servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things; enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.' [Matt. xxv. 21.] And we, most beloved brothers, premising these words of exhortation for the sake of eternal charity, do not hesitate further to grant those things which we perceive to be suitable for the privileges of your churches.

§ 142. "Wherefore, pursuant to your request, and to that of the kings our sons, we do by these our present precepts, in the name of St. Peter, prince of the apostles, grant you authority, that when the Divine Grace shall call either of you to Himself, the survivor shall ordain a bishop in the room of him that is deceased. To which effect also we have sent a pall to each of you, beloved, for celebrating the said ordination; that by the authority of our precept, you may make an ordination acceptable to God; because the long distance of sea and land that lies between us and you, has obliged us to grant you this, that no loss may happen to your church in any way, on account of any pretence whatever, but that the devotion of the people committed to you may be more fully extended. God pre serve you in safety, most dear brother! Given the third of the ides [11th] of June, in the twenty-fourth year of the reign of our most pious emperor, Heraclius, and the twenty-third after his consulship; and in the twenty-third year of his son Constantine, and the third after his consulship; and in the third year of the most illustrious Cæsar, his son Heraclius; in the seventh indiction; that is, in the year of the incarnation of our Lord 634."

CHAP. XIX. [A.D. 634.]—HOW THE AFORESAID HONORIUS FIRST, AND AFTERWARDS JOHN, WROTE LETTERS TO THE NATION OF THE SCOTS, CONCERNING AS WELL THE OBSERVANCE OF Easter, as the PELAGIAN HERESY.

§ 143. THE same pope Honorius also wrote to the nation of the Scots, whom he had found to err in the observance of Easter, as has been shown above, earnestly exhorting them not to esteem their small number, placed in the utmost borders of the earth, wiser than all the ancient and modern churches of Christ throughout the world; and not to celebrate a different Easter, contrary to the paschal calculation, and the synodical decrees of all the bishops upon earth. Likewise John,' who succeeded Severinus, successor to the same Honorius, being yet but pope elect, sent to them letters full of great authority and erudition for correcting the same error; evidently showing, that Easter Sunday is to be found between the fifteenth moon and the twenty-first, as was proved in the Council of Nice. He also in the same epistle admonished them to be careful to crush the Pelagian heresy, which he had been informed was reviving among them. The beginning of the epistle was as follows:

:

§ 144. "To our most beloved and most holy Tomianus,3 Colum

1 Many of the earlier chronologists stumbling at the date here assigned by Beda, endeavoured to amend it; but the accuracy of our historian is now firmly established; see Pagi ad an. 633, § 21, 22.

2 John IV. was consecrated pope, 25 Dec. 640, and was buried 12 Oct. 642. 3 Tomianus Mac Ronan (Annal. iv. Magr. a. D. 660) was bishop of Armagh in

3

banus,' Cromanus,' Dinnaus, and Baithanus,' bishops; to Cromanus, Ernianus, Laistranus,' Scellanus, and Segenus,' priests; to Saranus 1o and the rest of the Scottish doctors, or abbats, health from Hilarius, the arch-priest, and keeper of the place of the holy Apostolic See; John, the deacon, and elect in the name of God; from John, the chief secretary and keeper of the place of the holy Apostolic See, and from John, the servant of God, and counsellor of the same Apostolic See. The writings which were brought by the bearers to pope Severinus, of holy memory, were left, at his death, without an answer to the inquiries contained in them. Lest the obscurity of such intricate questions should remain unresolved, we opened the same, and found that some in your province, endeavouring to revive a new heresy out of an old one, contrary to the orthodox faith, do through ignorance reject our Easter, when Christ was sacrificed; and contend that the same should be kept on the fourteenth moon, with the Hebrews."

By this beginning of the epistle it evidently appears that this heresy sprang up among them of very late times, and that not all their nation, but only some of them, had fallen into the same.

§ 145. After having laid down the manner of keeping Easter, they add this concerning the Pelagians in the same epistle :

"And we have also understood that the poison of the Pelagian heresy again springs up among you; we, therefore, exhort you, that you put away from your thoughts all such venomous and superstitious wickedness. For you ought not to be ignorant how that execrable heresy has been condemned; for it has not only been abolished these two hundred years, but it is also daily condemned and anathematized for ever by us; and we exhort you, now that the weapons of their controversy have been burnt, not to rake up the 630, when the synod of Lethglinn, relative to the celebration of Easter, was held, (Ussher, Antiq. p. 486,) and died in 661; Ann. Tigern. ad an.

1 From the frequency of the name of Columbanus among the Irish, it is not easy to identify this individual; possibly he might be the bishop of Clunirard, who, according to the Ann. iv. Magr. died A.D. 652.

2 In some MSS. of good authority the name is written Cronanus; it, also, is exceedingly common. The individual here mentioned is supposed to have been bishop of Aondroma, who died 7 Jan. 642. Annal. iv. Magr. ad an.

3 Or Dimaus, according to other copies. According to the Annals of Tigernach he died A. D. 659, being then bishop of Connor. The same authority mentions the death of a bishop Dimnaus, whose see is not specified, A.D. 663.

Baithanus, bishop of Techbaithan, or Cluanmacnois, was the disciple of Columba, and is frequently mentioned in Adomnan's life of that saint.

5 This name is written Cronanus, or Croemanus, in MSS. of authority. The Annals of Tigernach, under the year 650, record the death of a person of this name, possibly this same individual.

Or Arnianus. He was a disciple of Columba, and abbot of a monastery built by that saint. Annal. iv. Magr. ad an. 616.

7 In some MSS. Laistronus, or Laustranus. He was abbot of Lethglinn, and took a prominent part in the synod held A.D. 630, relative to the celebration of Easter; Ussher, pp. 484, 485. He died A. D. 639; Annal. Tigern. ad an.; Ussher, p. 486. 8 Probably the "Sillanus episcopus Damhiniensis," whose death is mentioned in Annal. Tigern. as having happened A.D. 659.

9 In MSS. of considerable authority he is called Segianus. He became abbot of Iona in A.D. 623, and is mentioned in Adomnan's Life of Columba. To him Cumman addressed the important epistle "De Controversia Paschali," printed by Ussher in his Sylloge, No. xi. He died A.D. 652; see Ussher, pp. 367, 502.

10 Saranus, abbot of Othna Moire, is mentioned in the Annals of Tigernach, A.D 658.

ashes among you. For who will not detest that insolent and impious proposition, 'That man can live without sin, of his own free will, and not through God's grace?' And in the first place, it is the folly of blasphemy to say that man is without sin, which none can be, but only the Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, who was conceived and born without sin; for all other men, being born in original sin, are known to bear the mark of Adam's disobedience, even whilst they are without actual sin, according to the saying of the prophet, For behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.'” [Ps. li. 5.]

CHAP. XX. [A.D. 633.]-How AEDUIN BEING SLAIN, PAULINUS RETURNS INTO KENT, AND RECEIVES THE BISHOPRIC OF ROCHESTER.

§ 146. AEDUINI reigned most gloriously seventeen years over the nations both of the English and the Britons, six whereof, as has been said, he also was a soldier in the kingdom of Christ. Caedualla,' king of the Britons, rebelled against him, being supported by Penda,' a most warlike man of the royal race of the Mercians, and who himself from that time governed that nation twenty-two years with various success. A great battle being fought in the plain that is called Haethfelth, Aeduini was killed on the 4th of the ides of October [12 Oct.], in the year of our Lord's incarnation 633, being then forty-eight years of age, and all his army was either slain or dispersed. In the same war also, before him, fell Osfrid, one of his sons, a warlike youth; Eadfrid, another of them, compelled by necessity, went over to king Penda, and was by him afterwards, in the reign of Osuald, slain, contrary to his oath.

§ 146. At this time a great slaughter was made in the church and nation of the Northumbrians; and the more so because one of the commanders, by whom it was done, was a pagan, and the other a barbarian, more cruel than a pagan; for Penda, with all the nation of the Mercians, was an idolater, and a stranger to the name of Christ; but Caedualla, though he bore the name and professed himself a Christian, was so barbarous in his disposition and behaviour, that he neither spared the female sex, nor the innocent age of children, but with savage cruelty put the whole of them to tormenting deaths, ravaging all their country for a long time, and resolving to cut off all the race of the English within the borders of Britain. Nor did he pay any respect to the christian religion, which had newly taken root among them; it being to this day the custom of the Britons not to pay any respect to the faith and religion of the English, nor to communicate with them any more than with pagans.3

1 In the Annals of Tigernach he is called Chon, ad an. 631; in the Annales Cambria, (ap. Petrie and Hardy, p. 832,) Catguollaan.

2 Penda, son of Wibba, king of Mercia, succeeded to the throne A. D. 633, (not in 626, as in the Saxon Chronicle,) and died in 655.

3 Now Hatfield, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, Camd. col. 849. This battle is ascribed to A. D. 631, by the Annals of Ulster and Tigernach; to 14 Oct. 633,

by the Saxon Chronicle; and to 10 Oct. 633, by Florence of Worcester. Some MSS. supported by the Saxon version, read "forty-seven."

5 See book ii. ch. 4, § 98.

King Aeduini's head was brought to York, and placed afterwards in the church of St. Peter the apostle, which he had begun, but which his successor Osuald finished, as has been said before.' It was deposited in the porch of St. Gregory the pope, from whose disciples he had received the Word of life.

§ 148. The affairs of the Northumbrians being thus in confusion, by reason of this disaster, without any prospect of safety any where, except in flight, Paulinus, taking with him queen Aedilberge, whom he had before brought thither, returned into Kent by sea, and was very honourably received by the archbishop Honorius and king Eadbald. He came thither under the conduct of Bassus, a most valiant soldier of king Aeduini, having with him Eanfleda, the daughter, Vuscfrea, the son of Aeduini, as also Yffi, the son of Osfrid, his son, whom afterwards the mother, for fear of kings Eadbald and Osuald, sent over into France to be bred up by king Daegberect, who was her friend; and there they both died in infancy, and were buried in the church with the honour due to royal children and to the innocents of Christ. He also brought with him many rich vessels of king Aeduini, among which were a large gold cross, and a golden chalice, dedicated to the use of the altar, which are still preserved, and shown in the church of Canterbury.

§ 149. At that time the church of Rochester had no bishop, for Romanus, the prelate thereof, being sent to pope Honorius, by archbishop Justus, as his legate, was drowned in the waves of the Italian sea; and thereupon, Paulinus, at the invitation of archbishop Honorius and king Eadbald, took upon him the charge of the same, and held it until he ascended up to heaven, with the glorious fruits of his labours; and, dying in that church, he left there the pall which he had received from the pope of Rome. He had left behind him in his church at York, James the deacon, a holy ecclesiastic; who continuing long after in that church, by teaching and baptizing, rescued much prey from the power of the old enemy of mankind; from whom the village, where he mostly resided, near Cataract, has its name to this day. He was extraordinarily skilful in singing in the church, and when the province was afterwards restored to peace, and the number of the faithful increased, he, as a teacher of ecclesiastical chanting, began to instruct many, according to the custom of the Romans, or of the Cantuarians. And being old and full of days, as the Scripture says, he went the way of his forefathers.

1 See § 132.

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2 She became an inmate of the monastery of Liming, in Kent, which was founded for her use by her brother Eadbald; and dying, 10 Sept. 647, was canonized. See Monast. Anglic. i. 452, ed. Ellis.

Dagobert I, king of France, whose brother Charibert was father of Bercta, Adilberga's mother.

4

* Mabillon (Annal. ord. S. Bened. xii. 37) conjectures that they were buried in the church of St. Denis, at Paris.

Probably Akeburgh. See Whittaker's Richmondshire, ii. 21.

6 Smith, in his Appendix, No. xii, gives a short account of the introduction and use of the Gregorian chant in England.

BOOK III.

CHAP. I. [A.D. 633-634.1-HOW KING AEDUINI'S NEXT SUCCESSORS BETRAYED THE FAITH OF THEIR NATION, AND HOW THE MOST CHRISTIAN KING OSUALD RETRIEVED BOTH KINGDOMS.

§ 150. AEDUINI being slain in battle, the kingdom of Deira, to which province his family belonged, and where he first began to reign, devolved on Osric, the son of his uncle Aelfric, who, through the preaching of Paulinus, had also received the sacraments of the faith. But the kingdom of the Bernicians-for into these two provinces the nation of the Northumbrians was formerly divided-was possessed by Eanfrid, the son of Aedilfrid, who derived his origin and the commencement of his reign from that province. For all the time that Aeduini reigned, the sons of the aforesaid king Aedilfrid, who had reigned before him, with many of the youth of the nobility, lived in banishment among the Scots or Picts, and were there catechised according to the doctrine of the Scots, and regenerated by the grace of baptism. Upon the death of the king, their enemy, they were permitted to return home, and Eanfrid, as the first of them, mentioned above, became king of the Bernicians. Both those kings, as soon as they obtained the government of their earthly kingdoms, renounced and betrayed the sacraments of the heavenly kingdom, in which they had been initiated, and again delivered themselves up to be defiled and destroyed by the abominations of their former idols.

§ 151. [A.D. 634.] But soon after, the king of the Britons, Ceadualla, slew them both, through the rightful vengeance of Heaven, though the act was base in him. He first slew Osric, the next summer; for, being rashly besieged by him in a strong town,' he sallied out on a sudden with all his forces, by surprise, and destroyed him and all his army. After this, for the space of a year, he reigned over the provinces of the Northumbrians, not like a victorious king; but like a rapacious tyrant he ravaged and destroyed them; and at length brought to the same end Eanfrid, who unadvisedly came to him with only twelve chosen soldiers, to sue for peace. To this day, that year is looked upon as unhappy and hateful to all good men; as well on account of the apostasy of the English kings, who had renounced the sacraments of their faith, as of the outrageous tyranny of the British king. Hence it has been agreed by all, in their calculations of the reigns of the kings, to abolish the memory of those perfidious monarchs, and to assign that year to the reign of the following king, Osuald, a man beloved by God. He, after the death of his brother Eanfrid, advanced with an army, small, indeed, in number, but strengthened vith the faith of Christ; and the impious commander of the Britons was

Namely, the city of York, styled "Municipium" by Aurelius History of the Cæsars. See Drake's Eboracum, pp. 178, 179.

Victor, in his 2 See § 175.