Lives and legends of the English bishops and kings, mediaeval monks, and other later saints

Front matter

L

CORNELL

UNIVERSITY

Preface

It would be impossible to over-estimate the interest and importance of the history of the Church, as reflected in the lives of its noblest members, between the seventh and eighteenth centuries, during which, in spite of all the political and social changes continually taking place, the light of the true faith was kept burning by generation after generation of holy men and women, who, however much they may have differed in race, in character, and in position, were alike in their devotion to the Master they all served, and their readiness to lay down their lives for Him.

A very noteworthy feature of the first half of the period treated in this, the third and last volume of 'The Saints in Christian Art,' is the great number of Anglo-Saxons who have been admitted to the hierarchy of the saints. To this fact due prominence has been given, although, unfortunately, there exist but few works of art in which they are introduced, the result, of course, to a great extent, of the ruthless destruction after the Reformation of all that could recall the memory of the men who had upheld the rights of the Church, but still more to there having been no national school of religious art in England, such as was so long the glory of Italy, and in a minor degree of Germany and of the Netherlands.

Beginning with the first Bishops of Canterbury, the narrative in the present volume passes on to tell of the great work, in the North of England, of Saints Pauhnus and Aidan, aided by their royal converts Saints Edwin and Oswald, and of their successors,

VI

PREFACE

Saints Wilfrid, Chad, and Ciithbert ; after which are noticed the Saints of British origin who went forth to preach the Gospel to the fierce heathen of Northern Europe. Special chapters are devoted to the great Anglo-Saxon Abbesses, who had so important an influence over contemporary society, and to the royal Saints of the tenth and eleventh centuries, who set such noble examples to their subjects, more than one falHng a martyr to his zeal for the Christian religion. To the great Archbishops Saints Dunstan, Alphege, Lanfranc, and Anselm, in view of their widespread influence, a large amount of space is assigned, whilst the less highly-placed Bishops, such as Saints Oswald of Worcester, Ethel wold and Swithin of Winchester, Hugh of Lincoln, and many others, are grouped together in chronological sequence.

In the second half of the book the interest is transferred to Italy, where, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, were inaugurated the various Reformed Benedictine Orders that paved the way for the great religious revival of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, in which Saints Francis and Dominic led the way, ably seconded by their enthusiastic followers : Saints Antony of Padua and Bonaventura, Saints Peter Martyr and Thomas Aquinas, with others less celebrated.

The examination of the noble works of art inspired by the life-stories of these, the very elite amongst the Saints, who were fortunate enough to be the contemporaries of Giotto, Fra Angelico, and Fra Bartolommeo, is succeeded by an account of the remarkable group of men who founded the Carmelite and Servite Orders. These in their turn give place to the many noble men and women who, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, kept up the noble traditions of the thirteenth century, combining in a remarkable degree intellectual culture with zeal for a holy life ; Saints Catherine and Bernardino of Siena, especially, having brought about many social as well as religious reforms in their native land.

PREFACE vii

The close of the fifteenth century was marked by a great falHng-off in the number of men and women who have been accounted Saints, and it was not until long after their deaths that the great leaders of thought, Saints Ignatius Loyola, Francis Borgia, Carlo Borromeo, and their less well-known contemporaries, such as Saints Filippo Neri, Louis Bertrand, John of God, and others, were canonized ; so that, although they had the privilege of living in the golden age of painting and sculpture, they have not been made the subject of any great masterpieces of painting or sculpture. Before the end of the century the decadence of religious art had set in, and Rubens is the only really great master who has chosen to represent scenes from the life of the founder of the Jesuits.

The general plan followed in the third is the same as that in the previous volumes of the ' Saints in Christian Art '; that is to say, the historical facts are first given, then the legends which have gathered round the nucleus of truth are related, the general characteristics by which a Saint may be recognised are enumerated and explained, the patronage assigned to him or her, with its reason, is stated, and examples are given of typical works of art in which the Saint under notice is introduced, either as a principal or an accessory figure.

Amongst the groups of less celebrated Saints will be found many of whom very little is really known, yet whose humble lives teach some good though simple lesson, and whose name has been saved from complete oblivion by some quaint effigy or inscription. The rule observed throughout has been to include every Saint to whom a special emblem has been given, and in the case of those of English birth, or whose work was done in England, it has been thought useful to include references to the churches dedicated to them, which are often almost their only memorials.

In selecting the illustrations, it has been thought well to include amongst the many familiar masterpieces of the past

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PREFACE examples of the work of such gifted modern interpreters of rehgious subjects as Ford Madox Brown, Sir Edward Burne- Jones, and M. Olivier Merson. The ' St. Edith of Polesworth,' one of a series of designs for a stained-glass window never yet executed, is indeed a noble presentment of a noble theme, whilst the ' St. Isidore ' and ' St. Hedwig ' of the great French master are full of the spiritual insight into things unseen, which is, alas ! becoming ever rarer and rarer. Of very great interest also are the quaint ' Scenes from the Life of St. Neot,' from a sixteenth-century window in Cornwall, and the figure of St. Alphege, from one in the church named after him at Greenwich, which may be usefully compared with the ' St. Frideswide ' window, by Sir Edward Burne- Jones, of Christ Church, Oxford. It may perhaps also serve to suggest to modern designers of ecclesiastical decoration, who are weary of the constant repetition of hackneyed subjects, how fresh and inexhaustible a storehouse of inspiration is at their command in the lives of their saintly fellow countrymen and countrywomen of the past.

NANCY BELL.

Southbourne-on-Sea, December, 1903.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. THE FIRST BISHOPS OF CANTERBURY - - - I

II. SAINTS PAULINUS, EDWIN, AIDAN, AND OSWALD- - II

Chapter I The First Bishops Of Canterbury

Although few, if any, of the great masters of painting or of sculpture have chosen to represent the early Churchmen of Great Britain, or, with rare exceptions, to give scenes from their lives and legends, no account of the Saints in connection with art could be considered complete, without some reference to the men to whom the cause of Christianity in the West owes so deep a debt of gratitude, and whose influence has left so indelible a mark on every branch of human culture. To their enthusiasm was mainly due, not only the rapid growth of the spiritual kingdom of Christ, but also the foundation of the great cathedrals, minsters, and abbeys which were amongst the outward and visible signs of that growth. Poems in stone they may well be called, by many craftsmen of varying temperaments, but all imbued with one desire ; the promotion of the glory of God, and all alike content to live and die unknown if only their work might endure.

St. Augustine, who saved from destruction that unique survival of Roman times, St. Martin's Church at Canterbury, the modern windows of which commemorate various incidents of his career ; St. Paulinus, the first Bishop of York, and the Apostle of East Anglia ; his successor, St. Wilfrid, the restorer of York Minster and builder of a noble church at Hexham, of which the beautiful crypt still remains beneath the ruins of a later building ; St. Benedict Biscop, founder of the Abbey of Wearmouth, and the first to introduce stained-glass windows into English churches; St. Aidan, the evangelizer of Northumbria; St. Cuthbert of Lindisfarne, the shepherd-poet, the

VOL. III. I friend, and adviser of Saints Edwin and Oswald, whose name is still revered in the vast diocese he ruled so well ; St. Chad, the much-loved Bishop of Lichfield, whose shrine is still one of the treasures of its cathedral ; with many others less celebrated, all influenced the ecclesiastical architecture of their time, and are many of them commemorated in the sculptures and windows of churches erected long after they had passed away.

Amongst these pioneers of faith and worship precedence must be given to St. Augustine of Canterbury, not merely on account of his individual character or of the work he did, but also because of his association with the city which long before his arrival in Thanet had been the cradle of Christianity in Kent, the oldest kingdom of the Heptarchy, and since his death has remained the spiritual metropolis of England, the headquarters of the chief Primate of the English Church.

Of the early life of St. Augustine next to nothing is known, beyond the fact that he had been for some years Prior of the Benedictine Monastery of St. Andrew at Rome, before he was chosen by St. Gregory the Great as leader of the mission to England, which was to have such great and far-reaching results. As is well known, St. Gregory* had taken a special interest in the land of the Angles ever since, when he was still a young deacon, he had noticed the fair-haired slaves in the market-place, apropos of whom he made the celebrated series of plays upon words quoted in every account of the incident. ' Rightly,' he had said, ' are they called Angles, for they have the faces of angels, and are meet to be fellow-heirs with the angels in heaven ; well it is that their land is named Deira, for from the ire {de ira) of God shall they be rescued and called to the mercy of Christ ; and fitly is their King named J211a, for Alleluia shall be sung in Ella's land !'

Straight from the slave-market St. Gregory went to the Pope, and entreated him to send a mission to Britain, offering to go himself as leader if he were counted worthy, and when consent was given, he started at once with a few followers who shared his own enthusiasm. He had not, however, gone far, when he was recalled to Rome, for he had already so won upon the affections of his fellow-citizens that on his absence becoming

* For account of St. Gregory see vol. ii., pp. 290-300.

FIRST BISHOPS OF CANTERBURY 3

known a great tumult had arisen. The people had rushed upon the Pope as he was on the way to church, crying aloud that St. Peter would never forgive him for sending their dear Gregory away, and messengers were immediately despatched to bring the wanderer home. Reluctantly St. Gregory was compelled to abandon all hope of himself going to preach the Gospel to the fair-haired Angles to whom he had taken so great a fancy, but he never lost his strong desire to bring them into the fold, and when he became Pope, some fifteen years later, he at once set to work to pave the way for their evangelization. He began by sending instructions to a trusted priest in Gaul to buy young Angles that they might be instructed in the faith and sent back to teach their fellow-countrymen.

Meanwhile, a far more potent influence than could be that of any distant Pope had been at work in England. Some years before the famous interview in the market-place between the Roman deacon and the English slaves. King Ethelbert of Kent had married a Christian Princess, Bertha, daughter of the Prankish King Charibert, who had made the bridegroom promise never to interfere with his wife's religion. To Queen Bertha and to her chaplain, whose name is variously given as Leonard, Lindhard, and Liupard, is really due the credit of sowing the seed of the Gospel in Kent, or, to be more strictly accurate, of reviving the faith in Christ, which had grown cold in Southern England, for there is no doubt that when King Ethelbert brought home his bride, the Church of St. Martin's at Canterbury was already in existence. It was, indeed, the royal marriage which gave to St. Gregory the Great the opportunity he had long sought, and he lost no time in availing himself of it. He determined to send a small party of missionaries to England, and he chose as their leader the young Prior of the Monastery of St. Andrew in Rome, who had already distinguished himself as an eloquent preacher.

It seems to have been with some reluctance that St. Augustine accepted the arduous post assigned to him, for diffidence of his own powers was from the first one of his most marked characteristics. He could not, however, do otherwise than obey, and the little band set forth on their long journey with no weapon but the cross, with which to conquer all the obstacles on their way. They had not proceeded far, when their courage seems to have failed them, and St. Augustine went back to Rome to beg St. Gregory to release them from their task, for he declared it was beyond their strength. The Pope, though he received the messenger kindly, would not hear of any drawing back, and bade him return to his companions at once. He gave him, moreover, most careful written instructions, and St. Augustine, his faith and courage strengthened by his interview with the Head of the Church, set forth anew, determined to lay down his life rather than show any further sign of wavering. Henceforth the finely tempered courage, so often the result of conquered fear, never again failed him. He so cheered and encouraged his monks as to imbue them with his own enthusiasm, and on his arrival in Britain was rewarded by finding that the dangers and difficulties supposed to await him had been very greatly exaggerated. Instead of savages of uncouth manners and barbarous speech, he found a courteous ruler, whose noble wife had already predisposed him to listen to the truth, surrounded by thanes of stately bearing, ready to welcome the strangers kindly, simply because they were strangers, and to extend to them an ungrudging hospitality.

As soon as King Ethelbert heard of the arrival of the missionaries in the Isle of Thanet he gave orders that all necessaries should be supplied to them, and a few days later he went to visit them, attended by his Court. The important interview which ensued took place in the open air, because, it is said, the King feared that St. Augustine might cast some spell on him if he received him under a roof, although the probability is that there was no building in the neighbourhood capable of holding all who had a right to be present. In any case the meeting must have been a most beautiful and imposing sight. The monks in their long black robes, led by St. Augustine, advanced in solemn procession, chanting a litany, a silver cross and a picture of the Redeemer painted on a board borne aloft before them, to take up their position on the greensward of the chalk down, where the English were awaiting them. Then, after greetings had been exchanged between the monarch and the envoy from Rome, permission was given to the latter to address the assembled multitude. Unfortunately, the sermon which followed, and was translated by an interpreter as it was delivered, has not been preserved. All that is known is that it was a very long one, and that it was listened to with respectful

FIRST BISHOPS OF CANTERBURY 5

attention by the King and his thanes. When it was ended and St. Augustine craved to hear from Ethelbert's own hps what he thought of the message delivered to him, the astute monarch repHed : ' Your words are fair, but they are new and of doubtful meaning.' For himself, he went on to say, he would not forsake the religion of his fathers, but, with enlightened hberality, he gave the missionaries full leave to win as many as they could to their belief, ' seeing that they themselves declared the service of Christ should be voluntary, not by compulsion.' Moreover, he assigned several houses in Canterbury to the new-comers, gave orders that all their wants should be supplied, and promised to hear their leader again later.

Charmed with this unexpectedly generous reception, St. Augustine earnestly thanked the King for his goodness, and joyfully led his little band to their new quarters, followed, no doubt, by a crowd of English spectators, eager to learn more of the strangers who had come so far to dwell amongst them. As they wound their way across the downs and marshes between the Isle of Thanet and their new home, the cross ever before them, the monks, relieved of all their terrors, sang together the pathetic refrain, ' Turn from this city, O Lord, Thine anger and wrath, and turn it from Thy holy house, for we have sinned,' bursting out every now and then into a glad shout of 'Alleluia!' thus fulfilling the prophecy made so long ago by the chief who had sent them forth.

Arrived in Canterbury, the monks at once began, says Bede, ' to imitate the course of life practised in the primitive Church, applying themselves to frequent prayer, watching and fasting, preaching the word of life to as many as they could, receiving only their necessary food from those they taught, living themselves in all respects conformably to what they prescribed to others, always disposed to suffer any adversity, and even to die, for that truth which they preached.'

In spite of the proverbial stubbornness of the men of Kent, the steadfast consistency of the missionaries gradually won upon the most obdurate, and on Whitsun Eve, 597, some six years after their first arrival. King Ethelbert himself was baptized by St. Augustine, probably in St. Martin's Church. The conversion of the monarch was, as a matter of course, succeeded by that of many of his subjects. The little sanctuary where Queen Bertha and her few Christian attendants used to worship could no longer hold the ever-increasing congregation, and, with the consent of the King, St. Augustine converted the temple in which the Court had long done honour to the heathen gods, into a Christian church, naming it St. Pancras, after the boy martyr of Rome, whom he had always greatly venerated.* Later he consecrated anew, in the name of our Holy Saviour, God and Lord, Jesus Christ, a ruined building said to have been used for worship by Roman Christians, which in course of time developed into the iine church destroyed by fire in 1067, and replaced by the beautiful cathedral, now the chief glory of Canterbury. Out of the ruins of the Benedictine priory originally connected with the earlier church grew the famous King's School, founded by Henry VIII., and the remains of St. Augustine's own abbey were converted into an Anglican missionary college fifty years ago, so that the work inaugurated by the great pioneer of Christian education in England, may be said to have been continued almost without a break to the present day.

It was not until after the conversion and baptism of King Ethelbert that St. Augustine was consecrated Bishop ; but as soon as that important event had taken place, he received instructions from Rome to go to Aries, there to receive the episcopal dedication from the hands of Virgilius, then the Apostolic Legate of Gaul. On his return to England after a brief absence, St. Augustine, now armed with fresh powers, continued the work so auspiciously begun, daily adding many new converts to the Church, and sending forth many eager missionaries to outlying districts. Unfortunately, in spite of his having so convincingly proved his ability to judge for himself, he was still continuously hampered with instructions from Rome, and never ventured to take any important step without writing to St. Gregory for instructions. This, of course, caused many delays and misapprehensions, with the result that scant justice has been done by some historians to the memory of St. Augustine. In obedience to orders from Rome, he left his beloved Canterbury to seek an interview with the representatives of the British Christians of the West, with a view to promoting the unity of the Church, or, in other words, to bring the infant community under the control of the See of

* See vol. ii., p. 64.

FIRST BISHOPS OF CANTERBURY 7

Rome. It is related that the Western Bishops laid a kind of plot against their newly-consecrated brother, deciding that if at the meeting he rose to receive them, they would listen to what he had to say, but that if he remained seated they would circumvent his wishes by every means in their power.

Exactly where the all-important gathering took place is not known, but it is supposed to have been on the site of the present Aust, in Gloucestershire, or on that of Cricklade, in Wiltshire. In any case, it was in the open air beneath a wide-spreading oak that the prelates gathered together to hear what the messenger from Rome had to say. St. Augustine, who arrived first, awaited the coming of the Welsh Bishops surrounded by his attendants, and, considering himself the representative of St. Gregory, he did not rise to greet the later comers. After this unfortunate beginning, it is little wonder that the succeeding conference was a stormy one. There were three points on which the Archbishop had instructions to insist : Easter was to be kept in accordance with the Roman custom ; baptism was to be administered as in the Church of Rome; and the Celtic Bishops were to co-operate with the missionaries from Italy in the conversion of the heathen. St. Augustine, in spite of all his eloquent pleading, was defeated on all three questions, and the conference broke up without any results having been achieved, except the unfortunate one of the conversion of the two bodies of Christians in the British Isles from lukewarm friends into open enemies.

Considerably cast down at the issue of his journey, St. Augustine returned to Canterbury, there to resume the work of organization of the Church for which he was so admirably fitted. Before his death, which took place soon afterwards, he had completed the conversion of Kent and inaugurated that of East Anglia. St. Mellitus was consecrated Bishop of London, and St. Justus of Rochester, whilst many new churches were founded in outlying districts. As a rule, St. Augustine was everywhere courteously received, but the story goes that the men of Rochester, or, according to another version, those of Dorchester, would not at first listen to his preaching, but pelted him with fishes' tails. For this insult the holy man is said to have revenged himself in a very unworthy manner, praying God that the children of his persecutors should henceforth be born with fishes' tails ; and, in spite of the wildly improbable nature of the legend, a heated controversy has been waged as to when and how the curse was removed. Moreover, the news of the discomfiture of the men of Rochester spread far and wide, and in course of time it became customary amongst the people of Gaul to speak of all Englishmen as caudati, or tailed. Kentish longtails became a term of reproach freely applied by the French and the Scotch to the English, and at one time ' Longtails and Liberty ' was accepted as a motto by the descendants of the offenders themselves.

Of the closing hours of St. Augustine's life nothing is known except that he breathed his last peacefully on May 26, 604, the year of the death of St. Gregory the Great. Before the end he named his fellow-worker Laurentius or Lawrence his successor in the See of Canterbury, so that, to quote his own words, ' the infant Church might not be destitute of a pastor even for a short time.' St. Augustine was buried at first, as was still customary in England in the seventh century, by the side of the road leading into Canterbury, but a few years later his remains were translated to the newly completed Abbey of Saints Peter and Paul, on the site of the present St. Augustine's College.

Although representations of St. Augustine are rare, he appears occasionally in old stained-glass windows, as in one in the Cathedral of Oxford, in which he holds his pastoral staff and is preaching to his monks. He is also, of course, included in the modern representations of the English Bishops which it has lately become the fashion to introduce in churches. In the great south window of Lichfield Cathedral, for instance, he is seen between Saints Chad and Aidan, and in the north-west window of Bristol Cathedral he is placed beneath Christ and the Apostles, with a fourteenth-century Abbot on either side of him. The scenes from the life of St. Augustine in the modern windows of St. Martin's Church, referred to above, include his landing at Ebb's Fleet, the procession to Canterbury after the first interview with King Ethelbert, the baptism of that ruler, and Queen Bertha worshipping in the old St. Martin's Church.

To make up for the paucity of actual representations of the great missionary of Kent, many traditional sites are reverenced in the districts evangelized by him. A beautiful cross erected by Lord Granville in 1884 marks the spot on which he is supposed to have stood when he preached his first sermon to King Ethelbert; in the cornfields adjoining the ruins of the Roman Castle of Richborough, near to which there used to be

FIRST BISHOPS OF CANTERBURY 9

a little church dedicated to the first Bishop of Canterbury, are various strange markings known in olden times as St. Augustine's Cross; and at Cerne Abbas in Dorsetshire is a spring still called St. Augustine's, which is said to have sprung up at the feet of the holy man, when, needing water to baptize a number of converts, he struck the ground with his staff. Of the many churches dedicated in the British Isles to St. Augustine, the greater number probably belong to the Bishop of Hippo ; but some few, notably those in towns such as Alston in Cumberland, where the fete-day of St. Augustine of Canterbury was long celebrated by the holding of a fair, were no doubt originally named after him.

St. Lawrence of Canterbury, the successor of St. Augustine, had come to England with him, and had been one of his chief helpers in the arduous work of the evangelization of Kent. He was of Italian birth, and appears to have been a man of considerable culture, but little strength of character. The enthusiasm for the new religion began to wane in his diocese almost immediately after his accession to the episcopal dignity, and on the death of King Ethelbert in 616, thousands of so-called converts reverted to heathenism. Eadbald, the feeble son of the first Christian King, openly scoffed at his father's faith, threatened the missionaries with banishment, and revived the old sacrifices to the gods in Canterbury. Instead of boldly standing up for the right, as his great predecessor would have done, St. Lawrence weakly resolved to abandon his post, and is said to have been on the point of starting for Rome, when he was saved from that act of desertion by a dream in which St. Peter appeared to him, upbraided him for his cowardice, and scourged him so severely that when he awoke he found his shoulders covered with weals. Thoroughly ashamed of himself, he now resolved to remain in Canterbury, and having obtained an interview with the young King, he showed him his wounds, telling him by whom they were inflicted. This so terrified Eadbald that he entreated the Bishop to baptize him, promising, moreover, to do all in his power to win his subjects back to what he now felt must be the true faith. St. Lawrence, who on account of his strange vision is sometimes associated in art with St. Peter, died soon after the reconversion of the men of Kent, and was succeeded by St. Mellitus, who had been consecrated Bishop by St. Augustine.

The new Primate is chiefly celebrated on account of the beautiful legend to the effect that, on the eve of the consecration of a Httle church founded by his convert, King Sebert, in Thorney Isle, where Westminster Abbey now stands, a fisherman named Edric, who was watching his nets in the river, saw St. Peter himself, attended by angels, go through the whole ceremony of consecration. When St. Mellitus and his clergy came the next day to the spot, Edric told them what he had seen, and the truth of the story was proved by many different signs, such as crosses on the walls, and wax which had fallen from the candles of the angels, on the floors. The Bishop accepted the situation, and merely changed the name of the island to Westminster. In memory of the supernatural incident, a tithe of the fish taken in the Thames was given to the Abbey until late in the fourteenth century, and the messenger who brought it was allowed to eat for one day at the Abbot's table.