the monasteries of those same people, and the sacred governance of the nation. For this reason, even though those words "nor long after" allow a latitude of two or three years, yet I prefer to restrict them here, and to set the Picts' withdrawal from their error, with the editors of the councils, at the year 714, or even at the year 715 with Mabillon in the Annals. For the rest, what has been said thus far militates still more against the opinion of the Most Eminent Baronius and of Alford, which for that reason I judge improbable.

*. perhaps "beatæ" is wanting

§ V. The Saint's last Roman pilgrimage: his death and burial near Langres: the chronology of his whole life: some little Works ascribed to him.

[ ] The Saint, an old man, about to make pilgrimage to Rome There remains the last period of St. Ceolfrid, namely the Roman pilgrimage, in which near the city of Langres he crowned a life most holily spent with a like end. Receive the whole matter, as it was done, from the venerable Bede in the often-mentioned History of the abbots. "But when Ceolfrid — after much discipline of Regular observance, which his father Benedict, provident, contributed to him and equally to himself out of the authority of those before them; after an incomparable diligence of praying and singing psalms, in which he himself did not cease to be exercised; after a wonderful fervor both of restraining the wicked and moderation in consoling the weak; after a sparingness of food and drink unusual in rulers, and cheapness of dress — saw that he, now an elder and full of days, could no longer, through the hindrance of extreme age, set before his subjects, either by teaching or by living, the due pattern of spiritual exercise; and long turning many things over with himself, he decreed it more useful, giving a precept to the Brethren, that according to the statutes of their privilege, and according to the Rule of the holy abbot Benedict, they should themselves choose from among their own a father who was fitter, and that he himself (read: he himself, and add: should go to the thresholds) of the blessed Apostles, where as a young man he had been with Benedict; so that both he himself might before death, being for a while released from the cares of the world, more freely give himself in quiet to his own secret; and they, having taken a younger abbot, might more perfectly, according to the age of their master, keep the institutions of the Regular life.

[61] "Although all at first resisted and, with tears and sobbing, bent their knees with frequent entreaty, orders another abbot to be substituted for himself, what he willed was done; and so great was his desire of setting out that on the third day from that on which he opened to the Brethren the secret of his purpose he took to the road. For he feared, what came to pass, that he should die before he could reach Rome; at the same time avoiding that his undertaking should be delayed by friends or by leading men, to all of whom he was honorable, and that money should be given him by certain persons to whom he could not make return in the time available; having always this custom, that if anyone offered him any gift, he repaid it to him either at once or after a suitable interval with no less kindness. Therefore, Mass being sung early in the morning in the church of the blessed Mother of God and ever Virgin Mary and in the church of the apostle Peter, on the day before the Nones of June (of the year 716, as will be said below), on the fifth weekday, and those who were present communicating, he at once prepares to go.

[62] "All assemble in the church of the blessed Peter; he himself, incense being burned and prayer said at the altar, gives peace to all, standing on the steps, holding the censer in his hand: hence, with the weeping of all resounding amid the Litanies, they go out, and enter the oratory of the blessed Laurence the martyr, which lay in their way in the Brethren's dormitory; bidding farewell for the last time, he admonishes them about preserving mutual love and about correcting offenders according to the Gospel; to all, if perchance they had anywhere offended, he offers the grace of his remission and appeasement; he beseeches all to pray for him, and to be appeased toward him, if there be any whom he had rebuked more harshly than was just. They come to the shore; again, the kiss of peace being given to all amid tears, they bend their knees; he gives a prayer, he goes up into the ship with his companions. The deacons of the church also light burning tapers, and, carrying a golden Cross, he crosses the river (the Wear, on whose left bank we said the monastery of St. Peter was founded), venerates the Cross, mounts his horse, and departed, leaving in his monasteries Brethren nearly six hundred in number.

[63] "But as he was departing with his companions (whom he hands down below to have been more than eighty), Hwetbert is substituted in his place, the Brethren return to the church, commend themselves and their affairs to the Lord with tears and prayer, and after no great interval, the psalmody of the third Hour being completed, they all assemble again; they take counsel what is to be done; they decree that by praying, singing psalms and fasting they should the more quickly seek a father from God; to the monks of the blessed Paul, namely their brethren, through certain of them who were present, and also through some of their own, they disclose what they have decreed. They too assent; the mind of both becomes one, the hearts of all are lifted up, the voices of all are raised to the Lord. At last on the third day, the Lord's day of Pentecost coming, all assemble; there were not a few of the elders who were in the monastery of the blessed Paul. There is one concord, the same judgment of both. And so there is chosen as abbot Hwetbert, who from his earliest boyhood in that same monastery had not only been trained in Regular observance of discipline, but had also been exercised with no small industry in writing, chanting, reading and teaching. Going to Rome also in the times of Pope Sergius of blessed memory, and tarrying there no small space of time, he said, copied out, and brought back what he judged necessary for himself. Moreover, twelve years before this he had discharged the office of the priesthood.

[64] "This man therefore, chosen abbot by all the Brethren of both the aforesaid monasteries, whom he confirms, and letters commendatory straightway, taking some of the Brethren with him, came to the abbot Ceolfrid, who was awaiting the course of the ship that should cross the ocean, and announces whom they had chosen abbot. 'Thanks be to God,' he answered; he confirms the election, and received from him a commendatory letter to be carried to the Apostolic Pope Gregory, of which, for memory's sake, we have thought that some lines should be set down in this Work. 'To the lord most beloved in the Lord of lords, and thrice most blessed Pope Gregory, Hwetbert your humble servant, abbot of the monastery of the most blessed Peter, prince of the Apostles, in Saxony, perpetual health in the Lord. I cease not to give thanks to the dispensation of the heavenly judgment, together with the holy Brethren who with me in these places desire to bear the sweetest yoke of Christ for finding rest to their souls, that in our times He has deigned to set so glorious a vessel of election over the governance of the whole Church; so that through this, with which you yourself are filled, the light of truth and faith might sprinkle even the least abundantly with the radiance of its goodness.

[65] "'But we commend to your holy benignity, most beloved Father and lord in Christ, he receives from him to the Roman Pontiff. the venerable gray hairs of our most beloved Father, namely Ceolfrid, abbot and nourisher and guardian of our spiritual liberty and peace in monastic quiet. And first indeed we give thanks to the holy and undivided Trinity, that he, although not without our very great grief, groaning, mourning and following with tears, has departed from us, yet has come to the holy joys of the quiet he desired, while, always remembering with exultation those things which as a young man he had gone to, seen and venerated, though wearied with old age he devoutly sought again the thresholds of the blessed Apostles; and after long labors of more than forty years, and continual cares with which he presided over the governing of monasteries, with an incomparable love of virtue, as though newly summoned to the manner of life of the heavenly life, worn out with the last age and now near to dying, he begins again to be a pilgrim for Christ, so that the fire of compunction, glowing in the spiritual furnace, might the more freely consume the old thickets of secular anxieties. Then also we entreat your Paternity that what we have not deserved to do, you may zealously fulfil toward him as the office of a last piety, knowing for certain that, although you have his body, yet both you and we have his spirit, devoted to God, whether abiding in the body or loosed from the bonds of the flesh, as a great intercessor and patron for our offenses before the heavenly goodness.' And the rest which the sequel of the letter contains."

[66] This departure greatly smote St. Bede: Thus far the abbot Hwetbert, St. Ceolfrid's disciple and successor, in the letter to St. Gregory II, who then held the Apostolic Chair. Would that St. Bede had reviewed this letter entire, in which perhaps more would have been read for the commendation of his holy abbot Ceolfrid. But certainly what we have recited from it indicates plainly enough that he, while he still lived, was held by his monks for a Saint and a patron powerful with God. Further, among the rest that departure of the holy Abbot vehemently smote his most loving disciple Bede, who, reported by Mabillon in the third Benedictine Century, part 1, page 293, wrote this about his Roman setting-out and the substitution of Hwetbert, in the Preface to book 4 on Samuel: "The third volume on Samuel being completed, I thought that at length, the pleasure of meditating or writing being repaired by quiet, I should for some while set my hand to the beginning of the fourth. But this same quiet must be called for me an unlooked-for anxiety of mind, far more prolonged than I had determined, by the new change of surrounding circumstances

that has arisen, most of all by the departure of my most reverend Abbot, who, after long observance of monastic care, suddenly determining to go to Rome and among the places sacred with the bodies of the blessed Apostles and martyrs of Christ to render, an old man, his last breath, stupefied with no small confusion the minds of those committed to him, and with the greater as it was unforeseen.

[67] "But He who, when Moses full of years was to be taken from human affairs, substituted Joshua son of Nun in the leadership, and Eleazar in the priesthood for his father Aaron, Himself, when Ceolfrid advanced in age was hastening to the holy thresholds of the blessed Apostles, other things pertaining to this time. substituted the young Hwetbert — on whom love and zeal of piety had long since bestowed the surname of Eusebius — in the abbot's stead, to govern the souls of the faithful by priesthood and spiritual leadership." Now let us return to the History of the abbots. The venerable writer, after the words recited in no. 61, subjoins that Hwetbert, having returned from St. Ceolfrid to his monastery, was blessed as abbot by Acca, bishop (of Hexham), and translated the bones of SS. Easterwine and Sigfrid, abbots his predecessors, to a more honorable place. He adds finally the death of Witmer, about which consult no. 48. Whoever wants more about Hwetbert, let him consult the Mabillon just praised, page 294, where among other things which he has about him he gathers, from a certain translation of his relics made to Glastonbury, that he was once held in the number of the Saints, although his name is not found in the Martyrologies. Of St. Ceolfrid Bede goes on thus.

[68] "But Christ's servant Ceolfrid (as was said above), making for the thresholds of the blessed Apostles, Ceolfrid near the city of Langres before he had come thither, being touched with infirmity, closed his last day. For arriving at Langres about the third hour of the day, at the tenth hour of that same day he passed to the Lord, and on the morrow was honorably buried in the church of the blessed Twin martyrs, not only those English by race, who had been more than eighty in number in his company, but also the dwellers of that place being dissolved into tears and mourning for the delayed desire of so reverend an Old Man. For not easily could anyone hold back tears, seeing his companions, some, their Father being lost, pursuing the journey they had begun; some, changing the purpose with which they had desired to go to Rome, returning rather home, to announce that he was buried here; some, out of an inextinguishable affection for their Father, remaining at the tomb of the Deceased among men whose very language they did not know.

[69] "Now he was, when he died, seventy-four years old, an old man of 74 years, always tenacious of his former observance, dies having discharged the degree of the priesthood forty-seven years, and administering the office of abbot thirty-five years, or rather forty-three years; because namely from the first time when Benedict began to found his monastery in honor of the most blessed Prince of the Apostles, he himself was at hand to him as an inseparable companion, fellow-worker, and teacher of Regular and monastic institution. And lest any occasion, either of age or of infirmity or of the journey, should ever lessen for him the manner of his former rigor, from the day on which he set out and went away from his monastery to the day on which he died — that is, from the day before the Nones of June to the seventh day of the Kalends of October, through CXIV days — apart from the canonical Hours of prayer, he took care to chant the Psalter through twice daily in order, even when he came to this through infirmity, that, being unable to ride, he was carried in a horse-litter (that is, a litter set upon horses); and daily, Mass being sung, he offered to God the gift of the saving Host, except on one day when he was sailing the ocean, and on three days before his departure.

[70] "But he died on the seventh day of the Kalends of October, in the year from the Lord's Incarnation seven hundred and sixteen, on the sixth weekday, after the ninth hour, in the meadows of the aforesaid city, in the year of Christ 716, and is buried in the monastery of the holy Twins. and was buried on the morrow at the first milestone to the south of that same city in the monastery of the Twins, a not small company both of the English who had come with him and of the dwellers of that same monastery or city standing by and resounding with psalms. Now the Twin martyrs, in whose monastery and church he was laid, are Speusippus, Eleusippus, Meleusippus, who, brought forth at one birth of their mother, born again in the same faith of the Church, together with their grandmother Leonilla left to that place a worthy memorial of their martyrdom; who may also bestow upon us unworthy men and upon our parent the pious help of their intercession and protection." Thus far the venerable Bede, concluding the History of the abbots with these words, on which a few things come here to be annotated.

[71] A fault of the Paris edition corrected: the chronology The Paris edition of the same History has it thus about the years during which St. Ceolfrid presided: "administering the office of abbot thirty-five years, or rather three years"; for which Mabillon from Maihew set down: "or rather forty-three years." And rightly indeed, as is manifestly plain from the reason which is subjoined there in the History: "because namely from the first time when Benedict began to found his monastery in honor of the most blessed Prince of the Apostles, he himself was at hand as an inseparable companion, fellow-worker, and teacher of Regular and monastic institution." Now this monastery (on the testimony of the same Bede) was founded "in the year from the Lord's Incarnation six hundred and seventy-four"; from which to the XXV of September of the year 716, in which St. Ceolfrid died, the forty-third year could already have flowed by. From what has been said thus far I here set before the eyes a brief chronology of the chief matters concerning the holy Abbot which I have narrated in scattered places. The Saint was born in Britain in the year of Christ 642 or the following, of parents likely noble. He was initiated in the priesthood in the year 669 or the following, in the 26th or 27th of his age, and that more probably in the monastery of St. Peter at Canterbury, where he seems to have been a monk.

[72] of his life and of the things done by him. In the year 674, together with St. Benedict Biscop, he began to found the monastery of St. Peter near the mouth of the river Vedra, and, this being completed, he set out with him for Rome. Returning thence into Northumbria, he began with him about the year 681 to build the monastery of Jarrow near the river Tyne, and was set over it in the year 682. In the month of June of the year 689 he is set as abbot over both monasteries by SS. Benedict Biscop and Sigfrid, abbots of the monastery of Wearmouth, then dangerously ill, with the consent of all the monks; both of which he governed alone by his own authority, when first St. Sigfrid died on the XXII day of August of the same year, and then on the XII of January of the year next following St. Benedict too. In the year, more probably, 714 or 715, being asked by Naitan or Naiton, king of the Picts, he wrote a letter about the canonical time of Easter and the tonsure of clerics, and induced the said king with his nation to the Roman observance of Easter, and the clerics and monks of that kingdom to take up likewise the Roman tonsure. In the year 716, on the IV day of June, he departs from his monastery to make pilgrimage to Rome; awaiting a ship on the shore of the ocean, he confirms the election of Hwetbert, substituted for him by the Brethren of both monasteries on the VII day of June, on the Lord's day of Pentecost itself.

[73] At last, on the hundred and fourteenth day from his departure — which was the XXV of September of that same year 716 — about the third hour, carried in a litter by horses, he came sick to the city of Langres in Gallic Champagne, and in the meadows or field of that same city on the same day, at the tenth hour, or after the ninth was completed, he passed to heaven, numbering of his age, completed or begun, 74 years, of his priesthood 47, from the beginning of the monastery of Wearmouth 43 years, from his entering upon the prelacy of Jarrow 35, and finally from the death of St. Benedict Biscop the 27th year begun. At last on the morrow, or the XXVI day of September, his body was honorably entombed at the first milestone from that city, in the church of the monastery of the holy Twins or Triplets, the martyrs Speusippus, Eleusippus and Meleusippus, about which we annotated something above in no. 7. About the translation of that same St. Ceolfrid's body, made first hence to his own monastery and then to Glastonbury, consult likewise what was said above in no. 9 and the following. From what has been said, observe also that some martyrologists and some other writers, whom there is no need to review, manifestly erred when they handed down that our holy Abbot died at Langres not while making pilgrimage to the thresholds of the holy Apostles, but while returning thence. I omit also to name others who, not having seen Bede's History of the abbots, strayed from the truth in his chronology.

[74] It remains that we say a few words here about the lucubrations which are ascribed to our St. Ceolfrid by some. Some little Works John Pits, in the Historical Relations, or in the book on Illustrious Writers, where he calls him Geolfrid, says this of his little Works: "The titles of his books I have thus far found to be the following: On the Observance of Easter, on baptizing according to the Roman rite, on the Ecclesiastical and monastic tonsure, a long Letter to Naitan king of the Picts … One book of solemn Homilies. One book on his pilgrimage. A Testament to Humbert (better, I think, to Wicbert), one book. One book of Letters to his monks, and several others." Of all these little Works one only is certainly his, namely the Letter to King Naitan about the Canonical time of Easter and the Roman tonsure, of which we have treated above. But in this no mention is made of baptizing according to the Roman rite.

[75] ascribed to him. Thomas Dempster, in the Ecclesiastical History of the nation of the Scots, book 3, no. 235, under St. Ceolfrid, attributes the same little Works to him; he omits however "on his Pilgrimage," and adds, as distinct from the others, "one book on baptizing according to the Roman rite." John Trithemius, on the Illustrious Men of the Order of St. Benedict, book 2, chapter 20, says only this of his little Works: "He is reported to have written several letters, full of erudition, to various persons, of which I have read only that which he gave, sufficiently fitting, to the king of the Picts, who consulted him about the lawful reckoning of Easter." Further, although it would be by no means wonderful if St. Ceolfrid, given his erudition, had written some other little Works, yet I cannot straightway admit those praised by Pits and Dempster for his offspring, since the first of them confesses that he knows them only from their titles, and does not say whence he learned these titles themselves; and the other seems to have drawn them from none but him.