invited Augustine and his companions to come there to a conference with him. And they, being endowed with divine courage, came, bearing a cross for a standard, and a likeness of our Lord and Saviour depicted on a picture, and chanting litanies for their own salvation, and that of those for whom they had come. And when at the command of the king, they had sat down, they presented the Word of Life to him and to all who had come with him, and he replied saying, "The things which you promise are beautiful but because they are new to me and doubtful I cannot at the moment give my assent to them, forsaking these things which I and my nation have so long preserved. But because you, being foreigners, have come hither from a great distance, and because you have been desirous to communicate to me the things which you yourselves believe to be true and excellent, we are not disposed to deal harshly with you. Nor do we prohibit you from winning over to the faith of your religion, all whom you can influence by preaching." Accordingly, he assigned them an abode in the City of Canterbury, which was the capital of his dominions, where they began to imitate the apostolic life of the primitive church, using continued prayers and fastings, and preaching the Word of God, and bathing all whom they could convince in the laver of salva tion. And immediately many believed and were baptised. On the east there was a church close to the city itself, which had been built in old time in honour of the blessed Martin, in which the Queen, the daughter of the King of France, by name Bertha, had been accustomed to pray, and in which these missionaries began also to meet together and preach and celebrate masses and baptise. And . . . the king himself among them. . . believed and was baptised. He also allotted to the doctors a habitation suitable to their degree in his own metropolis, the City of Canterbury, and he gave them what was necessary for them in their particular. B 12. GREGORY'S ORDERS TO HIS MISSIONARIES [A.D. 597] SOURCE: Henry of Huntingdon, Chronicle, III (Forester). To his most beloved son Mellitus; the Abbott ; Since the departure of those we associated with you, we have been very anxious because no tidings have reached us of the success of your journey. When, however, Almighty God shall have conducted you safely to the most reverend Bishop Augustine, our brother, tell him what, after long deliberation on English affairs, I have determined upon, viz. that the temples of idols in that nation ought by no means to be pulled down; but let the idols that are in them be destroyed; let holy water be consecrated and sprinkled in the said temple; let altars be raised and relics deposited under them. For if these temples are well built it is requisite that they be converted from the worship of devils to the service of the true God; that the people seeing that their temples are not destroyed may cast out error from their hearts, and knowing and adoring the true God, may the more familiarly resort to places at which they have been used to worship. And inasmuch as they have been accustomed to slaughter many oxen in their sacrifices to devils, some solemnity ought to be substituted for this; on the anniversary of the feast of dedication, or the nativities of the holy martyrs whose relics are then deposited, they may erect booths, with the boughs of trees round those churches which have been converted from temples and celebrate the commemoration with religious festivity. Let them no more offer victims to the devil, but slaughter cattle to the praise of God in their entry, rendering thanks in their fulness to the Giver of all things; that so while some fleshly enjoyments are outwardly permitted, they may more readily be moved to inward and spiritual joys. For it is doubtless, impossible to extinguish the desire for such indulgences from obdurate minds, and he who endeavours to mount to a lofty summit, ascends by degrees or steps, and not by leaps. Thus the Lord revealed Himself to the people of Israel in Egypt; but permitting the use of sacrifices He reserved to his own worship what before they were accustomed to offer to devils, commanding them to sacrifice animals in the worship of Himself, to the end that, changing their hearts, one thing in sacrifice they might abolish, another they might retain; that although the animals were the same they were wont to offer, yet now being offered to God and not to idols, the sacrifices were no longer the same. These things beloved we require you to communicate to our brothers aforesaid, that we being now present on the spot may consider how we may order all things. May God have you, most beloved son, in His holy keeping." 13. THE INFLUENCE OF THE CHURCH [circa A.D. 650] SOURCE: Bede, Ecclesiastical History, IV, пI (Giles). Theodore arrived at his church the second year after his consecration, on Sunday, the 27th of May. . . . Soon after, he visited all the island, wherever the tribes of the Angles inhabited, for he was willingly entertained and heard by all persons; and everywhere attended and assisted by Hadrian he taught the right rule of life and the Canonical custom of celebrating Easter. This was the first Archbishop whom all the English Church obeyed. And forasmuch as both of them were, as has been said before, well read both in sacred and in secular literature, they gathered a crowd of disciples, and there daily flowed from them rivers of knowledge to water the hearts of their hearers; and together with the books of holy writ, they also taught them the arts of ecclesiastical poetry, astronomy, and arithmetic. A testimony of which is, that there are still living, at this day some of the scholars, who are as well versed in Greek and Latin tongues as in their own, in which they were born. Nor were there ever happier times since the English came into Britain; for their kings being brave men and good Christians they were a terror to all barbarous nations, and the minds of all men were bent upon the joys of the heavenly kingdom of which they had just heard, and all who desired to be instructed in sacred reading had masters at hand to teach them. From that time also they began in all the churches of the English to learn sacred music, which till then had been only known in Kent, and, excepting James above mentioned, the first singing master in the churches of the Northumbrians was Eddi, surnamed Stephen, invited from Kent by the most reverend Wilfrid, who was the first of the bishops of the English nation that taught the churches of the English the Catholic mode of life. Theodore, visiting all parts, ordained bishops in all places, and with their assistance converted such things as he found faulty. . . Being arrived in the City of Rochester, where the See had been long vacant by the death of Damianius, he ordained a person better skilled in ecclesiastical discipline, and more addicted to simplicity of life than active in worldly affairs. His name was Putta and he was extraordinarily skilful in the Roman style of church music; which he had learned from the disciples of the holy Pope Gregory. . . . A.D. 681. Bishop Wilfrid, when he came into the province (South Saxons), and found so great a misery from famine, taught them to get their food by fishing; for the sea and rivers a ounded in fish, but the people had no skill to take them, except eels alone. The bishop's men, having gathered eel-nets everywhere, cast them into the sea, and by the blessing of God took three hundred fishes of several sorts, which, being divided into three parts, they gave a hundred to the poor, a hundred to those of whom they had the nets, and kept a hundred for their own use. A.D. 731. Such being the peaceable and calm disposition of the times, many of the Northumbrians, as well of the nobility as private persons, laying aside their weapons rather incline to dedicate both themselves and their children to the tonsure and monastic vows, than to studying martial discipline. 14. CÆDMON, THE ENGLISH SACRED POET [a.d. 680] SOURCE: Bede, Ecclesiastical History, IV, XXIV, from the translation by L. Gidley. In the monastery of the abbess [Abbess Hilda of Whitby], was a certain brother especially marked by Divine grace, since he was wont to make songs suited to religion and piety, so that whatever he had learned from the Divine writings through interpreters, this he in a little while produced in poetical expressions composed with the greatest harmony and accuracy, in his own tongue, that is, in that of the Angles. By his songs the minds of many were excited to contemn the world, and desire the celestial life. And, indeed, others also after him in the nation of the Angles attempted to compose religious poems, but none could equal him. For he himself did not learn the art of poetry from men, or by being instructed by man; but, being divinely assisted, received gratuitously the gift of singing, on which account he never could compose any frivolous or idle poem, but those only which pertain to religion suited his religious tongue. For having lived in the secular habit unto the time of advanced age, he had never learned anything of singing. Whence, sometimes at an entertainment, when it was determined for the sake of mirth that all should sing in order, he, |