CHAPTER VI.

HOW THE ENGLISH BECAME CHRISTIANS.

THUS it was that Britain became England, and our fathers now dwelled in the land from the North Sea to the Severn, and from the Channel to the Firth of Forth. Now, as I before told you, the conquest of Britain by the English was not like the conquests made elsewhere by other Teutonic nations; for elsewhere those who came into the land soon learned to speak Latin, and to believe in Christ, if they had not believed in Him before. But in Britain our forefathers still went on speaking their own tongue, and serving their own Gods. But about a hundred and fifty years after they began to settle in Britain, and a very little time after Ceawlin had won his great victories over the Welsh, the English first began to believe in the true faith. But they did not first learn it from the Christians who still were in Britain, for the Welsh were not likely to try to teach the English, nor were the English likely to listen to them if they had tried. And though the Scots helped much in the good work afterwards, they had nothing to do with it at the beginning. Our fathers were first brought to the faith by the teaching of good men who were sent into Britain by Gregory, the Bishop of Rome, in the year 597. "In this year," says the Chronicle, "Gregorius the Pope sent into Britain Augustinus with very many monks, who gospelled God's word to the English folk." 66 'Gospelled," you will see, is the same as "preached" or "taught;" they told them, that is, the Gospel, the good spell or tale, the good news of what God had done and would do for them. Thus far the Chronicle; but Bæda, a monk of Northumberland, who lived from 674 to 735, and who, for his learning and goodness, is commonly called Venerable Bede, tells us a great deal more. You see that Bæda did not live quite at the

time, so that we still cannot be quite certain that we know everything exactly as it happened. Still the story as it is told by Bæda is so famous an one that you ought to know it, and there is no reason at all why it may not be true in the main. Gregory, called the Great, was Pope, that is, Bishop of Rome, the chief Bishop of the Western Church. As Rome was the first city in the world, and as the Roman Emperors were held to be lords of the world, the Church of Rome was naturally held to be the first of all Churches, and the Bishop of Rome to be the first of all Bishops. He was the Patriarch or chief Bishop of the West, as the Bishops of Constantinople or New Rome, of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, were Patriarchs in different parts of the East. And as the Emperors had now quite left Italy and lived at Constantinople, the Pope, or Bishop of Rome, gradually became something more than merely a Bishop. He became the chief man in Rome and in all Italy, and indeed in the whole West, and he had often to act for himself without consulting the Emperor. This happened especially when he had, as he often had, to deal with Kings and nations beyond the borders of the Empire. Thus the Bishops of Rome gradually gained very great power, much more than ever was gained by the Patriarchs of Constantinople, who had the Emperor near to control them. In after times, as you may have heard, the power of the Popes grew greater still, and it was often very badly used, and many abuses were brought into the Church, till at last our own Church and several other Churches found it needful to throw off their obedience to the Pope altogether. But there was nothing of this sort as yet in Gregory's days; the Popes were still only the first Bishops of the Western Church, and they often did a great deal of good by acting as a sort of common father to all the nations, in days when there was so much war and confusion everywhere. Thus it was that the Bishop of Rome was the most natural person to undertake the conversion of the English, or of any other heathen nation in the West, and the more so as Britain had once been a Christian land and a province of the Roman Empire.

The word Pope, Papa, пañâs, simply means father. In the East this name is given to every Priest, but in the West only to the Bishop of Rome.

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Now Bæda tells us that the reason which made Pope Gregory so anxious to make Christians of the English was as follows. Some time before he became Pope (which was in the year 590), perhaps about the year 574, he went one day through the market at Rome, where, among other things, there were still men, women, and children to be sold as slaves. He there saw some beautiful boys who had just been brought by a slave-merchant, boys with a fair skin and long fair hair, as English boys then would have. He asked from what part of the world they came, and whether they were Christians or heathens. He was told that they were heathen boys from the Isle of Britain. Gregory was sorry to think that forms which were so fair without should have no light within, and he asked again what was the name of their nation. "Angles," he was told.1 'Angles," said Gregory; they have the faces of Angels, and they ought to be made fellow-heirs of the Angels in heaven. But of what province or tribe of the Angles are they?" "Of Deira," said the merchant. "De irâ!" said Gregory: "then they must be delivered from the wrath"-in Latin de irâ-" of God. And what is the name of their King?" "Ella." “Ælla ;2 then Alleluia shall be sung in his land." Gregory then went to the Pope, and asked him to send missionaries into Britain, of whom he himself would be one, to convert the English. The Pope was willing, but the people of Rome, among whom Gregory was a priest and was much beloved, would not let him go. So nothing came of the matter for some while. We do not know whether Gregory was able to do anything for the poor little English boys whom he saw in the market, but he certainly never forgot his plan for converting the English people. After a while he became Pope himself. Of course he now no longer thought of going into Britain himself, as he had enough to do ar Rome. But he

1 It must be remembered that in this dialogue, which of course was in Latin, Gregory's sayings take the form of a series of plays upon words, such as we call puns, all of which cannot (though some can) be kept in the English.

2 Elle or Ælla was King of Deira from 559 to 588. The conversation between Gregory and the slave-merchant therefore happened before 588. And it could not have happened before 574, when Benedict the First became Pope, for it was either of him or of his successor Pelagius that Gregory asked leave to go.

now had power to send others. He therefore presently sent a company of monks, with one called Augustine1 at their head, who became the first Archbishop of Canterbury, and is called the Apostle of the English.

This was in 597. The most powerful King in Britain at that time was Æthelberht of Kent, who is reckoned as the third? Bretwalda, and is said to have been lord over all the Kings south of the Humber. This Æthelberht had done what was very seldom done by English Kings then or for a long time after he had married a foreign wife. You know that now Kings and Princes almost always marry foreigners, because they commonly think themselves too great to have anything to do with their own people. But it was not so in the old time. The Old-English Kings almost always married Englishwomen, the daughters either of other English Kings or else of their own nobles; so our Kings then were true Englishmen. But King Æthelberht, for what reason we do not know, had married a foreign wife, the daughter of Chariberht, one of the Kings of the Franks in Gaul. There were at this time several Frankish kingdoms in Gaul, and this Chariberht reigned at Paris. Now the Franks, as you know, were Christians; so when the Frankish Queen came over to Kent, Æthelberht promised that she should be allowed to keep to her own religion without let or hindrance. So she brought with her a Frankish Bishop named Liudhard, and the Queen and her Bishop used to worship God in a little church near Canterbury called Saint Martin's, which had been built in the Roman times. So you see that both

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1 You must take care and not confound Saint Augustine of Canterbury with the other Saint Augustine who, on account of the writings which he left, is reckoned as one of the "Fathers" of the Church. He was Bishop of Hippo in Africa in the fifth century, and is very famous for the books which he wrote. Our Saint Augustine does not seem to have left any writings behind him, except a few letters.

2 Elle of Sussex is reckoned the first, and Ceawlin of Wessex the second.

3 This is the same name as Herbert. In Old-English it is Hereberht, from here, an old word for an army, and berht or briht, a word which we have hardly changed. But in writing the names of the old Frankishi Kings a ch is generally used for our h. Perhaps they sounded it harder than we did.

Æthelberht and his people must have known something about the Christian faith before Augustine came. It does not, however, seem that either the King or any of his people had at all thought of turning Christians. This seems strange whe one reads how easily they were converted afterwards. For one would have thought that Bishop Liudhard would have been more likely to convert them than Augustine, for, being a Frank, he would speak a tongue not very different from English, while Augustine spoke Latin, and, if he ever knew English at all, he must have learned it after he came into the island. I cannot tell you for certain why this was. Perhaps they did not think that a man who had merely come in the Queen's train was so well worth listening to as one who had come on purpose all the way from the great city of Rome, to which all the West still looked up as the capital of the world.

So Augustine and his companions set out from Rome, and passed through Gaul, and came into Britain, even as Cæsar had done ages before. But this time Rome had sent forth men not to conquer lands, but to win souls. They landed first in the Isle of Thanet, which joins close to the east part of Kent, and thence they sent a message to King Æthelberht saying why they had come into his land.1 The King sent word back to them to stay in the isle till he had fully made up his mind how to treat them; and he gave orders that they should be well taken care of meanwhile. After a little while he came himself into the isle, and bade them come and tell him what they had to say. He met them in the open air, for he would not meet them in a house, as he thought they might be wizards, and that they might use some charm or spell, which he thought would have less power out of doors. So they came, carrying an image

1 They brought with them Frankish interpreters out of Gaul. Perhaps these men may have known English, or it may be that there was still so little difference between Old-English and the Old-German which the Franks spoke, that men of each tongue could understand the other. But in any case the Queen and her Bishop would understand them. They must also have understood Latin, or Augustine could not have made any use of them. Of course any priest, or any man of any education, in Gaul at this time would speak both Latin and German. It must be remembered that all intercourse between Augustine and the English, for some time at least, must have been through these interpreters.