VI. 597. rmed their mass, and preached till they made CHA P. veral converts, whom they baptised. The imression spread, till at length the king was affected, ad became himself a Christian. 10 In no part of he world has Christianity been introduced in a nanner more suitable to its benevolent character. THE peculiar form of this religion, which Gregory and Augustin thus introduced, was of ourse that system which Rome then professed. It was the best system which had been recognised at Rome; and it could not be better than that age, or the preceding times were capable of receiving or framing. It was a compound of doctrines, ritual, discipline, and polity, derived partly from the Scriptures, partly from tradition, partly from the decisions and orders of former councils and popes, and partly from popular customs and superstitions, which had been permitted to intermix themselves. But such as it was, it was the most useful form that either its teachers or the then intellect of the world could furnish. Nor is it clear that its new converts would have relished or understood any purer system. The papal clergy were then the most enlightened portion of the western world; and the system which they preferred must have been superior to any that the barbaric judgment could have provided. THE pope continued his attentions to his infant church. He sent Augustin the pall, the little addition to his dress which marked the dignity of an archbishop, with a letter of instructions on the formation of the English hierarchy, with several 10 Bede, c. 26. III. 597. 13 BOOK MSS. of books ", ecclesiastical vessels, vestments, and 12 ornaments, and several religious persons to assist him, who were afterwards active in the conversion of the rest of the island. Augustin restored from its ruins another British church at Canterbury, which had been built in the Roman times, and began the erection of a monastery. The king sanctioned and assisted him in all that he did; and afterwards became distinguished as the author of the first written Saxon laws, which have descended to us, or which are known to have been established; an important national benefit, for which he may have been indebted to his Christian teachers, as there is no evidence that the Saxons wrote any compositions before. Gregory sent into the island 11 Bede, c. 29. p. 70. Wanley has given a catalogue of the books sent by Gregory. These were, 1st. A Bible, adorned with some leaves of a purple and rose colour, in two volumes, which was extant in the time of James the First. 2d. The Psalter of St. Augustin, with the Creed, Pater Noster, and several Latin hymns. 3d. Two copies of the Gospels, with the ten Canons of Eusebius prefixed; one of which Elstob believed to be in the Bodleian library, and the other at Cambridge, p. 42. 4th. Another Psalter with hymns. 5th. A volume containing legends on the sufferings of the apostles, with a picture of our Saviour in silver, in a posture of blessing. 6th. Another volume on the martyrs, which had on the outside a glory, silver gilt, set round with crystals and beryls. 7th. An exposition of the Epistles and Gospels, which had on the cover a large beryl surrounded with crystals. Augustin also brought Gregory's Pastoral Care, which Alfred translated. See Elstob, p. 39-43., and Wanley, 172., whose description is taken from Thomas de Elmham, a monk of Augustine's abbey, in the time of Henry the Fifth. See also Cave, Hist. Lit. p. 431. 12 A list of the vestments, vessels, relics, &c., sent by Gregory is added to Elstob, from Wanley's communication, App. 34-40. 13 Bede, lib. i. c. 33. "many manuscripts," and thus began its intel- CHA P. lectual as well as religious education. 14 SEVEN years after Augustin's successful exertions in Kent, he appointed two of the persons that arrived last from Rome, Mellitus and Justus, to the episcopal dignity, and directed them to the kingdom of Essex. Sabert, the son of Ethelbert's sister, was then reigning. The new religion was favourably received; and Ethelbert, to whose superior power the little state was subject, began the erection of St. Paul's church at London, its metropolis. 15 AUGUSTIN did not long live to contemplate the great advantages which he had introduced into England. He died the year of his mission into Essex. Ethelbert survived him eleven years. His son Eadbald restored the Saxon paganism in Kent, and drove out the Christian ecclesiastics. The three sons of Sabert imitated him in Essex. But this persecution was of a short duration. A simple contrivance of Laurence, the successor of Augustin, affected the mind of Eadbald with alarm. He appeared before the king, bleeding from severe stripes; and boldly declared that he had received them in the night from St. Peter, because he was meditating his departure from the island. The idea was exactly level with the king's intellect and superstition. A strong sensation of fear that the same discipline might be inflicted, by the same invisible hand, on himself, changed his feelings, and he became a zealous friend to the new faith. The exiled bishops were recalled, and the old Saxon rites were abolished for ever in Kent and Essex. 16 LAURENCE enjoyed his triumph but two years; 15 Bede, lib. ii. c. 3. 14 Bede, lib. i. c. 29. VI. 604. III. 604. BOOK and, on his death, Mellitus, who had converted Essex, received his dignity: a man of noble family, and of such an active spirit, that the gout, with which he was severely afflicted, was no impediment to his unabated exertions for the mental and moral improvement of the Saxon nation. All these early prelates enjoyed their rank but for a brief period. In five years he died, and Justus, his friend and companion from Rome, was made his successor. As Gregory had chosen the men who were best adapted to accomplish his purpose, it is probable that those he selected were advanced in life. 17 17 Bede, lib. ii. c. 7, 8. CHAP. VII. Expedition of the EAST ANGLIANS to the RHINE. EDWIN's Asylum in VII. THE HE kingdom of East-Anglia becomes remark- CHAP. able by an incident which Procopius has preserved, and which occurred in the sixth century. ExpediIt exhibits the adventuring spirit of our early Saxon East Anprinces. BETWEEN the Rhine and the Northern Ocean, the Varni inhabited.' Their king solicited a princess of East Anglia for his son, and the hand of the lady was promised. On his death-bed it occurred to him, that an alliance with the Francs, his neighbours, would be more profitable to his people than the friendship of the Angles, who were separated from the Varni by the sea. In obedience to the political expediency, Radiger, the prince, married his father's widow, his step-mother, because she was sister of Theodebert the Franc. The rejected East Anglian would not brook the indignity; she demanded revenge for the slight, because in the estimation of her countrymen the purity of female chastity was sullied if the maiden once wooed was not wedded. Her brother and the East Anglian warriors thought her quarrel just; a large fleet sailed from England under her auspices, The editor of the great collection des Historiens des Gaules, Paris, 1741, remarks (referring to Valesius), that Procopius erred when he placed the Varni on the right bank of the Rhine, and that he is more credible when he places them nearer the Danes, vol. ii. p. 42. tion of the glians to the conti nent. 534—547. |