Honorius

ON ST. HONORIUS, ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY,

IN ENGLAND

IN THE YEAR DCLIII.

HISTORICAL COMMENTARY.

Honorius, archbishop of Canterbury, in England. (S.)

BY C. S.

§ I. His memory in various Martyrologies: his ancient cult proved from the translation of his body: his deeds to be related chiefly from Bede.

This fifth archbishop after St. Augustine, the apostle of the English in the island of Britain, He is announced in some manuscript Additions to Usuard of the church of Dorovernia, or, as we now say, of Canterbury, and primate of Britain, I have read inscribed in no ancient classic Martyrologies, not even in Bede's, although the latter mentions him with great praise in various places of the Ecclesiastical History of the English nation. Among the additions to Usuard published by our Sollier, the first to mark him is the manuscript called by him the Rosweyde codex, which in the Preface there, chapter 3, article 4, §3, he recognized, following Godfrey Henschen, to be of the twelfth century, and copied from some English Martyrology, and formerly to have belonged to the church of the Blessed Mary at Utrecht in Belgium. Now this codex announces him at this XXX day of September thus: On the same day, the deposition of St. Honorius the archbishop. Who, fifth after blessed Augustine, preached the word of God to the English nation. Sollier had put before it in the same place another English codex, entitled with the name of Bede by a more recent hand, which he called the greater Antwerp codex from our professed house, to which it belonged, and judged to be not older than the thirteenth century, against Henschen's opinion.

[2] In this, at the same day, is read: On the same day, in the city of Dorobernia, of St. Honorius, archbishop and confessor. There is added our manuscript Florarium Sanctorum, drawn up in the year 1486, in which also the year of the Saint's death is rightly added in these words: In England, of St. Honorius, archbishop of Canterbury, in the year of Salvation DCLIII. Greven and Molanus agree, saying in their additions to Usuard on the same day: In England, of St. Honorius, archbishop of Canterbury, the fifth after blessed Augustine. Him likewise Richard Whitford mentions in the English Martyrology for the use of the church of Salisbury, published at London in the year 1526, whose English announcement I here subjoin in Latin. The feast of St. Honorius, archbishop of Canterbury, who was a disciple of St. Gregory, a man of great learning, of singular sanctity and of great miracles. Following him or others, John Wilson in his English Martyrology of the edition of the year 1640 entered him at the aforesaid day with the following elogium, but in the vernacular tongue.

[3] At Canterbury, the deposition of St. Honorius, confessor and archbishop of the same see, in the Roman ones too and in the Benedictine, who came with St. Augustine our apostle from Rome into England, and afterwards succeeded him, being made the fifth archbishop of Canterbury. Which see, after he had ruled it laudably for more than twenty years, in great holiness of life and venerable old age he happily rested in the Lord in the year of Christ DCLIII, and was buried with his predecessors in his cathedral church at Canterbury, where his body was preserved down to our times with due veneration, on account of the many miracles which are recorded as wrought there. In the Roman Martyrology too a place was given him by Pietro Galesini and Cardinal Baronius, in whom, as also in the Roman Martyrology of today, is read on this day: At Canterbury in England, of St. Honorius, bishop and confessor. To these I add the Benedictine martyrologists, who ascribed the same holy archbishop Honorius to their Order, Wion, Ménard and Bucelin, of whom the first in the Lignum vitæ, book 3, and the second in his Martyrology, have thus: In England, of St. Honorius, bishop of Canterbury and confessor, a man of admirable sanctity and learning.

[4] of whom Bucelin's celebrates him with a notable elogium The third, namely Gabriel Bucelin, in his Menology celebrates him in more words, which I subjoin. At Canterbury in England, of St. Honorius, bishop and confessor. Honorius, from a most holy monk of St. Andrew's in the City a most holy and most accomplished bishop, a truly apostolic man, fifth after our St. Augustine, the chief apostle of the English, administered the archbishopric of Dorovernia most usefully, and with vast fruit and merit propagated the faith of Christ far and wide. For toiling strenuously with assiduous labours, he most skilfully abolished all the worst customs of the kingdom, and having won the minds of mortals and commended to them a solid love of the virtues, he deserved well of that most ample kingdom on many a count, and, barbarism being routed, brought in and established the pursuits of civilization. He was most diligent in the choice of ministers, so as to appoint to each church the most choice pastors. For he not only set bishops over the Church (says the writer of his Life) as higher guardians of the towers; but also, being the first to divide his province into parishes (with rare and most distinguished merit), he ordained lower ministers; whom he himself often instructed and exhorted to instruct the people of God courteously and patiently, not only by doctrine, but also by the uprightness of their own life: for by these the unbelieving and those estranged from the faith are more quickly won than by severe rebukes and austerity of manners, etc.

[5] His cult But after Honorius had fulfilled all the duties of a most holy prelate, he passed to God on the day before the Kalends of October, in the year of Christ DCLIII. Thus Bucelin, some of whose statements are certain from St. Bede, others doubtful or said only from probable conjectures. With a notable elogium Maihew too celebrates St. Honorius in the Benedictine Trophies of England, volume 2. But Mabillon in the Benedictine Century 2 placed him only among the Prætermissi without an asterisk, which, as he premised in the same place, designates those who seem to be genuine Benedictines. However that may be, the ancient cult of St. Honorius of Canterbury is proved by the History of the translation of St. Augustine, the apostle of the English, and of some of his successors, which Goscelin, a contemporary writer and a monk of the same place where it was done, composed seven years after it had happened, and dedicated to St. Anselm, likewise archbishop of Canterbury. That History, received from Mabillon, our Papebroch

printed in volume 6 of May, in St. Augustine, from page 411; where, since it can be read, it will suffice here to have set forth the lengthy narration in a brief compendium, besides those things which pertain more particularly to St. Honorius.

[6] In the year 1091, when the fabric of the new cathedral church of Canterbury had been much advanced, it is proved from the solemnity made in the year 1091, and the old one, which threatened ruin, had to be pulled down, Guy, abbot of the monastery of St. Augustine there, the episcopal see being then vacant and with the consent of king William Rufus, overthrew a tower that stood in the way of the fabric. But indeed the chief men themselves (the words are Goscelin's), namely Augustine, Laurence, Mellitus, Justus, Honorius, Deusdedit (the successors of St. Augustine himself in the archbishopric of Canterbury) being left in the said falling ruin, by divine protection as it were putting under a hand, the stones and the images [*] spared those whom harder human obstinacy did not spare. For when such masses of stones, beams and leaded roofs, which had overwhelmed the most sacred bodies, were carried away, all those sepulchral shrines of theirs, though they were brittle and of brick; and also the sculptures and angelic images wonderfully wrought with the Majesty of the Lord above the tomb of the magnificent Augustine, appeared unharmed, while all cried out the miracles of God.

[7] He then goes on to report the demolition of the other wall, which spared the tombs of SS. Augustine and Deusdedit still more wonderfully, when his body and those of the other holy and says that the tombs of all these six holy prelates lay for nine weeks under the open sky, yet not without the vigils of the monks and heavenly prodigies, until at last on the VI day of September of the same year, in the presence of Gundulf, bishop of Rochester, a beginning was made of their translation. On the aforesaid VI day the body of St. Augustine, breathing a wondrous fragrance, was found and brought into the new church to the altar of the holy Apostles; about whose solemnity and the miracles wrought on this occasion consult, if you please, the said Goscelin. On the X day of September the bodies of SS. Laurence and Mellitus were found and translated in like manner. There was then also found the body of some unknown Saint, whom for that reason it pleased them to call Deo-notus (Known-to-God), and on the next day to transfer into the new church.

[8] Finally, to hasten to St. Honorius: These things being thus arranged on the fifth feria (says the same author of the Translation), they obtain the sixth feria (which was the XII day of September) for bringing in the remaining Saints, archbishops of Canterbury, Justus, Honorius and Deusdedit. But no doubt the divine dispensation intended the Sabbath, which day was already the octave of Augustine's translation; so that the grace of these Saints might be the more renewed, and, when all had been translated on their own days, the festival might be kept, and that this one day might join and solemnize them all alike, as one charity. On that sixth feria, therefore, they went to the aforenamed Saints, as if to bring them in most easily and most quickly. They approach the most sacred Deusdedit, who (as has been noted before) occupied the Southern wall after Augustine. We shall tell a thing incredible, but true. That whole day, and the whole following night, they spent in breaking open or unfastening his mausoleum, their strength worn out: at last on the Sabbath morning with panting sweat they broke through his little crypt.

[9] fragrant with a heavenly odour, were found Then they sweated more intently at the crypt of Bl. Justus until the first hour, and scarcely at last unfastened it. Last of all, that of St. Honorius, who lay in the midst of these, the crypt being pierced in the side, gave the Saint an exit. Here then ask the life of the all-bounteous Deusdedit: the wondrous grace of sweet perfumes bursting from his tomb will recount it. Inquire who Justus is: the house of heavenly spices will set it forth for you. The fragrance of his storehouse speaks also the most abundant virtues and merits of Honorius. Of all these patriarchs, therefore, the one prerogative of divine spikenards proclaims the single bowels of fatherly affection and the single hearts. These three candlesticks, therefore, shining before the supreme Trinity, were translated on this octave day of Augustine; which the heavenly benevolence (as we believe) deferred and delayed for this end, that (as we said before) this same octave day might be the more preserved and solemnized in so many Hierarchs, and that, a whole week of feasts being completed, the octave might be rendered the first …

[10] and translated into the new church; These leaders of theirs were led, like the former, by a most solemn procession and tuneful praise; and when they had been laid down before the altar of Augustine their president, until they should be enthroned in their own seats, a festal Mass is celebrated. The order in which those venerable pledges of the Saints were then laid up in the new church he relates in the same place, page 419, number 24, premising this: But now these our Senators and Fathers of the council rest arranged as at the first; as there was in them one spirit, one faith, one charity, one religion and grace. See the rest in the same place, as also the table which Papebroch exhibits engraved on copper and published, at page 431: but the order in which those same bodies lay in the old church you have in the same Translation, page 416, number 17. From the same Goscelin we learn that the translation of all these was wont to be celebrated together with an annual feast. He began the first chapter of book 1 thus: After the ancient solemnities of Augustine, the Evangelical first parent of the English, triumphed in heaven, which we lately kept with festive praise, a new glory arises for us, a new gladness, a new solemnity. It is the new translation of him and of his holy Colleagues, which after almost a hundred lustra now shines forth, made in his new church.

[11] [which translation is read to be honoured yearly and inserted in the Martyrologies.] Again in chapter 3, number 24. This day, therefore, he says, irradiated with the splendours of so many Saints buried together and translated, and perfected today by their being received and arranged together, let us keep festive every year with all brightness and celebration, with undying repetition. We should not be able worthily to celebrate the solemnities of one, the least of these; how much less of all? But even a daily celebration of these Octaves would be beneath the dignity of such great Princes. Wilson's English Martyrology, cited above, mentions the same translation on the VI day of September, which was the first day of the octave, on which we have said the body of St. Augustine was translated. But the Altemps codex, which Sollier, mentioning it among the additions to Usuard, observed once to have belonged to the church of Winchester in England, announces it at the XIII of September, on which that solemn translation was completed, in these words: On the same day, the translation of blessed Augustine, apostle of the English, and of the holy archprelates and confessors Laurence, Mellitus, Justus, Honorius, Deusdedit, Theodore, and of St. Adrian the abbot, and of the virgin beloved of God Mildred. Of these the three last were not indeed translated in the same eight days, but were added to the rest either then or afterwards.

[12] But all these are honoured on various days; namely St. Augustine on the XXVI of May, Concerning these Saints, who are all honoured, a saying of Bede Laurence on the 2nd of February, Mellitus on the XXIV of April, Deusdedit on the XV of July, Theodore on the XIX of September, Adrian on the IX of January, Mildred on the XIII of July, on which days they have been treated of in our Work; but of Justus we shall have to treat on the X day of November, on which he is read to be inscribed in the Roman Martyrology. By way of a conclusion I here add the venerable Bede's short elogium of those seven first archbishops of Canterbury, book 5, chapter 8, where, treating of the death and ancient burial of the seventh, namely St. Theodore, he says this: And he was buried in the church of St. Peter, in which the bodies of all the bishops of Dorovernia are laid, of whom, together with the companions of his own rank, it can rightly and truly be said that their bodies are buried in peace, and their name shall live unto generations and generations.

[13] I add also the little verses of another anonymous writer, which Nicholas Harpsfield quotes in his Ecclesiastical History of England, century 7, and the verses of an anonymous writer. chapter 8, prefacing thus: There is extant even to the present day in my keeping a certain most ancient Work of an uncertain author, written on parchment, about the bodies of the Saints buried in the monastery of the divine Augustine, in which I find word for word, about the seven first columns of the English church, or archbishops of Canterbury from Augustine to Theodore, this worthy and memorable quatrain.

Seven primates are there for the English, and first fathers, Seven rulers, and seven wains through the heavens: Seven are the stars, by these shines this floor of the cell, Seven cisterns of life, and seven lamps.

Let these things suffice concerning the certainly ancient cult of St. Honorius; from what time, however, it began, I cannot declare: it seems, however, to be later than Bede, who died in the year 735, since I nowhere find the name of Honorius in his Martyrology, published before volume 2 of March of our Work, nor in his metrical one.

[14] Of the Saint's deeds the venerable Bede handed down to posterity few things indeed, but such as greatly commend him Bede treats of him in his History: we lack a Life, and sharpen the desire for a fuller knowledge of his deeds, in the Ecclesiastical History of the English nation. Maihew in the Benedictine Trophies of England at this day assigns as his biographer Gocelin, or Goscelin, as he calls him, the same by whom, as we said just now, the Translation of SS. Augustine and his companions was written. He has it thus: Afterwards (after St. Bede) Goscelin wrote his Life, as is established from those things which we brought forward on the VI day of this month about the translation of St. Augustine and his Companions. But there he cited William of Malmesbury, who in the Deeds of the kings of the English, book 4, chapter 1, says this about the same Goscelin: He, traversing bishoprics and abbeys for a long time, gave in many places monuments of distinguished learning, second after Bede in the praises of the Saints of England … Finally he set forth with his pen innumerable Lives of recent Saints, and those of the ancients, either lost through hostile action or published in unshapely form, he renewed more elegantly. But although from these words of Malmesbury one might rightly suspect that the Life of St. Honorius too was at some time written by Goscelin, yet this cannot thence be proved.

[15] More clearly speaks William Cave in his Literary History of ecclesiastical writers at the eleventh century, in Gotselin, expressly asserting [which is said to have been written by Goscelin: an elogium is extant in Capgrave.] that the Life of St. Honorius, archbishop of Canterbury, is extant in manuscript among others composed by him, in a very ancient and elegant Cottonian codex under Vespasian B. XX. If this is different from the short elogium which is read in the aforesaid Translation, book 1, chapter 4, under this title, Encomium of SS. Justus, Honorius, Deusdedit, it is lacking to us. We have also seen above, at number 4, that some biographer of the same Saint is cited without an express name by Bucelin. This seems to be none other than John Capgrave in the Legend of the Saints of England, in whose folio CLXXXI verso and the following he exhibits a short Life of St. Honorius, put together chiefly from Bede and the aforesaid History of the translation. A similar elogium Laurence Surius, excerpted from Bede, inserted into his collection on the Acts of the Saints at this day, and Adrien Baillet followed the same holy historian for the deeds of Honorius. I too shall use Bede's History chiefly in this Commentary, and shall afterwards subjoin that which Capgrave exhibits, because I have no other. But the other writers who have likewise mentioned him,

I shall cite where the matter shall require.

perhaps ligna* (timbers)

§ II. The Saint's Roman monastic life; his mission into Britain and apostolic life under St. Augustine: his succession to the archbishopric of Canterbury, into whose date inquiry is made.

The Saint was a monk The venerable Bede in book 5 of the Ecclesiastical History of the English nation, chapter 5, clearly teaches that Honorius was a disciple of St. Gregory the Great, Pope, writing thus: There (in Kent) Honorius, one of the disciples of blessed Pope Gregory, a man loftily instructed in ecclesiastical matters, held the rank of archbishop. The same thing is also indicated by Pope Honorius I in the letter given to the same holy Archbishop, in which, addressing him, he praises him as toiling and bearing fruit in the preaching of the Gospel, and following the rule of your master and head (as he says) St. Gregory. Hence Goscelin in the oft-cited Translation, book 1, chapter 4, number 26: Consult Bede, he says, that you may understand, even from the favour of this holy Pope, that this Bl. Honorius was a disciple of the Gregorian instruction, that is, a worthy nursling of the apostolic life and perfection. The same Goscelin in the Life of St. Augustine, published at the XXVI day of May in our Work, chapter 5, number 53, observes that both Honorius and his four predecessors in the see of Canterbury were Romans, either by birth or by training. Take his words.

[17] and a disciple of St. Gregory the Pope, It is to be noted with joy what noble pledges Rome, the universal mother, brought forth, which should be fathers and instructors to the British ocean itself … The most excellent of these, Augustine, made Laurence … his successor, … both of whom … Mellitus the third, and Justus the fourth successor followed. To these Honorius was joined as fifth, himself also a comely honour of Roman training. Deusdedit was sixth in order, but the first flower of the English nation to pass into the enrolment of the Roman fathers; than whose firstfruits from England the Roman beginnings of Dorovernia had nothing more welcome. From these things, then, we have two certainties: first, that St. Honorius was not an Englishman but a Roman, if not by birth, certainly by education and dwelling; second, that he was a monk by profession under the rule which St. Gregory followed, whether that of St. Equitius, as Cardinal Baronius thought, or that of St. Benedict, as others believe; on which matter one may consult the preliminary Commentary to the Life of the same holy Pontiff, §3, given in our Work at the XII day of March, and the other Commentary on the Acts of St. Augustine of Canterbury at the XXVI day of May, number 2.

[18] For the Benedictines there stands among the rest John Trithemius in the Illustrious Men of that Order, and sent by him into Britain among whom numbering Honorius in book 3, chapter 62, and book 4, chapter 54, he says in the latter place: Honorius, a monk of the monastery of Bl. Pope Gregory in the City of Rome, a learned and holy man and an excellent preacher, sent into England, after many labours, on the death of archbishop Justus, was ordained in his place as fifth archbishop of Dorovernia by Bl. Paulinus of York, etc. However that be, St. Honorius was one of the Roman monks of the monastery of St. Gregory I, Pope, whom he gave as helpers to St. Augustine for bringing the English nation in Britain from idols to Christ, with truly happy success. Now he sent into Britain two bands of apostolic men for this sacred expedition, which before he entered the Pontificate he had himself desired to undertake.

[19] Namely, he first destined thither in the year 596 the servant of God Augustine in the year 596 or in the year 601, and several other monks with him, fearing the Lord, to preach the word of God to the English nation; as Bede says in book 1, chapter 23, adding that St. Augustine was then appointed by him as their abbot, to be ordained bishop if he should be received by the English. After Augustine had already converted Ædilberct, king of the men of Kent, with many of his subjects, he asked the said Pontiff for other labourers in so rich a harvest, and he in the year 601 sent to him several fellow-workers and ministers of the word, as the same Bede testifies in book 1, chapter 29. There is no doubt that Honorius was of one or other company; but I cannot determine which, as Bede is silent. Yet whether he crossed to England with the former in the year 596, or with the latter in the year 601, he must then have been fairly young, or else of advanced age when he died in the year 653, as we shall say below.

[20] Of his deeds before the episcopate, which I have read related by no one, he lived under the discipline of St. Augustine, it is allowed to conjecture from what the said holy historian of the English wrote in chapter 26 about St. Augustine and his Companions when they had landed in Britain and been kindly received by king Ædilberct. But when (he says) they had entered the dwelling given them, they began to imitate the apostolic life of the primitive Church; namely by serving with assiduous prayers, vigils and fastings, by preaching the word of life to whom they could, by despising all things of this world as belonging to others, by accepting from those whom they taught only what seemed necessary for their sustenance, by themselves living in all things according to what they taught, and by having a mind prepared to suffer all adversities, or even to die, for the truth which they preached. Why delay? Some believed and were baptized, wondering at the simplicity of their innocent life and the sweetness of their heavenly doctrine … But when he too (king Ædilberct), among others, delighted with the most pure life of the Saints and their most sweet promises, which they had confirmed to be true by the showing of many miracles also, believed and was baptized; more began to flock together to hear the word, and, leaving the rite of heathenism, to join themselves by believing to the unity of the holy Church of Christ.

[21] and announced the Gospel to the English. These things, if not all, yet in great part pertain also to St. Honorius, especially if he came into Britain with the first band. Certainly Goscelin interpreted the same of him too, in book 1 of the History of the translation cited above, chapter 4, where, weaving an elogium of SS. Justus, Honorius and Deusdedit, he discoursed thus: Indeed, because the venerable Bede in his manifold history has declared too little of the miracles of these men, the merits of such great men ought not on that account to be blotted out from our faith. Could it not have sufficed for the slowness of our hardness, that he described Augustine with his own companions as imitating the apostolic life and virtues with innumerable signs, and as prepared to die for the very faith which they preached? Whoever wants more, let him read the said Bede, and the Acts of St. Augustine, of whom, as it is established that Honorius was a helper in preaching, so it is not to be doubted that he was also, for the time in which he landed among the English, a partaker of his labours and fruits.

[22] After three intervening, he succeeded him in the archbishopric of Canterbury, Of the aforesaid companions of St. Augustine, the first to succeed him in the metropolitan see of Canterbury of all Britain was St. Laurence, the second St. Mellitus, the third St. Justus, and the fourth at last St. Honorius, all disciples of St. Gregory I, Pope. The death of Justus and the succession of Honorius, Bede in book 2, chapter 18, expressly marked in words to be given afterwards; but because he assigned a year to neither, and passed over the duration of both their sees, more recent writers have gone off into various opinions about these matters. It will be useful to have heard Henry Wharton discoursing on this matter in the Anglia sacra. In part 1, in the Dissertation on the true succession of the archbishops of Canterbury, which he appended to the Indiculus of the anonymous canon of Lichfield, at these words of the Indiculus, Justus. He sat nine years, died on the IV of the Ides of November, in the year DCXXXIII, Wharton continues thus. Bede noted only the day of his death, book 2, chapter 18. Hence an easy handle of error for others. Malmesbury, Gervase, Ralph de Diceto, Stephen Birchington and Ussher's manuscript Catalogue relate that Justus presided over the see of Canterbury only three years. And these indeed are consistent enough with themselves, since they lay down that Honorius sat XXVI years.

[23] in an uncertain year, about which, because of Bede's silence But Gervase most wretchedly disturbed the chronology, assigning only three years to Justus and nineteen to Honorius, who, it is established, died in the year DCLIII; so that, on his opinion, the see was vacant for VII years, which yet no one has reported; nay rather, Bede invincibly refutes it, saying that Paulinus was consecrated by Justus in the year DCXXV (in the Epitome). A little better is the author of the anonymous Lambeth Chronicle, who put the death of Justus in the year DCXXXIV: with which reckoning Gervase's computation of the years of Honorius's pontificate would agree well enough, if only he agreed with himself in the rest. But I do not think the anonymous writer hit on the truth either. For Bede relates in book 2, chapter 18, that Honorius the successor of Justus was ordained by Paulinus, archbishop of York, who met him at Lincoln, before the latter was driven out of York. And having been driven out he returned into Kent in the year DCXXXIII, as the same witnesses in the Epitome, and Simeon of Durham in his Epistle to Hugh, page 77.

[24] and the doubtful date of St. Justus's death Before the year DCXXXIII, therefore, both Justus died and Honorius succeeded. But if Paulinus in the same year both consecrated Honorius and took to flight, our anonymous writer, whom we have found accurate enough in the rest, will not depart so very far from the truth. I do not know whether Westminster did not come nearer the mark, according to whom Justus died in the year DCXXX (according to Ralph de Diceto in the year DCXXIX). Yet, the reasons on both sides being weighed, I incline rather to the opinion that Justus sat only three years and died in the year DCXXVII, which the greatest part of the historians relate. Certainly Honorius could not have been ordained by Paulinus in the year DCXXXIII. For Bede gives assurance in book 2, chapter 18, that Justus died at the end of that same [*] year: and that Paulinus baptized king Edwin in the year DCXXVII, on the day before the Ides of April, the day of Easter, book 2, chapter 14, and thenceforth sat at York six years, in the same place: and finally, when Edwin was slain in the year DCXXXIII, on the 2nd day of October, took to hurried flight, book 2, chapter 20. For Paulinus had not dared to await the coming of the victor Cadwalla, the mortal enemy of the Roman Christians; much less, while he was in power, to return from Lincoln to York.

[25] Further, that Honorius died in the year DCLIII is established. various opinions of writers And he set Felix over the East Angles as bishop, and on his death gave Thomas, and to Thomas Boniface, as successors; as Bede testifies in book 2, chapter 15, and book 3, chapter 2. But Felix sat XVII years, Thomas V, by his reckoning: so that Honorius obtained the archbishopric at least in the year DCXXXI. After these things there follows in the same place, in the said Indiculus of the anonymous canon: Honorius. He sat twenty years. He died on the II of the Kalends of October, in the year DCLIII. The see was vacant a year and six months: which again Wharton takes up thus: The year and the day of the death, and indeed the time of the ensuing vacancy, Bede gave in book 3, chapter 20. In what year he undertook the pontificate, there are as many opinions as about the death of his predecessor Justus; about which above

it has been spoken. To the XXVI years of pontificate assigned to Honorius by himself and others, Ralph de Diceto added LV days, in his book On the Prelates of England, chapter 1. Thus far he.

[26] Nicholas Harpsfield in his Ecclesiastical History of England fixed the death of St. Justus to the year 634, they are reviewed. St. Justus ordained St. Paulinus in the year 625; Pagi in his Critica on Baronius at the year 633, number 22, to the year 632, Michael Alford in his Annals to the year 628: finally Baillet judged that the consecration of St. Honorius should be placed about the year 633. Farthest of all strayed the Catalogue of the archbishops of Canterbury, which, formerly collected by Marianus Victorius from the archive of Canterbury, Gerard Voss published illustrated with Notes at Rome in the year 1604: for in this St. Justus is said to have died in the year 640. But dismissing the opinions of others, let us with Wharton inquire the true epoch of Honorius's episcopate from Bede himself. This holy historian in book 2, chapter 9, writes thus about the consecration of St. Paulinus, archbishop of York: But Paulinus was ordained bishop by archbishop Justus on the twelfth day of the Kalends of August, in the six hundred and twenty-fifth year from the Incarnation of the Lord. He repeats this same thing in book 5, chapter 25, saying in the Recapitulation: In the year DCXXV Paulinus is ordained by archbishop Justus as prelate of the nation of the Northumbrians. And so neither the death of Justus nor the ordination of Honorius can be fixed before this year.

[27] Another argument, by which it is proved that Justus was alive at least until the year 626, and lived at least until the year 626; the same Bede supplies in book 2, chapter 20, where he writes that Romanus, prelate of the church of Rochester, who had been sent as an envoy to Pope Honorius by archbishop Justus, perished at sea. Honorius, in the opinion of Baronius, was consecrated Pontiff on the XIII day of May of the year 626; in the opinion of Papebroch, in the same year, but on the XXVIII day of September; but according to Pagi in his Critica, on the XXVII day of October of the year 625. But whichever of these opinions be preferred, the death of Justus could not have happened before the year 626; since between the XXVII day of October and the X of November, on which Justus died according to Bede, only thirteen days intervened, and within a space of fifteen days Honorius would have had to be consecrated Pontiff, the news of this to be carried from Rome to Canterbury, Justus to have appointed an envoy to Rome to the new Pontiff, and to have died; which is in no way likely.

[28] but certainly not beyond the year 631. But neither can the ordination of St. Honorius be deferred beyond the year 631, as must be determined from other reckonings of the same Bede. In book 2, chapter 15, he says this about St. Felix, sent by Honorius to the East Angles: When he had come (St. Felix the bishop, from Burgundy) to archbishop Honorius and had indicated to him his desire, he sent him to preach the word of life to the aforesaid nation of the English … And when he had presided over that province with pontifical rule for seventeen years, he ended his life there in peace. Then in book 3, chapter 20, he again writes: Meanwhile, Felix, bishop of the East Angles, being dead after seventeen years of his received episcopate, Honorius ordained in his place Thomas, his deacon, from the province of the Gyrvii: and when he had been taken from this life after five years of his episcopate, he substituted in his place Berctgils, surnamed Boniface, from the province of the men of Kent. And Honorius himself too, after he had fulfilled the bounds of his course, departed from this light in the year six hundred and fifty-three from the Incarnation of the Lord, on the day before the Kalends of October.

[29] Perhaps he died in the year 627; We have therefore seventeen years of the see of St. Felix and five of Thomas, that is, in all twenty-two, which being subtracted from the year of St. Honorius's death, there will come out the year of Christ 631, in which therefore he must already have been substituted for St. Justus. But how long before the sending of Felix he received that chair, and how long he held it after the ordination of Berctgils, remains uncertain. But although I cannot deny (what, as Wharton testifies, the greatest part of the historians relate) that St. Justus died in the year 627, and although with this opinion the twenty-six years of Honorius's episcopate excellently cohere, yet Bede's narration of the things done by St. Paulinus before the building of the church of Lincoln, in which Honorius was consecrated by him, persuades me to believe that he was ordained a year or two later. In book 2, chapter 9, he relates that the said Paulinus was consecrated bishop by St. Justus in the year 625, and sent with Ethelberga, sister of Eadbald king of the men of Kent, to Edwin king of the Northumbrians, then a pagan, who had sought her as his wife and had obtained her on this condition, that both she and those who were in her service should use Christian laws and rites.

[30] but that Honorius was ordained a little later Then the venerable writer adds: And when he had come into the province (of the Northumbrians) (Paulinus) laboured much that those who had come with him might, with the Lord's help, be kept from falling away from the faith, and that he might convert some (if perchance he could) of the pagans to the grace of faith by preaching. But, as the Apostle says, though he laboured long in the word, the god of this world blinded the minds of the unbelievers, that the illumination of the glory of Christ might not shine upon them. A little happier for that bishop was the year 626, in which king Edwin permitted his daughter lately born to him of Ethelberga to be baptized with twelve of his household, and promised that he too would be washed in the sacred font if he should return victorious from the war which he was about to undertake. He kept his promises at last in the year 627, when, as is read in chapter 14, with all the nobles of his nation and a very great number of the people … he was baptized … at York on the holy day of Easter, the day before the Ides of April, in the church of St. Peter the apostle, which he himself had built there of wood with hurried work, while he was being catechized and instructed for receiving baptism.

[31] Finally, in chapter 16 of the same book he again says: is gathered from the deeds of St. Paulinus, But Paulinus preached the word also to the province of Lindsey, which is the first on the Southern bank of the river Humber, reaching as far as the sea; and he first converted to the Lord the prefect of the city of Lincoln, whose name was Blecca, with his household. In which city indeed he also built a church of excellent work of stone … In which church Paulinus, when Justus passed to Christ, consecrated Honorius bishop in his place, as we shall say in what follows in its place. According to these things, then, the baptism of king Edwin, which first happened on the XII day of April of the year 627, preceded the preaching of Paulinus in the province of Lindsey, and the erection of the church of Lincoln, made of stone with excellent work, in which Honorius was consecrated bishop by Paulinus. But whoever determines that all these things, namely the preaching of Paulinus in the province of Lindsey, the conversion of the prefect of the city of Lincoln, the erection of a stone church of excellent work, and finally the ordination of St. Honorius in it, were accomplished in the same year 627 from the XII day of April, he seems to me to hurry too much and to relate a thing hardly credible.

[32] Nor is it likely that these same things are here reported by Bede in an inverted order: for the province of Lindsey was either in some way subject to Edwin, or, since it was in Mercia, obeyed Penda king of the Mercians alone. If the first, it is not likely that Paulinus did those things there at the time when not even Edwin's royal consort had a church in which her husband could be baptized according to his dignity, as is gathered from number 30. If the second, it is difficult to understand how Penda, a pagan king given to idols, permitted these things, unless we believe that Paulinus was supported by the recommendation of king Edwin, already by then baptized, and that Penda connived at it for the sake of Edwin, whom it was dangerous to offend; since he, as Bede testifies in book 2, chapter 5, with greater power presided over all the peoples of the English and equally of the Britons who inhabit Britain, except only the men of Kent.

[33] And that Edwin was not averse to making such a recommendation who ordained him. is clear from his fervour of faith, about which Bede, both elsewhere and in book 2, chapter 15, says this: But Edwin had (as is related) so great a devotion towards the worship of truth, that he even persuaded Carpwald, king of the East Angles, son of Redwald, to leave the superstitions of idols and receive the faith and sacraments of Christ with his province, etc. Then follows chapter 16: But Paulinus preached the word also to the province of Lindsey, etc., which I gave at number 31. For which reason there pleases me the assertion of Matthew of Westminster, who in the Flowers of the histories assigned Paulinus's preaching in the province of Lindsey, or perhaps the very building of the church of Lincoln, to the following year, in these words: In the year of grace DCXXVIII archbishop Paulinus converted to the faith of Christ the province of the region of Lindsey, which is on the Southern side of the river Humber, and first baptized Blecca, the prefect of that city, with his whole household. In which city he built a church, and in it consecrated Honorius bishop.

* namely DCXXVII

§ III. The opinions opposed to the aforesaid are refuted: the Saint's ordination by St. Paulinus, and its time and place: the pallium and faculty granted him by Pope Honorius I: the primacy of his church confirmed to him by the same Pontiff.

Pagi's argument Before we go on to narrate the ordination of St. Honorius by Paulinus, we must answer the things that can be objected against what has hitherto been said. Antoine Pagi in his Critica on Baronius at the year 633, number 22, lays down that Justus, the immediate predecessor of St. Honorius, died in no other year than 632. To prove this he observes from Bede, first, that Justus departed this life on the X day of November; but that Edwin, king of the Northumbrians, was slain in battle on the XII day of October of the year 633. He observes secondly, from the letters of Pope Honorius I given in the year 634, that the same king Edwin asked the said supreme Pontiff for a pallium for St. Honorius of Canterbury; whence he concludes thus: There can be no doubt that Justus ceased to live in the month of November of the previous year (that is, 632). But the learned man is mistaken: for as from that observation it is proved that the death of St. Justus cannot be placed after the year 632 (for otherwise Edwin, who was slain in the month of October of the year 633, could not have asked for a pallium for the successor of the deceased Justus), so it by no means follows that it did not happen before that same year 632.

[35] is refuted out of Pagi himself. The reason is that it is quite uncertain how long after St. Justus's death Edwin wrote; and it must rather be determined from the aforesaid letters of Pope Honorius, sent both to the king and to Honorius of Canterbury, that he did not do it immediately after his death, nor before Honorius's ordination; since in neither does he mention an ordination of the latter still to be performed, but in both calls Honorius a metropolitan bishop just as much as Paulinus, whom, from Bede,

I have shown above to have been consecrated bishop as early as the year 625. It is not necessary to prove this at greater length, since Pagi himself, perhaps forgetful of what he had said, does it at the year 627, number 25, where he expressly asserts that St. Felix was sent by Honorius, archbishop of Canterbury, to the East Angles in the year DCXXIX, or at latest in the year DCXXX. Consequently upon this, and at the same time upon the seventeen years which Bede attributes to Felix in the episcopate, the same Pagi in the same work at the year 646, number 5, lays down that Felix came into Britain in the year 630 and died in the year 646, adding at the end: See what we said about the beginning of his episcopate at the year DCXXVII. By Pagi's own judgment, therefore, Honorius presided as bishop over the church of Canterbury as early as the year 629 or 630, and consequently Justus had already died by then, whom he succeeded only when dead.

[36] Too late a beginning of St. Honorius's episcopate, There also disagree with me the reckonings which my Predecessors used both at the VIII day of March in the same St. Felix and at the XXVI of May in St. Augustine of Canterbury. In the latter place, volume VI of May, page 420, among the Annotations to the Translation of St. Augustine and his companions, at letter b, this is to be read: Honorius succeeded Justus in the year DCXXXIV, to which the following letter of Pope Honorius is referred by the same Bede in book 2, chapter 18. Occasion for the error was given by the said letter, to be given below, which, since it is dated in the year 634, made it seem, without further examination, that St. Honorius succeeded Justus in the same year. This passage Pagi too censures in his Critica at the year 633, number 22, saying thus: In the Notes Justus is wrongly said to have died in the following year, namely 634; but with his good leave, that is not said there; unless someone should hold that a successor cannot be given to a deceased bishop except within the same year of Christ. There is a greater discrepancy in our Work in the Commentary on St. Felix, on account of the dates to which the beginning of his preaching and his death are there bound; and since by these the whole chronology of Honorius is much disturbed, it is necessary here to weigh them a little more fully.

[37] Bede in book 2, after he had narrated in chapter 14 that king Edwin was baptized in the year 627 on the day before the Ides of April, and the preaching and death of St. Felix presently began chapter 15 with these words. But Edwin had (as is related) so great a devotion towards the worship of truth, that he even persuaded Carpwald, king of the East Angles, son of Redwald, to leave the superstitions of idols and receive the faith and Sacraments of Christ with his province … But Carpwald, not long after he had received the faith, was slain by a heathen man named Richbert; and thereafter for three years the province was involved in error, until the kingdom was received by Sigbert, brother of the same Carpwald, a man in all things most learned and most Christian, who, while his brother was still living, being in exile in Gaul, was imbued with the Sacraments of the faith; of which, as soon as he began to reign, he took care to make his whole province partakers. Whose endeavours bishop Felix most gloriously favoured, who, when he had come from the parts of the Burgundians, where he was born and ordained, to archbishop Honorius, and had indicated to him his desire, he sent him to preach the word of life to the aforesaid nation of the English.

[38] Nor did his prayers fall in vain … And he received the seat of his episcopate in the city of Dumnoc: our Predecessors fixed, and when he had presided over that province with pontifical rule for seventeen years, he ended his life there in peace. Thus the said holy historian. As regards the time, the Anglo-Saxon chronology published at Cambridge by the work and zeal of Abraham Wheloc marked the baptism of king Carpwald (whom it calls Eorpwald) in the year of Christ 632, and first mentions the preaching of Felix at the year 636 in this manner: Bishop Felix was preaching the faith of Christ to the East Angles. Florence of Worcester agrees, who placed Bede's abridged narration about the baptism and slaying of Carpwald at the year 632, but that about Sigbert and Felix at 636. Matthew of Westminster also agrees, except that he affirms that Carpwald, or Eorpenwald (as he too and Worcester call him), was converted to Christ with all his nation by St. Felix. Hence he of my Predecessors who wrote the said Commentary bound the death of St. Felix to the year of Christ 654; yet not altogether positively, as is clear from his words, which I here subjoin from number 6.

[39] The episcopal see was erected by him in a maritime city of the province of Suffolk, following the reckonings of certain men, which Bede in the Saxon manner calls Dumnac, others commonly Dunwich, in which, says Malmesbury, "having run the goal of his life, he was buried after seventeen years of episcopate." But Bede lays down eighteen years; which if they be counted from the year DCXXXVI, he must be said to have lived until the year DCLIV. Thus far there; which if they were true, the chief heads of the chronology of Honorius, which we have sought from the same Bede, would fall to the ground. For either Honorius would have to be said to have died much later than the year 653, or not to have ordained the two successors of the same St. Felix in the episcopate, Thomas and Berctgils; whereas Bede most clearly asserts both that Honorius died in that year, and that Thomas was ordained by him in the place of Felix, who died after seventeen years of his received episcopate; and that to him too, when he had been taken from this life after five years of his episcopate, Berctgils, surnamed Boniface, was again substituted by Honorius.

[40] which are shown from Bede to be faulty. Here therefore the Anglo-Saxon chronologist, Worcester, and Westminster must be abandoned, who, to pass over the rest, are also much inferior to Bede in age; since the first of them certainly wrote after the middle of the eleventh century, the second in the twelfth, the third in the fourteenth; but Bede in the eighth. Nor indeed does Bede's narration, reported at number 37, suggest that eight or nine years passed between Edwin's baptism and the sending of Felix, nor does it require so many intervening years but that it can easily be explained on our opinion. Edwin in that same year 627, in the month of April of which, on the XII day, he had been baptized, may have brought Carpwald to the faith of Christ, and the latter not long after, say at the beginning of the year 628, may have been slain by a heathen man who took it ill; from that point until the year 631 a triennium will easily remain, after which Sigbert could succeed to the kingdom of his brother Carpwald, and holy Felix be sent by Honorius and begin his preaching. The same text of Bede Pagi too interpreted more strictly in his Critica on Baronius at the year 627, number 25, where he concluded thus.

[41] St. Honorius succeeded St. Justus Carpwald, baptized in the year DCXXVII, was slain in it; Sigbert after an incomplete triennium, namely in the year DCXXIX, or at latest in the year DCXXX, succeeded to the kingdom, and Felix at once began to devote himself to the preaching of the East Angles. He is favoured by a certain letter of Peter of Blois, which, citing it at the year 646, number 5, he affirms that he read in it the following about the death of the same St. Felix: He passed to the Lord in the year of the Lord DCXLVI, Indiction IV, the nineteen-year cycle beginning at 1, Penda still reigning as a pagan over the Mercians. So it is; as all these characters agree rightly with the year of Christ 646, so the seventeen years which Bede attributes to his episcopate, subtracted from that same year, will bring us back to the year 629 or 630. So be it; I shall not contradict, especially for 630; for in favour of the former there remains a greater difficulty from the shortness of the time, which the authority of Peter of Blois, who flourished after the middle of the twelfth century, cannot alone remove. For the rest, that instead of the eighteen years of Felix's episcopate, which the author of the said Commentary read in his manuscript, seventeen must be read, is urged by the Anglo-Saxon-Latin Cambridge edition and the Latin Paris edition of Chifflet.

[42] [between the year 627 and 631, and, the consent of the Roman Pontiff having been received,] What has thus far been disputed at sufficient length makes me believe that St. Honorius was ordained archbishop of the men of Canterbury between the years of Christ 627 and 631, but I can determine no one year with certainty. To continue then his history: St. Justus having died about the year 627, St. Honorius was elected successor, and, confirmation having been received from Honorius I, the Roman Pontiff, he was consecrated by the oft-mentioned St. Paulinus, bishop of York. That for this matter the consent of Pope Honorius was sought I gather from the letters of the same Pontiff to be quoted below, in which in the year 634 he granted to both metropolitans of England, namely Honorius and Paulinus, that on the death of the one, the other who survived might consecrate another in the place of the deceased, without further leave sought from the Roman Pontiff. And he added this reason: That we should grant you this, the long intervals of land and sea which stand between us and you have compelled us to condescend; that no loss may in any way befall your churches under the pretext of any occasion whatsoever, etc.; namely, while the consent of the Apostolic See is sought and awaited through such long and dangerous journeys.

[43] Further, the said two holy prelates would have sought this faculty in vain he was ordained bishop by St. Paulinus if the metropolitans of Britain had been wont to be ordained without the consent of the Roman Pontiff being sought, or a general licence first obtained; nor is it to be believed that in the consecration of Honorius what by law was to be done was omitted. Of the ordination of St. Honorius itself Bede speaks thus in book 2, chapter 18: Meanwhile archbishop Justus was taken up to the heavenly kingdoms on the fourth day of the Ides of November; and Honorius was elected to the prelacy in his place: who came to Paulinus to be ordained; and, the latter meeting him, he was consecrated at Lincoln as the fifth prelate of the church of Dorovernia after Augustine. St. Paulinus, of whom mention has often been made, and whose deeds will be illustrated at the X day of October, on which he is inscribed in the Roman Martyrology, had fixed his see at York in Northumbria, to which city St. Gregory the Great, Pope, had long before destined the sacred metropolitan dignity, subject however to Canterbury, whenever it should be converted to Christ.

[44] Londocolinum, or Lindocolinum (as book 2, chapter 16, has it, and the Cambridge edition in both places), in the city of Lincoln. Ptolemy and Antoninus, as Camden testifies in his Description of Britain, called Lindum, the English afterwards Lincolne, in Latin Lincolnea, which is the chief city of the county of Lincoln, commonly called Lincolnshire. There, after the baptism of king Edwin and of the prefect Blecca, we have said a church of excellent work was built by St. Paulinus; about which Bede relates this also, memorable, in the place last cited: Whose roof having fallen either through long neglect or by a hostile hand, the walls are seen to stand to this day, and every year some miracles of healings are wont to be shown in that place for the benefit of those who faithfully seek them. In this place St. Honorius, ordained bishop, and St. Paulinus who had ordained him (it is uncertain

how long afterwards) sent letters to Honorius I, the supreme Pontiff, to which two Christian kings of the English, Eadbald of the men of Kent and Edwin of the Northumbrians, added their own, asking for two pallia and the faculty of ordaining the one when either of the metropolitans should die.

[45] The letters of the kings and bishops I have nowhere found, but two of Pope Honorius, Pope Honorius I in letters praises king Edwin, from which we learn these things, Bede recounted in book 2, chapters 17 and 18. The first is to king Edwin, and runs thus. To the most excellent and most eminent lord and son Edwin, king of the English, Honorius, Bishop, servant of the servants of God, greeting. So has the integrity of your Christianity been kindled with ardour of faith towards the worship of its Maker, that it shines far and wide, and, announced in all the world, brings back manifold the fruit of your work. I pass over the rest, because it does not pertain to the present argument, except what follows. But those things which you hoped would be ordained for your priests, these, for the sincerity of your faith, which has been laudably made known to us by manifold report through the bearers of the present letters, we have with a free mind provided to bestow upon them without any delay, and we have sent two pallia for both metropolitans, that is, for Honorius and Paulinus, so that, when one of them shall have been summoned from this world to his Author, the other, by this our authority, may substitute another bishop in his place. Which indeed we have been moved to grant both for the affection of your charity and for the spaces of such great provinces as are known to lie between us and you, that we might in all things afford our concurrence to your devotion and according to your desires. May the grace from above keep your excellency in safety. Thus far the letter to king Edwin, which lacks every note of time.

[46] and to him and to Paulinus The other, sent to St. Honorius for the same cause, he subjoined in the following chapter, that is, 18, premising this: To him (St. Honorius) also the aforesaid Pope Honorius sent a pallium and letters, in which he decreed this very thing which he had decreed in the letter sent to king Edwin, namely that, when the prelate of Dorovernia or of York should pass from this life, he who survived, being his colleague of the same rank, should have power to ordain another priest in the place of him who had passed away; lest it be necessary always to be wearied with journeying to the city of Rome through such long spaces of lands and sea for the ordaining of an archbishop. The text of which letters also we have thought it convenient to set in this our History.

To his most beloved brother Honorius, Honorius.

Among the very many gifts of good things which the mercy of our Redeemer deigns to bestow upon his servants, this also is granted by the munificence of his mercifully conferred loving-kindness, as often as through brotherly addresses it represents to alternate gazes, by a certain contemplation, a love of one mind.

[47] sends pallia to each, For which we unceasingly render thanks to his Majesty, and beseech him with suppliant prayers that he may confirm with perpetual stability your love, toiling and bearing fruit in the preaching of the Gospel and following the rule of your master and head, holy Gregory, and may through you rouse up mightier increases for the growth of his Church; that by faith and work, in the fear of God and in charity, your gain and that of your predecessors, which is budding forth through the beginnings made by the lord Gregory, may by gaining strength be more widely extended: that those very promises of the Lord's utterance may in the future look upon you, and that this voice may call you to the eternal festival: "Come to me all you that labour and are burdened, and I will refresh you." And again: "Well done, good and faithful servant; because you have been faithful over few things, I will set you over many: enter into the joy of your Lord." And we indeed, most dear Brethren, sending you beforehand these words of exhortation out of eternal charity, do not cease to impart further what we see can be fitting for the privileges of your churches.

[48] with power to ordain another metropolitan when either should die. And now [*] according to your petition, and that of our sons the kings, we bestow upon you by this our present precept, in the stead of blessed Peter, the prince of the Apostles, the authority that, when divine grace shall have bidden one of you be called to itself, he who survives should ordain another bishop in the place of the deceased. For which reason also we have sent single pallia to your love for celebrating that same ordination, that by the authority of our precept you may be able to perform an ordination pleasing to God; because, that we might grant you this, the long intervals of land and sea which stand between us and you have compelled us to condescend to it, that no loss may in any way befall your churches under the pretext of any occasion whatsoever; but rather that the devotion of the people committed to you may be more fully propagated. May God keep you in safety, most beloved Brother. Given on the third day of the Ides of June, in the reign of our lords the most pious Augusti, Heraclius in the twenty-fourth year, after his consulate in the twenty-third year; and Constantine his son in the twenty-third year and the third year of his consulate; and also Heraclius the most happy Cæsar, likewise his son, in the third year, Indiction the seventh, that is, in the six hundred and thirty-fourth year of the Lord's Incarnation.

[49] This subscription, which in other published and manuscript copies of Bede was read faultily, These letters were written in the year 634, Edwin being already dead. Pierre-François Chifflet happily restored thus from a codex of great antiquity and excellent quality of St. Maximin of Trier, Pagi also approving in his Critica on Cardinal Baronius at the year of Christ 633, number 22 and following, where he also reviewed various faulty readings of others. In the copy which Baronius used there was read the year of Christ 633 with the seventh Indiction; and since he noticed that these did not cohere with one another, he noted Indiction VI in the margin and retained the year 633. But after the said edition of Chifflet there is no further doubt that Indiction VII and the year 634 must be retained, with which all the other chronological notes aptly agree. Hence too we learn the date of the aforesaid letter of Pope Honorius to king Edwin, which is destitute of chronological notes: for to anyone comparing the two it is clear enough that both were written and sent into Britain at the same time. Further, at that time king Edwin had already departed this life, having been slain in battle on the XII day of October of the preceding year; for which reason Pagi rightly notes that his death had not yet been announced at Rome on the XI day of June in the year 634, when Pope Honorius signed the letters to be sent to our St. Honorius; but what he determined from those same letters, that St. Justus did not die before the year 632, I have already refuted in the preceding §.

[50] William of Malmesbury in book 1 of the Deeds of the pontiffs of the English quotes another letter of the same Pope Honorius written to Honorius of Canterbury, The same Pontiff consoled St. Honorius which he writes was produced by Lanfranc, likewise archbishop of Canterbury, among other arguments for the primacy of his see. It is of this tenor. To his most beloved brother Honorius, Honorius, Bishop, servant of the servants of God. Having received the letters of your love, we find in them that the solicitude of your labour about the flock committed to you is engaged with much weariness, and that with much labour and distress, as evils and worldly usages increase, you often endure the heaviness of difficulties [*] of your mind. But we exhort your love to hold to the work of the Gospel which you have undertaken, since you must labour in it and persevere rather than abandon it. Remember the Evangelical precept, in which it is said: "I have prayed for you, Peter, that your faith fail not; and do you, when once converted, confirm your brethren." And again in the Apostle: "Be steadfast and immovable, knowing that your labour is not in vain before the Lord."

[51] Therefore we humbly admonish your love that by faith and work, in the fear of God and in charity, your gain and encouraged him amid adversities, and that of your predecessors, which is budding forth through the beginnings made by the lord Gregory, may by gaining strength be more widely extended, that the very promise of the Lord's utterance may call you to the eternal festival, which says: "Come to me all you that labour and are burdened; and I will refresh you." And again: "Well done, good and faithful servant, because you have been faithful over few things, I will set you over many." Meanwhile you have asked that the authority of your see be strengthened by the privilege of our authority. And we, without any delay, with a free mind assenting to what is right, that what we have known to have been once appointed and disposed by our predecessors, this same we too should confirm, and following in their steps according to the manner of ancient custom which from the time of Augustine your predecessor of holy memory your church has held until now, do by the authority of blessed Peter, the prince of the Apostles, grant to you, Honorius, and to your successors in perpetuity, to hold the primacy of all the churches of Britain.

[52] and confirmed the primacy of his church. We command therefore that all the churches and regions of England be subject to your jurisdiction, and that in the city of Dorobernia the metropolitan place and honour of the archbishopric and the head of all the churches of England be preserved always hereafter, and be changed to another place by no person through any evil persuasion. But if anyone shall do otherwise, prompted by the swelling of pride and disobedient to our precept, and shall strive to resist the concessions of the dignity [] of the aforenamed church, let him know himself separated from the participation of the Body and Blood of our Redeemer Jesus Christ. May God keep you in safety, reverend [] brother. Michael Alford in volume 2 of the Annals of the Anglo-Saxon church at the year of Christ 634 likewise quoted the same letter from Malmesbury, but at the same time warned that it might seem suspect on account of the name of England twice set down, which had not yet obtained at that period, nor does it occur anywhere even in Bede, who one century later wrote the five books of the History of the English nation.

[53] There is no reason why this letter I confess that this word was not then wont to be used for Britain, nor yet will anyone on that account rightly reject the whole of that letter as fabricated. You have the Life of Bl. Lanfranc, archbishop of Canterbury, written by Milo Crispin in the twelfth century (Lanfranc had died in the year 1089), published among us at the XXVIII day of May. In chapter 5 of this there is extant a letter of the same Bl. Lanfranc to Pope Alexander II, in which, giving an account of the cause of the primacy of his church, which he had won against Thomas, archbishop of York, in a synod of England, among other arguments which he had used he also cited some writing of Honorius, the supreme Roman Pontiff. His words there, at number 39, are these. As a last support, as it were, and the confirmation of the whole cause, there were produced the privileges and writings of your predecessors Gregory, Boniface, Honorius, Vitalian, Sergius, again Gregory, and again the last Leo, which were given and transmitted to the prelates of the church of Dorobernia and to the kings of the English at various times and for various causes.

[54] on account of the inserted word England, There existed therefore at that time some rescript of Pope Honorius by which the primacy of the church of Canterbury in Britain had been confirmed, and indeed of such a kind

that Bl. Lanfranc did not hesitate to produce it in the synod among the other Pontifical writings for the support of his cause; nor could Thomas invalidate it, as may then be read in the same place. But that that Honorius cannot be any other than the first of that name is manifest from the time; for Bl. Lanfranc died in the year 1089, whereas Honorius II was first made Pontiff when the twelfth century was full grown. Besides this, Honorius I, whether he began to sit in the Apostolic chair in the year 625 or 626, died in the year 638, and so his writing cited by Bl. Lanfranc must have been sent either to Justus, who did not live long under the Pontificate of that Honorius, or to our St. Honorius, who survived him. Why then should we hold the Epistle in Malmesbury suspect on account of a single little word, which, even if it was not then in use, could yet easily have been employed by Pope Honorius on this occasion?

[55] For he was indeed writing to the primate of all Britain (such as he acknowledges St. Honorius to be at number 51), but since the latter had his see in that part of Britain we should suspect to be fabricated. which the nation then already called the English inhabited; and perhaps a dissension about the primacy of the bishoprics of this nation had already arisen, or was feared as about to arise; what is so much to be wondered at if he used the word Anglia (England), which was afterwards extended so much more widely, for the provinces of the English? David Wilkins in the Councils of Great Britain and Ireland, published at London in the year 1737, volume 1, page 35 and following, published that same letter from a manuscript codex of the Cottonian library; which, agreeing in the rest except for some words of less moment, in the former place reads Angliæ with the Malmesbury edition; but in the latter, where in Malmesbury is read, the head of all the churches of England, it says: The head of all the churches of the English peoples. If it were so read in both places, all the difficulty would cease; which yet, even if anyone should prefer to suspect that the little word Angliæ was inserted for Britanniæ by a more recent hand, cannot prevent the same letter from being believed to have been written by Pope Honorius, as Alford too acknowledged. Of the time and occasion at which it seems to have been given we shall treat more fitly in the following §.

read tam*

others, difficultatis*

others add rationibus*

others, dilectissime*

§ IV. The manner of the Saint's domestic life: his care for propagating the faith: the bishops ordained by him, and his other deeds: his death and burial.

He was praised by Pope Honorius, The supreme Pontiff Honorius in the letter given to St. Honorius above at number 47 praised him on two heads, namely as toiling and bearing fruit in the preaching of the Gospel, and following the rule of his master and head St. Gregory. The second part of this praise I judge must be taken of his domestic life, which he had formerly led as a monastic one, and of the life shared in common with his clergy and of the common use of goods, according to what St. Gregory the Pope had written back to St. Augustine, newly ordained bishop for the English, in the letter reported in Bede, book 1, chapter 27, from which I have excerpted the following. But the custom of the Apostolic See is to hand down precepts to ordained bishops, that of every stipend which comes in four portions ought to be made; one, namely, for the bishop and his household on account of hospitality and the reception of guests; another for the clergy; a third for the poor; the fourth for repairing the churches.

[57] But because your fraternity, trained in the rules of the monastery, ought not to live apart from your clerics in the church of the English, which by God's authorship has but lately been brought to the faith; you ought to institute that manner of living on account of the rule of St. Gregory kept in his episcopate, which was that of our fathers at the beginning of the newborn Church, among whom none of them said that anything of what they possessed was his own; but all things were common to them. But if there be any clerics established outside the sacred Orders who cannot contain themselves, they ought to take wives and receive their stipends outside. Because also of those same fathers of whom we have spoken before, we know it is written that distribution was made to each as anyone had need, thought must be taken and provision made for their stipend also, and they are to be held under ecclesiastical discipline, that they may live with good morals and be watchful in singing psalms, and, by God's authorship, keep heart and tongue and body from all unlawful things.

[58] of what kind this was, is set forth. But to those living a common life, what need we say about making portions, or showing hospitality, or fulfilling mercy? Since all that is over must be laid out in pious and religious causes, the Lord, the master of all, teaching: What is over, give alms, and behold, all things are clean to you. This is the rule which St. Gregory the Pope prescribed to St. Augustine to be kept in his episcopate, and for keeping which likewise I do not doubt that St. Honorius too, similarly trained in the rules of the monastery, and formerly a disciple of St. Augustine and then, after three intervening, his successor in the archbishopric, was praised by Pope Honorius in the words given. To apostolic labours and the episcopal office belongs the other part of the praise, in which the Pontiff commended Honorius as toiling and bearing fruit in the preaching of the Gospel. It will be useful here to have set forth briefly the state of the Christian religion at that time among the English, and especially in Kent and the provinces subject to its king, from Bede, book 1, chapter 26, book 2, chapters 5 and 6, and book 3, chapter 8, so that it may be plain that Honorius did not lack pagans to bring to Christ, nor Christians to confirm.

[59] The varying state of the English church in Britain is set forth, The first of the English kings who was converted from idols to the worship of God through St. Augustine and his companions was Ædilberct, king of Kent, and he is related … to have so rejoiced in the faith and conversion of his subjects that yet he compelled no one to Christianity; but only embraced believers with a closer affection, as fellow-citizens with him of the heavenly kingdom. For he had learned from the teachers and authors of his salvation that the service of Christ ought to be voluntary, not compelled. This pious king having died in the year of Christ 617, after twenty-one years from receiving the faith, when his son Eadbald took up the helm of the kingdom, it was a great harm to the increases of the Church there, still tender. For he had not only refused to receive the faith of Christ, but was also polluted by such fornication as the Apostle testifies is not even among the gentiles, so that he had his father's wife. By both which crimes he gave occasion of returning to their former vomit to those who under the rule of his parent had, either from royal favour or fear, taken up the laws of faith and chastity.

[60] in which the Saint, before and after receiving the episcopate, At about the same time there arose among the East Saxons, who with their king were also subject to Eadbald, a persecution of the Church; for when Sabert, the Christian king, died, St. Mellitus their bishop, driven from his see by his three pagan sons, fled into Gaul with St. Justus, then prelate of Rochester in Kent. Further, St. Laurence, archbishop of Canterbury, about to follow them both at once, being rebuked and chastised by St. Peter the apostle, went to king Eadbald, and brought it about that the king, renouncing the impious marriage, received baptism and recalled the exiled bishops. Eadbald thereafter persisted in the faith until the year 640, in which he died as a Christian, but seems to have enacted nothing against the idolaters. At length his son and successor Earconbert, the first of the kings of the English, commanded by his princely authority that in his whole kingdom the idols be forsaken and destroyed, and at the same time that the fast of Forty days be observed. And lest this could easily be despised by anyone, he appointed worthy and fitting punishments for transgressors.

[61] This was the varying state of the Christian religion in the kingdom of the men of Kent, he laboured strenuously. during the time when St. Honorius lived among them, partly before and partly after entering upon the prelacy; when there cannot have been wanting to him daily occasion of exercising his apostolic zeal, both in converting pagans and in confirming Christians, whom either their former error held back, or whom the bad examples of kings and their own vices called back to idolatry. Perhaps to his counsels and admonitions is owed also that law passed by king Earconbert about breaking the idols throughout his whole kingdom; the use of which, if it had before been tolerated by the two preceding kings for just causes, was certainly then forbidden for juster ones, and effectively proscribed by the penalties appointed. Nevertheless, since Bede did not add the date of the law's passing, and Earconbert lived about thirteen years with bishop Honorius after obtaining the kingdom, but also survived him seventeen, it remains altogether doubtful whether he was the author to the said king of its being passed.

[62] In the Elogium which I shall reprint from the Legend of John Capgrave at the end of this Commentary, It is uncertain whether, and what, he did against the Pelagians, he is said not only to have converted innumerable pagans, but also to have freed many from the error of the heretics; who, however, are not there named. Adrien Baillet in his French Life of him on this day indicates the Pelagians, in these words: The flourishing state in which he was keeping the English church was disturbed by the attempts of Pelagianism to be born again in a region where two hundred years before St. Germanus, bishop of Auxerre, had so happily rooted it out. He hindered its progress by his zeal and vigilance. That the impious dogma of Pelagius was then beginning to sprout again, not indeed among the English but among the Scots, Bede in fact teaches in book 2, chapter 19, where he also quotes the letter which, the Apostolic See being vacant through the death of Severinus, John, elected but not yet ordained Pontiff, gave on this matter with others of the Roman clergy to the Scots.

[63] In the same letter they rebuke and confute certain of them, and what he did about the Scots who differed in the celebration of Easter. who were trying to renew a new heresy out of an old one against the orthodox faith, refusing with cloudy darkness our Pasch, in which Christ was sacrificed, and striving to celebrate it on the fourteenth moon with the Hebrews. But what St. Honorius accomplished in either or in one of these causes I do not know, except that it is likely that he gave sedulous effort that that poison should not creep from so near a province into his own. Finally it is altogether unascertained by me what those remaining errors of heretics are which Capgrave liberally asserts were removed by Honorius, resting perhaps rather on conjectures than on ancient testimonies. Besides these things, which we have said in general about the episcopal care of the holy Archprelate, there are also particular ones, which we shall now pursue.

[64] Among the first years of his episcopate must be placed the sending of St. Felix by him to the East Angles, and the erection of an episcopal see at Domwic, commonly Dunwich, which is a maritime city of the province of Suffolk, He converted the East Angles through St. Felix, and ordained bishops for them. called by Bede Dumnoc in the Chifflet edition, which I follow. Of this mission enough

much has been said, so that it may suffice here to have added Bede's words about its happy success from book 2, chapter 15. Nor did his prayers (he says) fall in vain; nay rather, the pious cultivator of the spiritual field (Felix) found in that province a manifold fruit of believing peoples. For that whole province, according to the mystery of his own name, he led, freed from long iniquity and unhappiness, to the faith and works of justice and the gifts of perpetual felicity; and he received his see in the city of Dumnoc: and when he had presided over that province with pontifical rule for seventeen years, he ended his life there in peace. That Thomas was afterwards substituted for him, and for Thomas Berctgild, by St. Honorius, I have shown above. But those who will have it that the said St. Felix was also ordained bishop by the same holy metropolitan, unless they are to be thought to speak of the mission alone, are opposed to Bede, by whose testimony Felix the bishop … came from the parts of the Burgundians, where he was born and ordained, to Honorius.

[65] King Edwin being slain in battle, While matters were flowing so prosperously among the English — St. Honorius in Kent under the Christian king Eadbald, St. Paulinus in Northumbria under king Edwin, whom with his nation he had lately baptized, and St. Felix among the East Angles with the most religious king Sigbert, all strenuously fulfilling their parts — the English church again suffered a great loss in the slaying of king Edwin, and affairs in it were greatly disturbed. The sad history Bede narrates in book 2, chapter 20, writing thus. But when Edwin had for seventeen years most gloriously presided over the nation of the English and of the Britons alike, of which for six he himself also (as we have said) served in the kingdom of Christ, Cadwalla, king of the Britons, rebelled against him, Penda affording him help, a most strenuous man of the royal race of the Mercians, who himself also from that time presided over the kingdom of that same nation for twenty-two years with varied fortune. And a grievous battle being joined in the plain which is called Hethfelth, Edwin was slain on the fourth day of the Ides of October, in the six hundred and thirty-third year of the Lord's Incarnation, when he was forty-eight years old; and his whole army was either destroyed or scattered, etc.

[66] and a persecution having arisen, St. Paulinus flees to Canterbury. At which time a very great slaughter was made in the church or nation of the Northumbrians; especially because one of the leaders by whom it was done was a pagan; the other, because he was a barbarian, more savage than a pagan. For Penda with the whole nation of the Mercians was given up to idols and ignorant of the Christian name. But Cadwalla, although he had the name and profession of a Christian, was yet so barbarous in mind and manners that he did not spare even the female sex or the innocent age of little children, but handed them all over with brutish atrocity to death by torments, ranging for a long time in fury through all their provinces, and determining to wipe out the whole race of the English from the borders of Britain. So he paid no honour to the Christian religion which had arisen among them … Affairs of the Northumbrians being thus disturbed at the crisis of this disaster, when there seemed to be no protection anywhere but in flight, Paulinus, taking with him queen Ethelberga, whom he had formerly brought thither, returned by ship into Kent, and was honourably received by archbishop Honorius and by king Eadbald (brother of Ethelberga).

[67] The year both of the ill-starred battle and of Paulinus's coming to Honorius Bede marked again in the Recapitulation, where he says: In the year DCXXXIII, king Edwin being slain, St. Oswald, the tyrant being driven out, reigning, Paulinus returned to Kent. Hence note briefly how badly some place the beginning of St. Honorius's episcopate after that year. The kingdom of Edwin in Northumbria, which had formerly been divided in two, two men seized for themselves; namely Osric the kingdom of the Deiri, Eanfrid that of the Bernicians, both indeed initiated by baptism among the Scots or Picts, but as soon as they began to reign returning to idolatry. Both too the aforesaid Cadwalla, king of the Britons, slew a little after, and he alone exercised tyranny through the provinces of the Northumbrians, until he was cut down and destroyed by St. Oswald with his army, as Bede relates in book 3, chapter 1, who places one year, or a little more, between the slayings of Edwin and of Cadwalla.

[68] Further, St. Oswald, having gained the kingdom of the Northumbrians, sets St. Aidan the Scot over his people as bishop. asked for a teacher from the Scots, among whom while in exile he had been baptized, and received St. Aidan, for whom he erected the bishopric of Lindisfarne. Consult, if you please, the deeds of the said holy king and of holy Aidan, of whom you have the former illustrated in our Work at the V day of August, the latter at the XXXI of the same month. But anyone will easily understand how much care and how much grief that change of affairs must have brought to St. Honorius, when he saw the greatest part of the English church, of which he was primate, first for a whole year so cruelly torn by those barbarous and pagan kings, and then also handed over to the Scots; who, although they were Catholics, yet differed from the Romans, especially in the Pasch, which they celebrated on the fourteenth moon with the Jews, if it fell on a Sunday. Meanwhile St. Paulinus, having lost his see of York, was living at Canterbury, having left at York a deacon named James, who during the time of the said persecution bestowed his labour most usefully.

[69] To provide for Paulinus, Honorius set him over the then vacant bishopric of the church of Rochester. Honorius gives Paulinus the bishopric of Rochester, Roffa, in the vernacular now called Rochester, and which Bede relates was surnamed Rhofescestre from one who was once its chief man, called Rhof, is a city of Kent, situated between Canterbury and London, to which St. Augustine formerly gave as first bishop St. Justus, who afterwards was St. Honorius's immediate predecessor in the metropolitan see of Canterbury. But let us hear Bede continuing. At which time the church of Rochester had no pastor at all, because Romanus, its prelate, sent as an envoy to Pope Honorius by archbishop Justus, had been swallowed up by the waves of the Italian sea: and through this the aforesaid Paulinus undertook the care of it at the invitation of bishop Honorius and of king Eadbald, and held it until he himself also in his own time ascended to the heavenly kingdoms with the fruit of a glorious labour. Of the time of this Saint's death and of the successor given him by Honorius the same holy historian speaks in book 3, chapter 14, saying thus: In the six hundred and forty-fourth year from the Lord's Incarnation, the most reverend father Paulinus, formerly of York but then bishop of the city of Rochester, passed to the Lord on the sixth day of the Ides of October, etc.

[70] In whose place archbishop Honorius ordained Ithamar, and on his death substitutes St. Ithamar: whether he also veiled Ethelberga, sprung indeed from the nation of the men of Kent, but to be matched with his predecessors in life and learning. Of St. Paulinus we shall have to treat on the aforesaid X day of October, on which he is inscribed in the Roman Martyrology; but of holy Ithamar (for he too obtained a sacred cult) our Godfrey Henschen had prepared a few things for the press, which after his death were printed at the X of June. St. Ithamar survived St. Honorius, whose successor holy Deusdedit he ordained. See Bede, book 3, chapter 20, and our Sollier at the XV day of July, where he treated briefly of St. Deusdedit. Further, as Paulinus was never restored to his see of York, so neither did Ethelberga, the widow of king Edwin, return into her own kingdom. Capgrave in the Elogium of St. Honorius to be published relates that she, dedicated to God by him with the sacred veil, founded a monastery in the village of Lyminge, received from her brother king Eadbald, in which she was made the mother of very many virgins and widows.

[71] [as one writer will have it? perhaps at this time the letter quoted above was given.] To this writer perhaps Goscelin had given the lead in the Life of St. Werburga the virgin, published in our Work at the III day of February, in whose chapter I, number 1, without any mention however of St. Honorius or of a veil received, this is to be read: But queen Æthelburga, after the slaying of her own king of the Northumbrians, Edwin, returning to her brother Eadbald, built a monastery in the village of Lyminge, in which she rests with St. Eadburga. See the Annotations there. Alford in volume 2 of the Annals of England at the year of Christ 634, number 5, agrees about the monastery founded by her and the veil received, but says it was done by the hands of St. Paulinus, not of Honorius: which of these is truer, Bede and the other ancients being silent, I cannot determine. For the rest, there appears to me very likely the opinion of the same Alford, judging elsewhere that the letter of Pope Honorius I to our St. Honorius, which I quoted at number 50 and following, was given on the occasion of the oft-mentioned persecution. It is most likely, I say, that St. Honorius grieved by letters before the Pontiff over such great evils of the English church; nor does the said letter seem referable to any fitter time, by which the Pontiff tried to console him, engaged with much weariness about the flock committed to him, and sweating with much labour and distress as evils increased, and to rouse him to constancy.

[72] The Saint dies in the year 653 and is buried among his predecessors; Since I have no more about that Saint's deeds, I subjoin his death from Bede's book 3, chapter 20. And Honorius himself too, after he had fulfilled the bounds of his course, departed from this light in the six hundred and fifty-third year from the Incarnation of the Lord, on the day before the Kalends of October: and, the episcopate ceasing for a year and six months, there was elected as sixth archbishop of the chair of Dorovernia Deusdedit, of the nation of the West Saxons, whom Ithamar, prelate of the church of Rochester, came thither to ordain. These things are clear and need no illustration. But from what we have disputed about the beginning of Honorius's episcopate, its duration also must be determined. His burial Harpsfield indicates thus in the Ecclesiastical History of England, century VII: He was buried in the Northern part of the church of the blessed Peter and Paul with this epitaph:

As fifth in honour you are recorded, Honorius, in a mindful verse, Worthy [*] of a burial which no erasure shall wear away. Your light burns in the darkness with a pure quivering. This presses down all wickedness, puts shadows to flight, takes away the clouds.

[73] with whom, translated, he rested honourably until England's defection, About the place of burial Goscelin agrees in the History of the translation of St. Augustine and his successors, book 1, chapter 2, number 17, setting forth at length their position in the ancient church; of which take these few things. Over the sacred head of Laurence (who first succeeded St. Augustine) Mellitus, as his next successor, lay in the extended floor of the church. Mellitus fits to his head the justice-flowing Justus, according to his own succession: but at Justus's right hand Bl. Honorius, the successor of Justus: at Honorius's right hand was joined, by the order of his succession, holy and God-given Deusdedit … Yet all those mausoleums of the angels of God were so distinguished that there was a passage between each. There the body of St. Honorius lay thus until

the year of Christ 1091, in which, fragrant with a heavenly odour, it was found and solemnly translated with the rest into the new church, as I said in § I. It remained there until England's defection from the Catholic faith, from which time what was done with it and with the rest I have not ascertained; but it is most likely that what then survived was scattered, and that those Saints received this at last as their wage from those whose forefathers they had brought from idols to Christ.

read Digne*

ELOGIUM

From the Legend of John Capgrave.

Honorius, archbishop of Canterbury, in England. (S.)

BHL Number: 3986

St. Honorius succeeded St. Justus: he received the pallium Blessed archbishop Justus ^a having been translated to the heavenly places, St. Honorius was elected to the prelacy in his stead, who was one of the disciples of blessed Pope Gregory ^b, a man of great reverence and loftily instructed in ecclesiastical matters. Who came to Paulinus to be ordained, and, the latter meeting him at Lincoln, he was consecrated prelate of the church of Dorobernia ^c. To whom also Pope Honorius ^d sent a pallium and letters, in which he decreed that, when the prelate of Dorobernia or of York should pass from this life, he who survives as his colleague of the same rank should have power to ordain another priest in the place of him who had passed away; lest it be necessary always to be wearied with journeying to the city of Rome through such long spaces of lands and sea for the ordaining of an archbishop.

[2] Among the very many gifts of good things, says the said Pope, which the mercy of our Redeemer deigns to bestow upon his servants, and letters from Pope Honorius I: this also is granted by the munificence of his mercifully conferred loving-kindness, as often as through brotherly affections it represents to the gaze of another, by a certain contemplation, a love of one mind; for which we unceasingly render thanks to his Majesty, and beseech him with suppliant prayers that he may confirm with perpetual stability your love, toiling and bearing fruit in the preaching of the Gospel and following the rule of his master and head holy Gregory, and may through his own rouse up mightier increases for the growth of his Church; that by faith and work, in the fear of God and in charity, your gain and that of your predecessors, which is budding forth through the beginning made by the lord Gregory, may by gaining strength be more widely extended. By such favour, therefore, and testimony of this holy Pope it is clearly plain that this Bl. Honorius was a disciple of the Gregorian instruction, that is, a worthy emulator of the Apostolic life and perfection.

[3] Nor is this a heralding of small glory, His deeds in the episcopate, that through St. Felix, ordained by him as prelate of the East Angles, he converted that nation too to Christ ^e. But when blessed Felix died, he ordained in his place Thomas his deacon, from the province of the Gyrvii. In these times, affairs of the Northumbrians being disturbed and king Edwin slain, Bl. Paulinus, taking with him queen Ethelberga, returned by ship to Kent, and was honourably received by Bl. Honorius ^f. But king Eadbald gave to his sister Ethelberga the village named Lyminge, in which she built a monastery, and, consecrated with the veil by Bl. Honorius, was made the mother of very many virgins and widows ^g. Who after the end of her life was buried there on the Ides of December. But Paulinus he made bishop of Rochester, who there ended his life. Thus therefore the strenuous and ever-watchful Leader of the Lord's warfare strove to substitute others for those falling, as it were, in the divine battle-line, lest indeed a place of breaking in should lie open for his enemy, lest the lion roaring and seeking whom he might devour should lay waste the Lord's flock found without a defender.

[4] his vigilance and other virtues Not only for the higher, but also for the lower guardianships of the churches did the faithful and prudent Steward of the Lord look out, and he provided all things, as one solicitous for all: he ordered parishes and the other offices of clerics, teaching all to show themselves in all things as ministers of God, and to instruct the people of God by sweetness and patience as much as by doctrine; to enlighten them by the example of a pious conversation as much as by exhortation; so that Christians still rude in the faith, and nations still unbelieving, might be drawn by the sweetness of divine love rather than by the austerity of terror. For so did God enrich St. Honorius on earth with a most pure faith, a lovable conversation, and many signs and powers, that as a lamp burning and shining he blazed forth for this kingdom, so that he did away with many errors of heretics ^h, converted innumerable pagans to God, relieved the miseries of many men by praying and consoling, and his whole life shone as a mirror for those desiring to behold it.

[5] worthy of a holy prelate, his death, burial, translation. Sparing to himself and bountiful to the poor of Christ, serving the Lord in the spirit of humility and in the office of all charity, he strove to be numbered among those whom the sentence of Christ beatifies: "Blessed (he says) are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." He was zealous to watch for himself and for all by praying, by singing psalms, by rousing others; to prepare all with himself to meet the Lord: and so from the workhouse of this world he passed to the country of eternal brightness on the day before the Kalends of October in the year of the Lord six hundred and fifty-three, and is buried in the monastery of the apostles Peter and Paul with his fathers. Many years having passed after this, when his relics were being raised from the earth, at the hour when his crypt was opened by the digging hoe, so vast a fragrance of most sweet odour at once burst forth that all who were then present at that holy office, sprinkled with that odour, proclaimed the praises of God with great devotion of heart ⁱ.

[6] A detractor of the Saint refuted. A certain envious man disparaged this Saint, preferring to him a certain bishop of worldly opulence who had built up the church of God with many riches and ornaments, whereas of this man ^k there is no trace that he did any such useful thing in his life. When the Prior of that place took this ill on its being reported to him, on the following night there stood in a vision before a certain elder a certain venerable person, shining as brightly as the sun, saying: Why did such a one yesterday wish to tear holy lord Honorius with abusive detraction in preferring the bishop he praised? Why, when these things were reported, did the Prior not answer from the holy Gospel, that before the just Judge the two mites of the poor woman of the Gospel were worth more than all the copious largesses of the rich ^l? Hence therefore it is given to understand how much more precious the poverty of this man was than the riches of the world before the Lord, who is not a tester of gold but of faith. He, spurning the transitory pomp of this world and always desiring the glory of the heavenly kingdom, now reigning with the Lord, ever prays that the Lord may be propitious to us in this world.

ANNOTATIONS.