Odilo of
Bavaria had probably encouraged Grifo in his revolt against Carloman and
Pepin, and afterwards he began a movement for independence.
Bavaria had probably encouraged Grifo in his revolt against Carloman and
Pepin, and afterwards he began a movement for independence.
Cambridge Medieval History - v2 - Rise of the Saracens and Foundation of the Western Empire
According to the most
probable view of evidence, not quite consistent, and not easy to weigh,
Clovis was baptised on Christmas day 496, probably at Rheims*. He
had however been friendly to Christianity even before his conquest of
Syagrius (486), and became naturally more so afterwards. After his
conversion, followed by that of many Franks, he was able as an orthodox
king to reckon on the help or at least the sympathy of Catholic bishops
everywhere: the wars that spread his, power took somewhat the character
of crusades and for three centuries this remained true of Frankish
campaigns against the heathens. Broadly speaking, with the power
of the Frankish kings went the power of the Church, although the
fellowship between the two was sometimes closer, sometimes looser.
As the Frankish power spread into districts less thoroughly Romanised
new sees had to be founded, and even in the more settled lands this
happened also. But a distinction must be made between the new
missionary bishops and the type of bishops already found in the
Romanised cities. Up to the settlement under Boniface (Winfrid,
Bonifatius) or even later we have a time in which both types appear
side by side. As a rule the city bishop owed his appointment to the
State: the missionary bishop to the Church. It is not a. question of
differences between Roman and Keltic clergy, but merely between lands
in which Roman traditions survived, and those where missions started
quite afresh. What Theodore did for England Boniface was to do
for the continental Teyjons.
Local differences were many and strong: in Austrasia heathenism
was more general to begin with and lived on longer. The Frankish
conquests drove together heathens and Christians, and in some places
heathenism gained strength: on the whole, the leading families and
1 See Chaps, iv. v.
1 See Chap. iv. p. 112. For a detailed criticism of the date and references see
Hauck, K. G. D. i. , later edns, pp. 695 f.
## p. 533 (#565) ############################################
eoo] The Keltic Monks 633
the towns were more thoroughly Christianised than the country, which
remained mainly heathen. In some places—like Mainz, Cologne, and
Tongres—Christian communities, sometimes chiefly oriental or foreign,
may have lived on since Roman times and sometimes bishops were left:
in others—like Trier—Christianity was just becoming general when the
Frankish conquest brought in new conditions. Everything depended
upon the centres already gained for Christianity, and across the Rhine
these were few and tended to become fewer. Nearer Italy there were
centres to which Christianity had come from the south, such as Augsburg,
which until about the year 600 was connected with Aquileia. But where
such centres of life were few or Christianity had only begun its growth
the Teutonic invaders could be but little affected by it.
The Keltic missions came to give these new centres, and by a
monastic framework to guard their power. There are some indications
—in the letters of Boniface and elsewhere—that Keltic priests, some of
whom caused him trouble, were more widely spread than we might suppose.
And as Keltic monasteries became stages in systematic pilgrimages to
Rome a steady stream of Christianity was brought to bear upon the
Teutons. The Keltic missionaries were for the most part led to travel
by the wish to live amid new surroundings: they lived among their new
neighbours as strangers, but the evils around them forced them to
become missionaries, and, although Keltic monasticism was ascetic and
rigorous, Keltic monks never feared to plunge into the world and to
play a part there when it seemed good. Frankish Christianity, with its
comparative neglect of penance, seemed to the great missionary Colum-
banus merely superficial: he stood outside the ordinary Frankish Church:
his altar at Luxeuil was consecrated by an Irish bishop, and he had no
episcopal licence for his foundations. Hence the Keltic monasteries
besides being centres of learning strengthened the tendency already
shewn to exempt monasteries from episcopal control1. The difference
about Easter did not of necessity lead to lasting strife, and the
monastic foundations of Columbanus, his comrades and followers, kept
alive upon the Continent the Irish love of learning. As regards the
papal power Keltic tradition and habits belonged to an earlier day when
the papal control had been less effective; this tradition Columbanus
kept and shewed in his defence of the Keltic Easter. But it is a
mistake to take these differences as implying either hostility to the
Papacy or a claim to full independence.
The Keltic monks travelled for the most part in bands of twelve,
but there were other single teachers such as Rupert (Rodbert) a Frank
who towards the end of the seventh century came to Regensburg, the
ducal court of Bavaria, and thence passed into the wild Salzkammergut
1 See Gougaud, Let ChrilienU* Celtiques, p. 220; Hauck, K. 0. D. i. pp. 266 and
310. For Columbanus see Chap. v. of this volume. For Sever in us, vol. i. p. 425.
ch. xvi (b).
## p. 534 (#566) ############################################
534 Frisia [613-647
with its Roman memories and remains; here a monastery, a nunnery and
a church were planted. A like work was also wrought at Regensburg
by Emmeran, although his first hope had been to preach to the Avars.
These isolated endeavours gave new centres of Christian civilisation, but
in later years few traces of them were left. Work on a larger and more
considered plan was needed. But the life of St Severinus (died 482) in
Noricum (Bavaria) shews how far the influence of a hermit could reach
and how great it could be.
Frisia, with its unknown coasts and wild heathenism, soon began
to attract missionaries. The growth of Christianity here had been due
to the Franks and varied with the state of their church: simony and
careless appointments of bishops had been somewhat checked: the
influence of Columbanus had reached far, not only in the south but
even northwards to the Marne: a new and differently trained genera-
tion had grown up, and when the union of the kingdoms under
Chlotar II (613) gave the land rest, the church thus strengthened broke
fresh ground among its neighbours to east and north. Chlotar II had
encouraged Amandus, a hermit of Roman descent from Aquitaine. who
felt himself called by St Peter to distant missions: pilgrimages to Rome
deepened the wish, and after Chlotar had procured his consecration he
worked as a missionary bishop from Ghent as a centre. Hitherto Frisian
merchants had come to the Franks, and Frankish rule had gained
ground upon the borders, but even Maestricht and Noyon, although
bishoprics, were yet partly heathen. Quarrels with King Dagobert, and
banishment for a time (629) turned him to other fields. But both
around Ghent and at Maestricht where he was afterwards bishop (647)
he was unhappy in his work: the enforcement of baptism by royal order
under Dagobert may have been due to his suggestion, and at any rate it
explains his lack of success: spells of work on the Danube, in Carinthia,
at the mouth of the Scheldt and among the Basques varied a strange
career marked by restless energy and much wandering. After his death
a little more ground was gained under the direction of Cunibert of
Cologne, a church was built at Utrecht, and under the well-known
Eligius (bishop of Noyon, 64-1, and renowned as a silversmith) a better
foundation was laid. But the task was left unfinished until the following
century. Frisia was affected by the changes of Frankish politics.
Christian missions were both too fitful and too disconnected. A general
plan and organisation was needed.
In England, as the letter of Daniel bishop of Winchester to Boniface
(Ep. 23) shews, the methods of missions had been carefully thought out,
since the local conditions not only aroused enthusiasm to call forth
missionaries but gave them a training ground for their work. English-
men were learning at this very time what careful organisation and
ordered work could do. They had felt the benefit of fellowship with
Rome and its traditions while they had still the fresh energy of
## p. 535 (#567) ############################################
678-695] WilMbrord 535
younger tribes and growing states. This is the reason why in the
eighth century English missionaries take the place of the earlier Kelts.
And the field of labour seemed already fixed for them: they had
not forgotten the land from which they had come. Wilfrid landed in
Frisia (678) on his way to Rome—in order to avoid the enmity of
Ebroin, mayor of the palace—and stayed there a winter because of the
friendly welcome by Adelgis the king (who refused to sell his guest)
and his people. This was only an episode. Ecgbert, a Northumbrian
who was afterwards to go to Iona, who had lived long in Ireland and
pledged himself to pilgrimage, was hindered by visions and by storms
from a long desired journey to Frisia: in his place he sent a pupil
Wicbert who only stayed two years and then went home again. This
failure only caused Ecgbert to send another mission of twelve monks.
The leader of it, Willibrord, was a Northumbrian whose father Wilgils
in old age became a hermit at the Humber's mouth. He had been
educated up to the age of twenty at Ripon—Wilfrid's old monastic
home—and afterwards in Ireland (c. 678). He landed and went to
Utrecht, now held by Radbod the Frisian king, who must have regained
territory, for Utrecht had formerly been a Frankish town. But Frisia
beyond it was lost to the Franks as the result of a war which was just
ended and had naturally left ill-will behind it. The defeated Radbod
was little likely to favour the faith of his Frankish enemies, and
Willibrord saw a chance of securer work under Frankish protection.
He therefore journeyed to Pepin, who promised him help for a work
which was of interest to both of them. Willibrord shared the enthusiasm
of Wilfrid and Boniface for Rome—and indeed others, the Irish
Adamnan and Ecgbert for instance, were turning towards Rome and
unity. Accordingly Willibrord went to Rome to get consent for his
mission, thus beginning the policy which Winfrid afterwards carried out
on a larger scale.
Success soon made organisation desirable: the monks elected one
Suidbert as their future bishop and he passed across to England to
be consecrated there by Wilfrid. But after his return difficulties seem
to have arisen and the new bishop left Frisia in order to preach to
the Bructeri: a little later we find Pepin, like the earlier kings, taking
the organisation into his own hands and sending Willibrord to Rome
for consecration (22 Nov. 695) as archbishop of a province to include
both Frankish and independent Frisia. Willibrord, who at his con-
secration took the name of Clement, received the pall at Rome, and
from Pepin as his seat Utrecht, where he built a cathedral and
a monastery. A native church began, and soon he felt able to devote
himself to the Frisians in Radbod's territory since Radbod himself
was now friendly to the Franks, and his daughter Theutsind had
married Pepin's son Grimoald. But here Willibrord's success was
small: Radbod was indifferent although not hostile and Willibrord
CH. XVI (b).
## p. 536 (#568) ############################################
536 Winfrid [714-719
went on further to preach to the Danes. Their country too he left and
on his return to Frisia landed on the coast: by venturing to baptise
some converts in a holy well he awoke the anger of the heathen and
they sought to have him put to death by Radbod. The king however
spared his life, but as the hopes of any work among the free Frisians
now seemed hopeless he went back to Utrecht. After Pepin's death
(16 Dec. 714) the quarrel between his sons enabled Radbod to regain
the part of Frisia held by the Franks. The church had gained no real
hold among the natives: Willibrord had left, the priests were put to
flight, and the land once more under the sway of a heathen king
became heathen too. It was now that Winfrid came.
Winfrid was born near Crediton (c. 680) of a noble English family:
after education first in a monastery at Exeter and then at Nutshall
(Nutsall, Netley or Nursling ? ) he was ordained, and employed in
important affairs. But above the claims of learning and the chance of
a great career at home he felt the missionary's call to the wild. From
London he sailed to Frisia (716): here he stayed for part of a year
until on the outbreak of a Frankish war he went back to his West-
Saxon monastery. On the death of his old master Winbert the monks
wished to make him abbot, but his future work lay plain before him
and he refused. He sought letters of commendation from Daniel,
bishop of Winchester—a man of much learning and experience to
whom Bede owed much information—and with these (718) he went
abroad again. But this time passing through Frankland he went to
Rome, to visit the threshold of the Apostles. Here he saw Gregory II,
and from him he received as "Bonifatius1 the religious priest1''—the
name by which he was henceforth known—a letter of commendation
(15 May 719). The journey was a common one for an Englishman of
the day, but Boniface with his strong wish for missionary work reached
Rome when the Papacy was turning towards plans of organisation.
Furthermore between him and the Pope a friendship and even a fellow-
ship began.
Taking this new line of organisation under papal guidance Boniface
went to Thuringia, where the natives, in new seats, and pressed upon by
Franks and Saxons, had partly received and then soon lost Christianity.
To win back their leaders was Boniface's new task: the land was
disordered in politics and religion alike: heathenism was found side by
side with Christianity of strange types. From Thuringia Boniface
started for the Frankish court, but on the way he heard of Rad bod's
death, which might make Frisia a more fruitful field. Already Willi-
brord, working like Boniface himself under papal sanction, had been
consecrated Archbishop of Utrecht, and to his help Boniface now went.
When after a three years' stay Willibrord would have had him as
1 For the name see Loofs, Der Beiname rfe* Apostels der Deuttchen, Z. K. 6. (18ifi),
pp. 623-31, and Hauck, K. G. D. I. p. 458 n. 1.
## p. 537 (#569) ############################################
722] Boniface 537
coadjutor he pleaded the papal command: he sought leave to depart
and passed to Hesse. This was ground more unworked than Thuringia,
for the people had kept their older seats and with them their old
customs, but it might link Saxony to the Frankish Church. So great
was his success—thousands being baptised—that he could soon think of
organising a bishopric. He sent a report to Rome and in reply was
called thither himself. On his way he probably met1 Charles Martel,
and at Rome he was consecrated (St Andrew's day, 722 or less probably
723). At his consecration he took an oath much like that taken by
the suburbicarian bishops, and thus pledged himself to work as a
bishop under papal direction. But by a significant change the promise
of fidelity to the Eastern Emperor was left out and its place taken by
a promise to hold no intercourse with bishops who disobeyed the canons,
to work against them and to denounce them to the Pope. The new
bishop received letters of commendation to all who could help his work
in Germany and especially to Charles Martel. Henceforth Boniface
could depend even more than before upon papal direction, help and
sympathy: we find him, like St Augustine of Canterbury, sending
difficulties to Rome for decision. As he was to build up a church
which was suffering from Keltic disorder and Frankish negligence, a
collection of canons was a natural papal gift to him.
Boniface now begins a new stage of his work, no longer as a mere
missionary pioneer but rather as a missionary statesman in the service
of Rome. For his new plans and his new office state support was
needed. Backed by a letter from Charles Martel, Boniface went to
Hesse to weld together the scattered links of his earlier work. Some
twenty years later he wrote to Daniel of Winchester: "Without the
patronage of the Prince of the Franks I am able neither to rule the
people of the church nor to defend" the priests or deacons, the monks
or nuns: and I am not powerful enough to hinder the very rites of the
pagans and the sacrileges of idols in Germany without his order and the
dread of him. " The boldness he shewed in felling the sacred oak at
Geismar led the heathen to think their gods had lost their power, and
from these successes in Hesse Boniface passed to Thuringia. In each
district he founded schools of learning and of training for his converts:
Amanaburg and Fritzlar in Hesse, Ohrdruff in Thuringia: for women,
Tauberbischofsheim, Kitzingen and Ochsenfurt, three foundations near
the Main. These were founded before his organisation of Bavaria, and
his favourite house Fulda was specially planned to foster Christian
civilisation and to be a monastic model. This side of Boniface's work is
sometimes overlooked in comparison with his ordering of dioceses, but
1 Hauck, i. pp. 463 n. 3 and 464 n. 1.
* Ep. 63, p. 329 (Diimmler). The omission of defendere in one MS. would
make the passage even more emphatic as to the need of state support (as suggested
by Browne, Boniface of Urediton, p. 62).
ch. xvi (b).
## p. 538 (#570) ############################################
538 Organisation of Sees [731-741
the two were really complementary: on the monastic side he entered
into the heritage of the Keltic monks to whom, when there was no
question of disorder or irregularity, he was by no means an enemy.
At Fulda Sturm, a Bavarian of his own training, ruled: there and else-
where helpers from England, some of them bound to Boniface by ties of
blood, and all by kinship in devotion, made new homes for themselves:
Burchard, Lul, Denehard, Willibald, Wicbert among the men: Lioba
and Walpurgis among the women. With England a lively interchange
of letters was kept up: some of his English friends came out to him as
they gradually lost their kinsfolk by death, and others came because of
their love for him. But in either case they helped to strengthen associa-
tions which were of political as well as religious power. Boniface
himself was strong enough to award praise and blame to English kings;
he himself, his comrades and his work gave England some hold upon
continental life.
On the death of Gregory II (11 Feb. 731) Gregory III succeeded,
a true successor in his care for Germany. When Boniface declared to
him that the burden of his growing work was becoming too heavy, the
papal answer was (732) to make him Archbishop, although with no
defined province, so that he could the better call fellow-labourers to his
help. In the few following years we must probably place much of
Boniface's work in furthering his foundations, and some of his letters
of the time shew him turned to reading and study of questions raised
by his pastoral work. But about 735* we find him in Bavaria where
once before the duke Theodo and Gregory II had thought of a church
organisation in the interests both of church and duchy. Hucbert was
now duke under stricter Frankish suzerainty: little had hitherto been
done and Passau was the only see. In Bavaria Boniface now travelled
and taught. But his third visit to Rome (probably 738), caused possibly
by his wish to take up once more his old plans for Frisia, now that
the field of Germany was under cultivation, brought a year's break and
rest. This time Boniface was a great figure both with the Romans and
the pilgrims, so greatly had his renown been spread.
In Bavaria after Hucbert's death (probably 736) Odilo was placed
as duke, a ruler of a different type, less ready to submit to Frankish
direction and a generous patron of the Church. To Bavaria Boniface
went (739), and now he takes a new position, that of legate of Rome:
his appearance as legate1 was followed by the meeting of a Synod and
a division of the duchy into four dioceses: Passau (where Vivilo who
had been consecrated at Rome remained), Regensburg, Salzburg and
Freising. A little later (741) we find Boniface similarly founding another
group of three dioceses for Hesse and Thuringia: Biiraburg, near
Fritzlar, for Hesse, Wurzburg for southern and Erfurt for northern
1 The change is strongly marked in the letters about Bavaria: see Epp. 43, 44,
and 45 (Diimmler): nostrum agentem vicem, says the Pope of Boniface.
## p. 539 (#571) ############################################
741-742] Pope Zacharias 539
Thuringia. Zacharias who had now (3 Dec. 741) succeeded Gregory III
confirmed this division, although like his predecessor advising caution
against erecting too many sees and so lowering the episcopal standard.
But Boniface's personal inspiration found him able helpers: at Biiraburg
an Englishman, Witta, was placed, and at Wlirzburg another, Burchard,
entered upon the heritage of the Keltic Kilian. The protection of
Charles Martel, even if not too eager, had been of great use: his death
(22 Oct. 741) brought about a change in Boniface's work: henceforth it
was to be for the whole of eastern Frankish territory.
Carloman invited Boniface to come and hold a Synod in Austrasia:
in this way discipline, which had been trampled under foot for some
sixty years, could be restored. Boniface was here faced by conditions
such as he had known in Bavaria. His work in Hesse had already
brought to him opposition from Frankish bishops.
But among the Franks church law was widely disregarded and
Boniface found it hard, as he told Daniel of Winchester, to keep the
oath he had sworn to the Pope. If he was to refrain altogether from
intercourse with offending bishops his work would be impossible. There
was no weakening of his allegiance to the Pope, but a new element,
the Frankish State, was now coming more fully into his life and his plans.
The most striking feature in Boniface's career is the way in which
while never waiting for circumstances he was quick to seize each
circumstance and use it to the utmost good. He never lost sight of
any work he had ever planned and begun: if he turned aside for some
pressing need he wove that special work into his general plan, and with
each new field his outlook broadened.
The new pope Zacharias was a Greek from Calabria, a man of
mildness and yet of diplomatic skill: his tone towards Boniface was
somewhat more commanding than that used by previous popes, and the
explanation may be found in his policy towards the Franks, against
whom he for a time played off the Bavarians and Lombards.
Odilo of
Bavaria had probably encouraged Grifo in his revolt against Carloman and
Pepin, and afterwards he began a movement for independence. A papal
envoy is said to have ordered a Frankish army to leave his land1,
but this did not hinder the defeat of the Bavarian duke. The Nordgau
was separated from his duchy and joined to Austrasia. Neuburg on
the Danube became—possibly through some adaptation of Odilo's plans
—a new bishopric and remained so for some two generations. Eichstadt,
where a monastery had already been founded, was made the seat of
another bishopric for a population of mixed descent.
The projected Council for Austrasia met in a place unknown
(21 April 742)a, and began the work of reorganisation. Bishops were to
1 See Hodgkin, Italy and her Invaders, vn. pp. 100 f. and Hauck, K. G. D. i. p. 533.
2 The date is disputed. Early in 742 seems most likely. See Hauck, K. O. D.
i. pp. 618 n. 6 and 520 n. 3; contra Loofs who dates it 743.
ch. xvi (b).
## p. 540 (#572) ############################################
540 Councils [742-747
be consecrated for cities and over them was to be set the archbishop
Boniface, legate (missus) of St Peter: councils were to meet yearly:
the moral standard of the priesthood was to be raised, and the priests
were to be subject to the bishops: bishops or priests who were not
known were not to be allowed to minister and heathen customs were to
be put away. In the place given to Boniface it is best to see a restora-
tion of the metropolitan system, and that this was made by royal power
is significant. Not only the bishops of the older and more settled part
of the realm, Cologne and Strassburg, but also those of Wiirzburg,
Eichstadt, Buraburg and Erfurt, were invited to the Council. To carry
out the reforms laid down was the work of Boniface. In the next two
years many new bishops were appointed, and (1 March 743) a second
Synod met at Estinnes", and here, by the assembly of bishops and leading
laymen, the decrees of 742 were confirmed. In 744 (2 March) a Synod
for Neustria met at Soissons, and a new organisation followed for Pepin's
realm also. The archbishoprics of Rheims, Rouen and Sens were to be
restored, and Boniface, who had acted in close friendly if not official touch
with Pepin, asked the Pope to send three palls for them. But before
Zacharias replied (22 June 744) some change was made in the plans and
Grimo of Rouen alone was to have the pall. This change and some
freedom in Boniface's criticism of papal fees and Roman customs made
the Pope a little angry, but we find him none the less (1 May 748)
commending Boniface his "brother, archbishop, legate of the Holy See
and personal representative" to the bishops—expressly named—of both
the eastern and western Franks. And in an earlier letter (5 Nov. 744)
Zacharias even extended the right of free preaching in the province of
Bavaria which was granted by his predecessor. "And not only for
Bavaria, but for the whole province of the Gauls" he was to use the
office of preaching laid upon him by the Pope for reformation and
edification.
The original plan was for Boniface to be Archbishop of Cologne, and
in this position wield even greater power. To this the Pope had agreed.
But when Gewilip was rightly deposed from Mainz, Carloman and Pepin
(perhaps led by enemies of Boniface at court) appointed Boniface his
successor, and so the see of Mainz (which became an archbishopric in
780) as held by a legate and apostle gained a new renown. Cologne
which had probably been an archbishopric in the sixth century became
such again in 785, but the jealousy between the two great cities lingered
on, and echoes even in the letters of Gregory VII.
In the spring of 747 Boniface held his last Synod: one wish of his
was satisfied when the bishops there met decreed their fidelity to Rome.
In the way of reform much had already been done: some unworthy
1 Here again is a difficulty of date 743 or 745. Huhn, Jahrbuch, Exc. xiv.
p. 103; contra Hauck for 743.
## p. 541 (#573) ############################################
745-7M] The work of Boniface 541
priests had been condemned both by the Franks and at Rome (745): this
last Synod not only regulated metropolitan rights but also the discipline
over priests. It is clear that the power of the Frankish princes over
the Church counted for much, probably for more than is often allowed.
Boniface had gained both inspiration and experience not only at Rome
but in England before, and he cannot be regarded as a mere emissary
of Roman power extending it over a-rhurch free until his day. The
power of the State was but little affected by the recognition of Rome,
yet Boniface had brought about a union between the two: he did it with
fidelity towards both, but he was the slave of neither.
The anointing of Pepin, after Carloman had withdrawn to a Roman
monastery, is told elsewhere: it took place, 752, under Roman sanction
and by the hand of Boniface. But there is no reason to make Boniface
the author or inspirer of the deed: he was merely the agent.
The old man, weary with work and longing to rest in the grave at
his beloved Fulda, was preparing for death: the consecration of Lul as
his coadjutor, and then, by papal leave, to be his successor, was a sign of
the coming end. When Fulda, by an act unusual in the Frankish
Church1, was placed directly under the Pope, it was a sign of the great
apostle's withdrawal. He was going back to the dream of his earlier
years. He would go to Frisia, which had never been far from his
thoughts. But he knew he was going to his death, for he bade the
faithful Lul send along with him his shroud packed in his box of books.
Lul was to carry out to a perfect end the work in Thuringia, which the
Saxons had lately harried, and he was to finish the partly built church
at Fulda. In 753 Boniface left, and for two years he worked among
the water-bound washes of the Zuiderzee: when (5 June 754) he was
at Dockum awaiting converts who were to be confirmed a band of savages
attacked him and his followers: they were all slain: the books he had
with him were found and taken to Fulda, and thither also, after
some time at Utrecht, was carried the body of the saint himself: there
in the house of his founding, near the middle of his vast field of
toil, the great hero lay at rest. He had done much to bind together
a growing world and to direct its ways. His letters, with their eager
interest in the past, with their requests for books, the Scriptures,
commentaries, parts—even particles—of the many works of Bede, with
their Latin verses, traced the outlines of medieval learning, and opened
up channels along which medieval scholarship was long to flow. The
many activities of his busy life must not hide his great services to learning.
Sometimes when "the vineyard he had dug brought forth only wild
grapes,'1 and disappointments from half-heathen converts and wholly
unworthy priests came thick upon him, he turned to study for rest and
1 Boniface asked for this privilege. The papal grant, and the royal confirmation,
are alike doubted, but the questions are different. For the latter see Chap. xvm.
p. 681.
CH. XVI (b).
## p. 542 (#574) ############################################
642 The work of Boniface
peace. Even when he was "an old man buffeted by the waves of the
German sea," and from dimness of eye could not read the small running
hand of the day, he wrote to England for clearly written books. His
connexion with England meant much, and when he died Archbishop
Cuthbert wrote to Lul that an English synod "lovingly placed him
among the splendid and glorious doctors of the faith," and along " with
blessed Gregory and Augustine had taken him for their patron saint"
The greatness of his work was seen even more in its endurance than
in its variety or its extent. He had visions of what he was to do,
and he also saw the lines upon which alone it could be done. The
Frankish Empire, the papal supremacy, monastic foundations, ecclesi-
astical organisation, were perhaps the four greatest features of the
medieval world. Each of these was built up by Boniface into the
work of his life. He must have seen what each of them would be and
would accomplish. But his far-sightedness, his enthusiasm and his wisdom
cannot fully explain all he did and all he was. For that we must go to
his letters: in them we see his power of friendship, his command of
detail, and his breadth of view. In them we see how the great man
grew with the very greatness of his work, until the young Englishman
with the zeal of his nation's new-found faith upon him became the
shaper of the mighty German West.
## p. 543 (#575) ############################################
543
CHAPTER XVII.
ENGLAND (to c. 800) AND ENGLISH INSTITUTIONS.
It is not surprising that the Venerable Bede, being a Northumbrian,
in his Ecclesiastical History completed about 731, just one hundred
years after the conversion of Northumbria to Christianity, should regard
Edwin of Deira, the king who had brought about the change, as almost
the greatest English prince of the seventh century. In his pages Edwin
appears as the fifth English king who had won renown by establishing
an effective imperium over his neighbours, both English and British,
and the same view of him is repeated in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
written two hundred years later, which shews that ninth century tradition
reckoned him as the fifth "Bretwalda," a title which seems to mean
"the wide-ruler" or over-king. The actual achievements of Edwin's
reign, which began in 617 after the defeat of Aethelfrith of Bernicia
by Raedwald of East Anglia at the battle of the Idle, shew that the
title was not unmerited; for he is credited with subjecting the Isle
of Man to his rule, conquering Anglesey from the king of Gwynedd
or North Wales, annexing the Southumbrian district of Lindsey and the
yet British district of Elmet in South Yorkshire, and even asserting
himself along the Thames and waging successful war with the West
Saxons. The only English kingdom, according to Bede, which did not
bow to him, was Kent, the home of his queen who had induced him to
adopt Christianity. His power, however, if striking, was really precarious,
and his baptism in 627 soon brought about political difficulties. Other
kings had recognised his suzerainty so long as he appeared as the
champion of the English against their foes, but his desertion of Wodan
made the more conservative of them restive.
The leader of the discontented was Penda, the chief of the Mercians
in the Trent valley, and of the "Wreocensaete" or dwellers by the
Wrekin, who had settled along the upper Severn and were fast spreading
south into Herefordshire. Penda first made his name in 628 by a suc-
cessful attack on the folk called Hwicce, the branch of the West Saxons
who had fixed their seats on the upper tributaries of the Thames, on the
Worcestershire Avon and along the lower Severn. A victory at Ciren-
cester made these districts tributary to Mercia and doubled Penda's
power, whereupon he came forward as the champion of the old national
## p. 544 (#576) ############################################
644 Penda of Mercia. Battle of Heathfield [633
religion and quickly found himself supported by all those warriors, who
hated the new-fangled restrictions which the Christian missionaries
threatened to impose in the matters of marriage and private vengeance.
The attitude of the heathen chieftains, who probably acted as priests for
their several districts and themselves sacrificed and collected temple
tolls from their liegemen, like the Icelandic Godis of a later time, is not
depicted at all clearly by Bede, who had little interest in heathen
institutions, but we can gain a fair idea of the shape which their
antagonism must have taken if we read the "Christne Saga," which
describes a similar struggle between Christ and Wodan in the northern
island three hundred and fifty years later1.
The first folk actually to rise against Edwin's influence were the East
Angles, who slew their king Eorpwald for accepting baptism; but the
real crisis came in 633, when Penda joined forces with Cadwallon, king
of Gwynedd, Edwin's chief British enemy. The rival armies met on the
borders of Mercia and Deira somewhere near Doncaster in the woodlands
called Heathfield, with the result that Edwin's army was disastrously
routed and the "Bretwalda" himself slain.
This fight in Heathfield made the fortune of Mercia. The Deiran
supremacy not only disappeared but Bernicia and Deira again fell apart
and their leading men apostatised. Cadwallon, eager to regain the
North for the British, occupied York, and this forced Paulinus with
Edwin's queen to flee to Kent. Penda meantime stepped into Edwin's
place as leading king, a fact not emphasised by Bede because of this
prince's hostility to Christianity, and created an enlarged Mercia,
stretching right across England from the Humber and the Wash on the
east to Chester and Hereford on the west.
The provinces of this enlarged state seem to be set out for us in the
first section of the so-called "Tribal Hidage," a Mercian document com-
piled apparently some fifty years later for Penda's successors for revenue
purposes. This hidage, or schedule of assessments, indicates that "that
which was first called Mercia" comprised in addition to the two Mercian
districts, north and south of the Trent, six dependent "maegths"' or
chieftaincies, namely (1) the land of the Wreocensaete, now Shropshire
with parts of Herefordshire, (2) Westerna, a somewhat vague expression
which apparently refers to the plain of Cheshire and South Lancashire,
(3) the land of the Pecsaete, the dwellers round the Peak and Sheffield,
(4) the land of Elmet, which had its centre at Loides2 (Ledstone near
Pontefract) where the road from London to York crossed the river
1 Vigfiisson aud Vork Powell, Origines Islandicae, i. pp. 309-12, 370-412.
9 Loides has usually been identified with Leeds, but this ignores the fact that
in 1066 Leeds was an unimportant village, divided between seven small manors,
whereas Ledstone with Kippax at the important crossing of the Aire was the seat
of the Earl and the most extensive lay manor of the Elmet district (Domesday,
i. 316a. )
## p. 545 (#577) ############################################
634-640] Pendas Kingdom. Oswald of Bernicia 545
Aire and which reached north to the Wharfe, (5) Lindsey with the land
of Heathfield, and (6) the settlements of the North and South Gyrwe,
comprising the fenlands of Holland and the Isle of Ely, perhaps detached
from East Anglia. Over these "maegths" as well as in the Mercian
homelands the victorious Penda ruled as king; but his influence was
also paramount over the sub-kingdom of the Hwicce in Worcestershire
and Gloucestershire and over the territories occupied by the Middle
Angles (Bede's Angii Mediterranei) in Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire
and Huntingdonshire. These latter he formed into a second sub-kingdom
and entrusted to his son Peada.
The centre of the realm thus constituted was at Tamworth on the
Watling Street, and it is clear that, if its parts could only hold together,
the new state from its central situation was in a far better position for
gaining supremacy over all England than Northumbria had been. The
struggle, however, was by no means over; for it was not long before the
Northumbrian dynasty recovered from its eclipse and made a determined
effort to undo Penda's work.
The new Northumbrian leader was Oswald, one of the sons of
Aethelfrith of Bernicia who had been exiled when Edwin of Deira won
his kingdom. This prince seized the opportunity afforded by Edwin's
death to return to Bernicia, and in 635 signally defeated Cadwallon at
Heavenfield near Hexham on the Roman Wall. Upon this he was able
not only to reunite Deira to Bernicia, but being a zealous Christian to
begin the reconversion of both districts. To effect this he called to his
aid, not the exiled Paulinus, but a band of Irish-Scot missionaries from
the renowned monastery of Iona on the west coast of Scotland where he
had himself learnt Christianity, when in exile. The struggle between
the adherents of Christ and Wodan was thus again renewed, but this time
not under the auspices of Rome; for the Scots were quite independent
of the Papacy and had their own traditions and a peculiar organisation.
The leader of the new mission to Bernicia was Aidan (correctly Aedan),
whom Oswald established, not at York amid Roman surroundings, but
on the island of Lindisfarne in the North Sea, hard by Bamborough,
the Bernician capital. The detailed story of this second attempt to
Christianise Northumbria will be found elsewhere; its effect on the newly
formed Mercian kingdom is what now concerns us; for Oswald, as a
champion of Christ, was bound to attack Penda, even if he had not also
felt it his duty to regain for Northumbria its lost political supremacy.
In this enterprise Oswald was not long without allies. The numerous
petty chiefs, whom Penda had subdued, were naturally not very heartily
on his side. Any overlord, even one who adhered to the old religion,
was distasteful to them, and this made it easy to stir up rebels. Besides,
notwithstanding Penda's opposition, Christianity was making headway
all round him, in East Anglia under Anna who was crowned king in
spite of a victorious Mercian invasion, and in Wessex under Cynegils
C. MED. B. VOL. II. Oil. XVII. 36
## p. 546 (#578) ############################################
546 Battle of Maserfield. Oswald slain by Penda [640-651
who was converted about this time by an Italian missionary, named
Birinus.
These two folk-kings were necessarily Oswald's allies, and if we are
to believe Bede, even accepted him as their overlord. At any rate
Oswald encouraged Cynegils to set up Birinus as bishop of the West
Saxons with his see at Dorchester a few miles below Oxford on the
upper Thames, and was himself present as sponsor when Cynegils was
baptised. By 640 the allied princes were clearly pressing Penda hard;
for Oswald was able to regain Elmet and Lindsey and collect his forces
for an attack on the district of " Westerna" round Chester. But here,
as it proved, the Christian champion over-reached himself. In this
quarter Penda could rely on British help and probably was joined by
Cadwalader of Gwynedd. At any rate in 642 he faced Oswald in the
north-east corner of Shropshire at the foot of the Welsh hills in the
woodlands called Maserfield, and here Oswald was slain and his army
destroyed. Penda had his body mutilated, but tradition says that his
head was subsequently buried at Lindisfarne, while his arms and his
hands were preserved at Bam borough as precious relics of the fight with
heathendom. Later he was canonised as St Oswald. The Welsh too
preserved his memory, calling the site of the battle Croes Oswallt, while
the English called it Oswestry.
The same results followed from the disaster in Maserfield as from
Edwin's disaster in Heathfield. Bernicia and Deira again parted com-
pany, this time for thirteen years, while Penda retained his position as
leading king. Northumbria however did not go back to heathendom,
though Penda ravaged it as far as Bamborough. The Irish missionaries
had obtained too great a hold on the people to be repudiated, and Aidan
did not think of abandoning his flock. In Wessex heathenism had
greater success. Cynegils died in 643, and his son Coenwalch, who had
married Penda's daughter, succeeded and practised heathen rites. But
even here Birinus seems to have maintained a foothold. At any rate
Coenwalch soon quarrelled with Penda, and fleeing for refuge to Anna of
East Anglia was shortly afterwards baptised by Felix, the missionary
bishop of Dunwich. Penda, indeed, as the years went by, must gradu-
ally have realised that in spite of his victories he was fighting against the
inevitable. In 648 Coenwalch, aided by his kinsman Cuthred, returned
to Wessex and openly proclaimed himself a Christian. Peada, too, who
had been set over the Midland Angles, was also found among the converts,
while missionaries from Lindisfarne headed by Cedd, an Englishman,
were invited into Essex by the local chiefs, who had remained heathens
ever since the expulsion of Bishop Mellitus in 617.
The prime mover in all this was Oswy, Oswald's younger brother,
who after Maserfield had become king of Bernicia and who in 651 tried
to regain Deira as well, by putting to death Oswin, a chieftain who was
ruling that district with the support of Penda. In this he did not succeed,
## p. 547 (#579) ############################################
654-655] Battle of the Winwaed. Penda slain by Oswy 547
but it heralded a new struggle in which heathendom had once more to
fight for its existence. Penda as usual met the danger with vigour. In
654 he made a savage attack on East Anglia and slew Anna, and the
year following collected all his strength to march against Oswy. At first
Oswy offered tribute, but Penda refused all terms. His levies, we are
told, were organised under thirty different chiefs and included contin-
gents from Wales, East Anglia and Deira. Oswy's forces in comparison
were far inferior, but they had the better spirit, some of Penda's allies
being half-hearted and some actually treacherous. The collision took
place at the ford of the Winwaed, apparently a stream half-way between
Doncaster and Ledstone. Here in the district of the Elmetsaete
Penda's life-long good fortune deserted him. The Deirans would not
fight for him, one of the Welsh contingents took to flight, and in the
end Penda himself fell together with the king whom he had recently set
up in East Anglia and many of his other vassals.
Oswy's somewhat unexpected victory not only gave him great prestige,
but was decisive for the religious destiny of the English. Sussex and
much of Wessex and Mercia were still heathen, and Cedd's mission to the
men of Essex and Middle Anglia had still much work to do; but from
this time onwards active heathen resistance was at an end, for Peada the
heir to Mercia already stood for Christianity, and had married Oswy's
daughter. It must not be thought that Penda's career had been in
vain. He had failed, it is true, to maintain the old religion; but the
Mercian State which he had evolved out of a congeries of tiny tribes,
was destined to prove permanent, and in spite of Oswy's momentary
triumph soon shewed itself able to resist all efforts to bring about its
dismemberment. It remained in fact the leading factor in English
politics for the next hundred and fifty years.
It may be well at this point to glance at the chief changes from the
social and political point of view, which each English tribe underwent
as soon as its leaders discarded heathenism. The most far-reaching
change of all, next to the introduction of a higher moral standard, is
clearly the rise in each kingdom of a small class who could read and
write and who had some knowledge of Mediterranean civilisation. The
English of all ranks, as pagans, must have lived almost without writing.
They were indeed acquainted with the Runic alphabet, and used it for
mottoes on weapons and coins, for recording names on gravestones, and
now and again for secret messages; but this method of writing was
altogether useless for the ordinary needs of civilisation. Here and there,
too, there may have been court bards, who may have been capable of
reading messages for the kings in the Roman alphabet, but the ordinary
chief knew nothing of writing and put nothing on record. Everything
that needed to be remembered had to be put in the form of rhythmic
verses suitable for chanting to the harp, and all the laws and customs
of the tribes were handed down orally by this method. All this now
ch. xvii. 35—2
## p. 548 (#580) ############################################
548 Changes introduced with Christianity
began to change. Wherever the missionaries came, they brought the
Roman alphabet with them and were ready to write down and record,
at first of course in Latin, but after a few years in the vernacular also,
not only accounts of deeds of importance but every-day bargains and
contracts. The new learning might be meagre, and the class of writers
a small one, but a new epoch had begun. A book ceased to mean a
tablet of beechwood and became a book of parchment, and hereafter
there was a new leaven ceaselessly at work making for social progress.
Hardly less important politically was the new division set up between
clergy and laity, a distinction which dominates all later periods, and
which introduced a dualism into the framework of government and
society which is now difficult to apprehend in all its subtle bearings.
The new class of clergy, the godcund estate as opposed to the zeoruld-
cund or laity, did not merely step into the places of the priests of
heathen days. As already suggested the heathen priests for the most
part had not been a class apart, but, like the later Godis of Iceland,
were probably leading landowners who acted the part of chieftains,
judges and priests combined, and enjoyed the right of conducting
the sacrifices on national feast-days as an hereditary office appendant
to their estates. The edifices, too, which served as temples, if they
were like the Icelandic hovs, had not been buildings solely devoted to
religious uses, but were attached to the big halls of the chieftains used
equally for social purposes, so that a sacrifice and a banquet were easily
merged together.
The new order of clergy, on the other hand, from the outset did
everything they could to mark off their position from that of the
heathen priests, asserting themselves to be a caste apart, superior to
the lay classes and fenced about by special sanctions definitely recognised
by the law. And this in itself led to further developments, causing the
bishops to be ever urging on the kings the necessity of recording in
writing what the rights were which the clergy were to enjoy, and by
what fines and punishments their teaching was to be made effective and
their privileges guarded. It thus came about not only that the laws
were materially supplemented but that the amendments were put into
writing, a step forward in the path of civilisation of the utmost
importance. It is true that only one amending code, that for Kent,
issued by King Aethelberht, is now extant which dates from the
first advent of the missionaries, but there can be no reasonable doubt
that similar codes must also have been written down at any rate for
Northumbria and East Anglia, as without them the position of the
clergy, with no tradition to appeal to, could not have been made secure
or their views on morality enforced.
In considering these changes in the laws, it would be unjust to
suppose that the work of the bishops was mainly directed to securing
the status of their own order. It would be truer to maintain that their
-
## p.
probable view of evidence, not quite consistent, and not easy to weigh,
Clovis was baptised on Christmas day 496, probably at Rheims*. He
had however been friendly to Christianity even before his conquest of
Syagrius (486), and became naturally more so afterwards. After his
conversion, followed by that of many Franks, he was able as an orthodox
king to reckon on the help or at least the sympathy of Catholic bishops
everywhere: the wars that spread his, power took somewhat the character
of crusades and for three centuries this remained true of Frankish
campaigns against the heathens. Broadly speaking, with the power
of the Frankish kings went the power of the Church, although the
fellowship between the two was sometimes closer, sometimes looser.
As the Frankish power spread into districts less thoroughly Romanised
new sees had to be founded, and even in the more settled lands this
happened also. But a distinction must be made between the new
missionary bishops and the type of bishops already found in the
Romanised cities. Up to the settlement under Boniface (Winfrid,
Bonifatius) or even later we have a time in which both types appear
side by side. As a rule the city bishop owed his appointment to the
State: the missionary bishop to the Church. It is not a. question of
differences between Roman and Keltic clergy, but merely between lands
in which Roman traditions survived, and those where missions started
quite afresh. What Theodore did for England Boniface was to do
for the continental Teyjons.
Local differences were many and strong: in Austrasia heathenism
was more general to begin with and lived on longer. The Frankish
conquests drove together heathens and Christians, and in some places
heathenism gained strength: on the whole, the leading families and
1 See Chaps, iv. v.
1 See Chap. iv. p. 112. For a detailed criticism of the date and references see
Hauck, K. G. D. i. , later edns, pp. 695 f.
## p. 533 (#565) ############################################
eoo] The Keltic Monks 633
the towns were more thoroughly Christianised than the country, which
remained mainly heathen. In some places—like Mainz, Cologne, and
Tongres—Christian communities, sometimes chiefly oriental or foreign,
may have lived on since Roman times and sometimes bishops were left:
in others—like Trier—Christianity was just becoming general when the
Frankish conquest brought in new conditions. Everything depended
upon the centres already gained for Christianity, and across the Rhine
these were few and tended to become fewer. Nearer Italy there were
centres to which Christianity had come from the south, such as Augsburg,
which until about the year 600 was connected with Aquileia. But where
such centres of life were few or Christianity had only begun its growth
the Teutonic invaders could be but little affected by it.
The Keltic missions came to give these new centres, and by a
monastic framework to guard their power. There are some indications
—in the letters of Boniface and elsewhere—that Keltic priests, some of
whom caused him trouble, were more widely spread than we might suppose.
And as Keltic monasteries became stages in systematic pilgrimages to
Rome a steady stream of Christianity was brought to bear upon the
Teutons. The Keltic missionaries were for the most part led to travel
by the wish to live amid new surroundings: they lived among their new
neighbours as strangers, but the evils around them forced them to
become missionaries, and, although Keltic monasticism was ascetic and
rigorous, Keltic monks never feared to plunge into the world and to
play a part there when it seemed good. Frankish Christianity, with its
comparative neglect of penance, seemed to the great missionary Colum-
banus merely superficial: he stood outside the ordinary Frankish Church:
his altar at Luxeuil was consecrated by an Irish bishop, and he had no
episcopal licence for his foundations. Hence the Keltic monasteries
besides being centres of learning strengthened the tendency already
shewn to exempt monasteries from episcopal control1. The difference
about Easter did not of necessity lead to lasting strife, and the
monastic foundations of Columbanus, his comrades and followers, kept
alive upon the Continent the Irish love of learning. As regards the
papal power Keltic tradition and habits belonged to an earlier day when
the papal control had been less effective; this tradition Columbanus
kept and shewed in his defence of the Keltic Easter. But it is a
mistake to take these differences as implying either hostility to the
Papacy or a claim to full independence.
The Keltic monks travelled for the most part in bands of twelve,
but there were other single teachers such as Rupert (Rodbert) a Frank
who towards the end of the seventh century came to Regensburg, the
ducal court of Bavaria, and thence passed into the wild Salzkammergut
1 See Gougaud, Let ChrilienU* Celtiques, p. 220; Hauck, K. 0. D. i. pp. 266 and
310. For Columbanus see Chap. v. of this volume. For Sever in us, vol. i. p. 425.
ch. xvi (b).
## p. 534 (#566) ############################################
534 Frisia [613-647
with its Roman memories and remains; here a monastery, a nunnery and
a church were planted. A like work was also wrought at Regensburg
by Emmeran, although his first hope had been to preach to the Avars.
These isolated endeavours gave new centres of Christian civilisation, but
in later years few traces of them were left. Work on a larger and more
considered plan was needed. But the life of St Severinus (died 482) in
Noricum (Bavaria) shews how far the influence of a hermit could reach
and how great it could be.
Frisia, with its unknown coasts and wild heathenism, soon began
to attract missionaries. The growth of Christianity here had been due
to the Franks and varied with the state of their church: simony and
careless appointments of bishops had been somewhat checked: the
influence of Columbanus had reached far, not only in the south but
even northwards to the Marne: a new and differently trained genera-
tion had grown up, and when the union of the kingdoms under
Chlotar II (613) gave the land rest, the church thus strengthened broke
fresh ground among its neighbours to east and north. Chlotar II had
encouraged Amandus, a hermit of Roman descent from Aquitaine. who
felt himself called by St Peter to distant missions: pilgrimages to Rome
deepened the wish, and after Chlotar had procured his consecration he
worked as a missionary bishop from Ghent as a centre. Hitherto Frisian
merchants had come to the Franks, and Frankish rule had gained
ground upon the borders, but even Maestricht and Noyon, although
bishoprics, were yet partly heathen. Quarrels with King Dagobert, and
banishment for a time (629) turned him to other fields. But both
around Ghent and at Maestricht where he was afterwards bishop (647)
he was unhappy in his work: the enforcement of baptism by royal order
under Dagobert may have been due to his suggestion, and at any rate it
explains his lack of success: spells of work on the Danube, in Carinthia,
at the mouth of the Scheldt and among the Basques varied a strange
career marked by restless energy and much wandering. After his death
a little more ground was gained under the direction of Cunibert of
Cologne, a church was built at Utrecht, and under the well-known
Eligius (bishop of Noyon, 64-1, and renowned as a silversmith) a better
foundation was laid. But the task was left unfinished until the following
century. Frisia was affected by the changes of Frankish politics.
Christian missions were both too fitful and too disconnected. A general
plan and organisation was needed.
In England, as the letter of Daniel bishop of Winchester to Boniface
(Ep. 23) shews, the methods of missions had been carefully thought out,
since the local conditions not only aroused enthusiasm to call forth
missionaries but gave them a training ground for their work. English-
men were learning at this very time what careful organisation and
ordered work could do. They had felt the benefit of fellowship with
Rome and its traditions while they had still the fresh energy of
## p. 535 (#567) ############################################
678-695] WilMbrord 535
younger tribes and growing states. This is the reason why in the
eighth century English missionaries take the place of the earlier Kelts.
And the field of labour seemed already fixed for them: they had
not forgotten the land from which they had come. Wilfrid landed in
Frisia (678) on his way to Rome—in order to avoid the enmity of
Ebroin, mayor of the palace—and stayed there a winter because of the
friendly welcome by Adelgis the king (who refused to sell his guest)
and his people. This was only an episode. Ecgbert, a Northumbrian
who was afterwards to go to Iona, who had lived long in Ireland and
pledged himself to pilgrimage, was hindered by visions and by storms
from a long desired journey to Frisia: in his place he sent a pupil
Wicbert who only stayed two years and then went home again. This
failure only caused Ecgbert to send another mission of twelve monks.
The leader of it, Willibrord, was a Northumbrian whose father Wilgils
in old age became a hermit at the Humber's mouth. He had been
educated up to the age of twenty at Ripon—Wilfrid's old monastic
home—and afterwards in Ireland (c. 678). He landed and went to
Utrecht, now held by Radbod the Frisian king, who must have regained
territory, for Utrecht had formerly been a Frankish town. But Frisia
beyond it was lost to the Franks as the result of a war which was just
ended and had naturally left ill-will behind it. The defeated Radbod
was little likely to favour the faith of his Frankish enemies, and
Willibrord saw a chance of securer work under Frankish protection.
He therefore journeyed to Pepin, who promised him help for a work
which was of interest to both of them. Willibrord shared the enthusiasm
of Wilfrid and Boniface for Rome—and indeed others, the Irish
Adamnan and Ecgbert for instance, were turning towards Rome and
unity. Accordingly Willibrord went to Rome to get consent for his
mission, thus beginning the policy which Winfrid afterwards carried out
on a larger scale.
Success soon made organisation desirable: the monks elected one
Suidbert as their future bishop and he passed across to England to
be consecrated there by Wilfrid. But after his return difficulties seem
to have arisen and the new bishop left Frisia in order to preach to
the Bructeri: a little later we find Pepin, like the earlier kings, taking
the organisation into his own hands and sending Willibrord to Rome
for consecration (22 Nov. 695) as archbishop of a province to include
both Frankish and independent Frisia. Willibrord, who at his con-
secration took the name of Clement, received the pall at Rome, and
from Pepin as his seat Utrecht, where he built a cathedral and
a monastery. A native church began, and soon he felt able to devote
himself to the Frisians in Radbod's territory since Radbod himself
was now friendly to the Franks, and his daughter Theutsind had
married Pepin's son Grimoald. But here Willibrord's success was
small: Radbod was indifferent although not hostile and Willibrord
CH. XVI (b).
## p. 536 (#568) ############################################
536 Winfrid [714-719
went on further to preach to the Danes. Their country too he left and
on his return to Frisia landed on the coast: by venturing to baptise
some converts in a holy well he awoke the anger of the heathen and
they sought to have him put to death by Radbod. The king however
spared his life, but as the hopes of any work among the free Frisians
now seemed hopeless he went back to Utrecht. After Pepin's death
(16 Dec. 714) the quarrel between his sons enabled Radbod to regain
the part of Frisia held by the Franks. The church had gained no real
hold among the natives: Willibrord had left, the priests were put to
flight, and the land once more under the sway of a heathen king
became heathen too. It was now that Winfrid came.
Winfrid was born near Crediton (c. 680) of a noble English family:
after education first in a monastery at Exeter and then at Nutshall
(Nutsall, Netley or Nursling ? ) he was ordained, and employed in
important affairs. But above the claims of learning and the chance of
a great career at home he felt the missionary's call to the wild. From
London he sailed to Frisia (716): here he stayed for part of a year
until on the outbreak of a Frankish war he went back to his West-
Saxon monastery. On the death of his old master Winbert the monks
wished to make him abbot, but his future work lay plain before him
and he refused. He sought letters of commendation from Daniel,
bishop of Winchester—a man of much learning and experience to
whom Bede owed much information—and with these (718) he went
abroad again. But this time passing through Frankland he went to
Rome, to visit the threshold of the Apostles. Here he saw Gregory II,
and from him he received as "Bonifatius1 the religious priest1''—the
name by which he was henceforth known—a letter of commendation
(15 May 719). The journey was a common one for an Englishman of
the day, but Boniface with his strong wish for missionary work reached
Rome when the Papacy was turning towards plans of organisation.
Furthermore between him and the Pope a friendship and even a fellow-
ship began.
Taking this new line of organisation under papal guidance Boniface
went to Thuringia, where the natives, in new seats, and pressed upon by
Franks and Saxons, had partly received and then soon lost Christianity.
To win back their leaders was Boniface's new task: the land was
disordered in politics and religion alike: heathenism was found side by
side with Christianity of strange types. From Thuringia Boniface
started for the Frankish court, but on the way he heard of Rad bod's
death, which might make Frisia a more fruitful field. Already Willi-
brord, working like Boniface himself under papal sanction, had been
consecrated Archbishop of Utrecht, and to his help Boniface now went.
When after a three years' stay Willibrord would have had him as
1 For the name see Loofs, Der Beiname rfe* Apostels der Deuttchen, Z. K. 6. (18ifi),
pp. 623-31, and Hauck, K. G. D. I. p. 458 n. 1.
## p. 537 (#569) ############################################
722] Boniface 537
coadjutor he pleaded the papal command: he sought leave to depart
and passed to Hesse. This was ground more unworked than Thuringia,
for the people had kept their older seats and with them their old
customs, but it might link Saxony to the Frankish Church. So great
was his success—thousands being baptised—that he could soon think of
organising a bishopric. He sent a report to Rome and in reply was
called thither himself. On his way he probably met1 Charles Martel,
and at Rome he was consecrated (St Andrew's day, 722 or less probably
723). At his consecration he took an oath much like that taken by
the suburbicarian bishops, and thus pledged himself to work as a
bishop under papal direction. But by a significant change the promise
of fidelity to the Eastern Emperor was left out and its place taken by
a promise to hold no intercourse with bishops who disobeyed the canons,
to work against them and to denounce them to the Pope. The new
bishop received letters of commendation to all who could help his work
in Germany and especially to Charles Martel. Henceforth Boniface
could depend even more than before upon papal direction, help and
sympathy: we find him, like St Augustine of Canterbury, sending
difficulties to Rome for decision. As he was to build up a church
which was suffering from Keltic disorder and Frankish negligence, a
collection of canons was a natural papal gift to him.
Boniface now begins a new stage of his work, no longer as a mere
missionary pioneer but rather as a missionary statesman in the service
of Rome. For his new plans and his new office state support was
needed. Backed by a letter from Charles Martel, Boniface went to
Hesse to weld together the scattered links of his earlier work. Some
twenty years later he wrote to Daniel of Winchester: "Without the
patronage of the Prince of the Franks I am able neither to rule the
people of the church nor to defend" the priests or deacons, the monks
or nuns: and I am not powerful enough to hinder the very rites of the
pagans and the sacrileges of idols in Germany without his order and the
dread of him. " The boldness he shewed in felling the sacred oak at
Geismar led the heathen to think their gods had lost their power, and
from these successes in Hesse Boniface passed to Thuringia. In each
district he founded schools of learning and of training for his converts:
Amanaburg and Fritzlar in Hesse, Ohrdruff in Thuringia: for women,
Tauberbischofsheim, Kitzingen and Ochsenfurt, three foundations near
the Main. These were founded before his organisation of Bavaria, and
his favourite house Fulda was specially planned to foster Christian
civilisation and to be a monastic model. This side of Boniface's work is
sometimes overlooked in comparison with his ordering of dioceses, but
1 Hauck, i. pp. 463 n. 3 and 464 n. 1.
* Ep. 63, p. 329 (Diimmler). The omission of defendere in one MS. would
make the passage even more emphatic as to the need of state support (as suggested
by Browne, Boniface of Urediton, p. 62).
ch. xvi (b).
## p. 538 (#570) ############################################
538 Organisation of Sees [731-741
the two were really complementary: on the monastic side he entered
into the heritage of the Keltic monks to whom, when there was no
question of disorder or irregularity, he was by no means an enemy.
At Fulda Sturm, a Bavarian of his own training, ruled: there and else-
where helpers from England, some of them bound to Boniface by ties of
blood, and all by kinship in devotion, made new homes for themselves:
Burchard, Lul, Denehard, Willibald, Wicbert among the men: Lioba
and Walpurgis among the women. With England a lively interchange
of letters was kept up: some of his English friends came out to him as
they gradually lost their kinsfolk by death, and others came because of
their love for him. But in either case they helped to strengthen associa-
tions which were of political as well as religious power. Boniface
himself was strong enough to award praise and blame to English kings;
he himself, his comrades and his work gave England some hold upon
continental life.
On the death of Gregory II (11 Feb. 731) Gregory III succeeded,
a true successor in his care for Germany. When Boniface declared to
him that the burden of his growing work was becoming too heavy, the
papal answer was (732) to make him Archbishop, although with no
defined province, so that he could the better call fellow-labourers to his
help. In the few following years we must probably place much of
Boniface's work in furthering his foundations, and some of his letters
of the time shew him turned to reading and study of questions raised
by his pastoral work. But about 735* we find him in Bavaria where
once before the duke Theodo and Gregory II had thought of a church
organisation in the interests both of church and duchy. Hucbert was
now duke under stricter Frankish suzerainty: little had hitherto been
done and Passau was the only see. In Bavaria Boniface now travelled
and taught. But his third visit to Rome (probably 738), caused possibly
by his wish to take up once more his old plans for Frisia, now that
the field of Germany was under cultivation, brought a year's break and
rest. This time Boniface was a great figure both with the Romans and
the pilgrims, so greatly had his renown been spread.
In Bavaria after Hucbert's death (probably 736) Odilo was placed
as duke, a ruler of a different type, less ready to submit to Frankish
direction and a generous patron of the Church. To Bavaria Boniface
went (739), and now he takes a new position, that of legate of Rome:
his appearance as legate1 was followed by the meeting of a Synod and
a division of the duchy into four dioceses: Passau (where Vivilo who
had been consecrated at Rome remained), Regensburg, Salzburg and
Freising. A little later (741) we find Boniface similarly founding another
group of three dioceses for Hesse and Thuringia: Biiraburg, near
Fritzlar, for Hesse, Wurzburg for southern and Erfurt for northern
1 The change is strongly marked in the letters about Bavaria: see Epp. 43, 44,
and 45 (Diimmler): nostrum agentem vicem, says the Pope of Boniface.
## p. 539 (#571) ############################################
741-742] Pope Zacharias 539
Thuringia. Zacharias who had now (3 Dec. 741) succeeded Gregory III
confirmed this division, although like his predecessor advising caution
against erecting too many sees and so lowering the episcopal standard.
But Boniface's personal inspiration found him able helpers: at Biiraburg
an Englishman, Witta, was placed, and at Wlirzburg another, Burchard,
entered upon the heritage of the Keltic Kilian. The protection of
Charles Martel, even if not too eager, had been of great use: his death
(22 Oct. 741) brought about a change in Boniface's work: henceforth it
was to be for the whole of eastern Frankish territory.
Carloman invited Boniface to come and hold a Synod in Austrasia:
in this way discipline, which had been trampled under foot for some
sixty years, could be restored. Boniface was here faced by conditions
such as he had known in Bavaria. His work in Hesse had already
brought to him opposition from Frankish bishops.
But among the Franks church law was widely disregarded and
Boniface found it hard, as he told Daniel of Winchester, to keep the
oath he had sworn to the Pope. If he was to refrain altogether from
intercourse with offending bishops his work would be impossible. There
was no weakening of his allegiance to the Pope, but a new element,
the Frankish State, was now coming more fully into his life and his plans.
The most striking feature in Boniface's career is the way in which
while never waiting for circumstances he was quick to seize each
circumstance and use it to the utmost good. He never lost sight of
any work he had ever planned and begun: if he turned aside for some
pressing need he wove that special work into his general plan, and with
each new field his outlook broadened.
The new pope Zacharias was a Greek from Calabria, a man of
mildness and yet of diplomatic skill: his tone towards Boniface was
somewhat more commanding than that used by previous popes, and the
explanation may be found in his policy towards the Franks, against
whom he for a time played off the Bavarians and Lombards.
Odilo of
Bavaria had probably encouraged Grifo in his revolt against Carloman and
Pepin, and afterwards he began a movement for independence. A papal
envoy is said to have ordered a Frankish army to leave his land1,
but this did not hinder the defeat of the Bavarian duke. The Nordgau
was separated from his duchy and joined to Austrasia. Neuburg on
the Danube became—possibly through some adaptation of Odilo's plans
—a new bishopric and remained so for some two generations. Eichstadt,
where a monastery had already been founded, was made the seat of
another bishopric for a population of mixed descent.
The projected Council for Austrasia met in a place unknown
(21 April 742)a, and began the work of reorganisation. Bishops were to
1 See Hodgkin, Italy and her Invaders, vn. pp. 100 f. and Hauck, K. G. D. i. p. 533.
2 The date is disputed. Early in 742 seems most likely. See Hauck, K. O. D.
i. pp. 618 n. 6 and 520 n. 3; contra Loofs who dates it 743.
ch. xvi (b).
## p. 540 (#572) ############################################
540 Councils [742-747
be consecrated for cities and over them was to be set the archbishop
Boniface, legate (missus) of St Peter: councils were to meet yearly:
the moral standard of the priesthood was to be raised, and the priests
were to be subject to the bishops: bishops or priests who were not
known were not to be allowed to minister and heathen customs were to
be put away. In the place given to Boniface it is best to see a restora-
tion of the metropolitan system, and that this was made by royal power
is significant. Not only the bishops of the older and more settled part
of the realm, Cologne and Strassburg, but also those of Wiirzburg,
Eichstadt, Buraburg and Erfurt, were invited to the Council. To carry
out the reforms laid down was the work of Boniface. In the next two
years many new bishops were appointed, and (1 March 743) a second
Synod met at Estinnes", and here, by the assembly of bishops and leading
laymen, the decrees of 742 were confirmed. In 744 (2 March) a Synod
for Neustria met at Soissons, and a new organisation followed for Pepin's
realm also. The archbishoprics of Rheims, Rouen and Sens were to be
restored, and Boniface, who had acted in close friendly if not official touch
with Pepin, asked the Pope to send three palls for them. But before
Zacharias replied (22 June 744) some change was made in the plans and
Grimo of Rouen alone was to have the pall. This change and some
freedom in Boniface's criticism of papal fees and Roman customs made
the Pope a little angry, but we find him none the less (1 May 748)
commending Boniface his "brother, archbishop, legate of the Holy See
and personal representative" to the bishops—expressly named—of both
the eastern and western Franks. And in an earlier letter (5 Nov. 744)
Zacharias even extended the right of free preaching in the province of
Bavaria which was granted by his predecessor. "And not only for
Bavaria, but for the whole province of the Gauls" he was to use the
office of preaching laid upon him by the Pope for reformation and
edification.
The original plan was for Boniface to be Archbishop of Cologne, and
in this position wield even greater power. To this the Pope had agreed.
But when Gewilip was rightly deposed from Mainz, Carloman and Pepin
(perhaps led by enemies of Boniface at court) appointed Boniface his
successor, and so the see of Mainz (which became an archbishopric in
780) as held by a legate and apostle gained a new renown. Cologne
which had probably been an archbishopric in the sixth century became
such again in 785, but the jealousy between the two great cities lingered
on, and echoes even in the letters of Gregory VII.
In the spring of 747 Boniface held his last Synod: one wish of his
was satisfied when the bishops there met decreed their fidelity to Rome.
In the way of reform much had already been done: some unworthy
1 Here again is a difficulty of date 743 or 745. Huhn, Jahrbuch, Exc. xiv.
p. 103; contra Hauck for 743.
## p. 541 (#573) ############################################
745-7M] The work of Boniface 541
priests had been condemned both by the Franks and at Rome (745): this
last Synod not only regulated metropolitan rights but also the discipline
over priests. It is clear that the power of the Frankish princes over
the Church counted for much, probably for more than is often allowed.
Boniface had gained both inspiration and experience not only at Rome
but in England before, and he cannot be regarded as a mere emissary
of Roman power extending it over a-rhurch free until his day. The
power of the State was but little affected by the recognition of Rome,
yet Boniface had brought about a union between the two: he did it with
fidelity towards both, but he was the slave of neither.
The anointing of Pepin, after Carloman had withdrawn to a Roman
monastery, is told elsewhere: it took place, 752, under Roman sanction
and by the hand of Boniface. But there is no reason to make Boniface
the author or inspirer of the deed: he was merely the agent.
The old man, weary with work and longing to rest in the grave at
his beloved Fulda, was preparing for death: the consecration of Lul as
his coadjutor, and then, by papal leave, to be his successor, was a sign of
the coming end. When Fulda, by an act unusual in the Frankish
Church1, was placed directly under the Pope, it was a sign of the great
apostle's withdrawal. He was going back to the dream of his earlier
years. He would go to Frisia, which had never been far from his
thoughts. But he knew he was going to his death, for he bade the
faithful Lul send along with him his shroud packed in his box of books.
Lul was to carry out to a perfect end the work in Thuringia, which the
Saxons had lately harried, and he was to finish the partly built church
at Fulda. In 753 Boniface left, and for two years he worked among
the water-bound washes of the Zuiderzee: when (5 June 754) he was
at Dockum awaiting converts who were to be confirmed a band of savages
attacked him and his followers: they were all slain: the books he had
with him were found and taken to Fulda, and thither also, after
some time at Utrecht, was carried the body of the saint himself: there
in the house of his founding, near the middle of his vast field of
toil, the great hero lay at rest. He had done much to bind together
a growing world and to direct its ways. His letters, with their eager
interest in the past, with their requests for books, the Scriptures,
commentaries, parts—even particles—of the many works of Bede, with
their Latin verses, traced the outlines of medieval learning, and opened
up channels along which medieval scholarship was long to flow. The
many activities of his busy life must not hide his great services to learning.
Sometimes when "the vineyard he had dug brought forth only wild
grapes,'1 and disappointments from half-heathen converts and wholly
unworthy priests came thick upon him, he turned to study for rest and
1 Boniface asked for this privilege. The papal grant, and the royal confirmation,
are alike doubted, but the questions are different. For the latter see Chap. xvm.
p. 681.
CH. XVI (b).
## p. 542 (#574) ############################################
642 The work of Boniface
peace. Even when he was "an old man buffeted by the waves of the
German sea," and from dimness of eye could not read the small running
hand of the day, he wrote to England for clearly written books. His
connexion with England meant much, and when he died Archbishop
Cuthbert wrote to Lul that an English synod "lovingly placed him
among the splendid and glorious doctors of the faith," and along " with
blessed Gregory and Augustine had taken him for their patron saint"
The greatness of his work was seen even more in its endurance than
in its variety or its extent. He had visions of what he was to do,
and he also saw the lines upon which alone it could be done. The
Frankish Empire, the papal supremacy, monastic foundations, ecclesi-
astical organisation, were perhaps the four greatest features of the
medieval world. Each of these was built up by Boniface into the
work of his life. He must have seen what each of them would be and
would accomplish. But his far-sightedness, his enthusiasm and his wisdom
cannot fully explain all he did and all he was. For that we must go to
his letters: in them we see his power of friendship, his command of
detail, and his breadth of view. In them we see how the great man
grew with the very greatness of his work, until the young Englishman
with the zeal of his nation's new-found faith upon him became the
shaper of the mighty German West.
## p. 543 (#575) ############################################
543
CHAPTER XVII.
ENGLAND (to c. 800) AND ENGLISH INSTITUTIONS.
It is not surprising that the Venerable Bede, being a Northumbrian,
in his Ecclesiastical History completed about 731, just one hundred
years after the conversion of Northumbria to Christianity, should regard
Edwin of Deira, the king who had brought about the change, as almost
the greatest English prince of the seventh century. In his pages Edwin
appears as the fifth English king who had won renown by establishing
an effective imperium over his neighbours, both English and British,
and the same view of him is repeated in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
written two hundred years later, which shews that ninth century tradition
reckoned him as the fifth "Bretwalda," a title which seems to mean
"the wide-ruler" or over-king. The actual achievements of Edwin's
reign, which began in 617 after the defeat of Aethelfrith of Bernicia
by Raedwald of East Anglia at the battle of the Idle, shew that the
title was not unmerited; for he is credited with subjecting the Isle
of Man to his rule, conquering Anglesey from the king of Gwynedd
or North Wales, annexing the Southumbrian district of Lindsey and the
yet British district of Elmet in South Yorkshire, and even asserting
himself along the Thames and waging successful war with the West
Saxons. The only English kingdom, according to Bede, which did not
bow to him, was Kent, the home of his queen who had induced him to
adopt Christianity. His power, however, if striking, was really precarious,
and his baptism in 627 soon brought about political difficulties. Other
kings had recognised his suzerainty so long as he appeared as the
champion of the English against their foes, but his desertion of Wodan
made the more conservative of them restive.
The leader of the discontented was Penda, the chief of the Mercians
in the Trent valley, and of the "Wreocensaete" or dwellers by the
Wrekin, who had settled along the upper Severn and were fast spreading
south into Herefordshire. Penda first made his name in 628 by a suc-
cessful attack on the folk called Hwicce, the branch of the West Saxons
who had fixed their seats on the upper tributaries of the Thames, on the
Worcestershire Avon and along the lower Severn. A victory at Ciren-
cester made these districts tributary to Mercia and doubled Penda's
power, whereupon he came forward as the champion of the old national
## p. 544 (#576) ############################################
644 Penda of Mercia. Battle of Heathfield [633
religion and quickly found himself supported by all those warriors, who
hated the new-fangled restrictions which the Christian missionaries
threatened to impose in the matters of marriage and private vengeance.
The attitude of the heathen chieftains, who probably acted as priests for
their several districts and themselves sacrificed and collected temple
tolls from their liegemen, like the Icelandic Godis of a later time, is not
depicted at all clearly by Bede, who had little interest in heathen
institutions, but we can gain a fair idea of the shape which their
antagonism must have taken if we read the "Christne Saga," which
describes a similar struggle between Christ and Wodan in the northern
island three hundred and fifty years later1.
The first folk actually to rise against Edwin's influence were the East
Angles, who slew their king Eorpwald for accepting baptism; but the
real crisis came in 633, when Penda joined forces with Cadwallon, king
of Gwynedd, Edwin's chief British enemy. The rival armies met on the
borders of Mercia and Deira somewhere near Doncaster in the woodlands
called Heathfield, with the result that Edwin's army was disastrously
routed and the "Bretwalda" himself slain.
This fight in Heathfield made the fortune of Mercia. The Deiran
supremacy not only disappeared but Bernicia and Deira again fell apart
and their leading men apostatised. Cadwallon, eager to regain the
North for the British, occupied York, and this forced Paulinus with
Edwin's queen to flee to Kent. Penda meantime stepped into Edwin's
place as leading king, a fact not emphasised by Bede because of this
prince's hostility to Christianity, and created an enlarged Mercia,
stretching right across England from the Humber and the Wash on the
east to Chester and Hereford on the west.
The provinces of this enlarged state seem to be set out for us in the
first section of the so-called "Tribal Hidage," a Mercian document com-
piled apparently some fifty years later for Penda's successors for revenue
purposes. This hidage, or schedule of assessments, indicates that "that
which was first called Mercia" comprised in addition to the two Mercian
districts, north and south of the Trent, six dependent "maegths"' or
chieftaincies, namely (1) the land of the Wreocensaete, now Shropshire
with parts of Herefordshire, (2) Westerna, a somewhat vague expression
which apparently refers to the plain of Cheshire and South Lancashire,
(3) the land of the Pecsaete, the dwellers round the Peak and Sheffield,
(4) the land of Elmet, which had its centre at Loides2 (Ledstone near
Pontefract) where the road from London to York crossed the river
1 Vigfiisson aud Vork Powell, Origines Islandicae, i. pp. 309-12, 370-412.
9 Loides has usually been identified with Leeds, but this ignores the fact that
in 1066 Leeds was an unimportant village, divided between seven small manors,
whereas Ledstone with Kippax at the important crossing of the Aire was the seat
of the Earl and the most extensive lay manor of the Elmet district (Domesday,
i. 316a. )
## p. 545 (#577) ############################################
634-640] Pendas Kingdom. Oswald of Bernicia 545
Aire and which reached north to the Wharfe, (5) Lindsey with the land
of Heathfield, and (6) the settlements of the North and South Gyrwe,
comprising the fenlands of Holland and the Isle of Ely, perhaps detached
from East Anglia. Over these "maegths" as well as in the Mercian
homelands the victorious Penda ruled as king; but his influence was
also paramount over the sub-kingdom of the Hwicce in Worcestershire
and Gloucestershire and over the territories occupied by the Middle
Angles (Bede's Angii Mediterranei) in Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire
and Huntingdonshire. These latter he formed into a second sub-kingdom
and entrusted to his son Peada.
The centre of the realm thus constituted was at Tamworth on the
Watling Street, and it is clear that, if its parts could only hold together,
the new state from its central situation was in a far better position for
gaining supremacy over all England than Northumbria had been. The
struggle, however, was by no means over; for it was not long before the
Northumbrian dynasty recovered from its eclipse and made a determined
effort to undo Penda's work.
The new Northumbrian leader was Oswald, one of the sons of
Aethelfrith of Bernicia who had been exiled when Edwin of Deira won
his kingdom. This prince seized the opportunity afforded by Edwin's
death to return to Bernicia, and in 635 signally defeated Cadwallon at
Heavenfield near Hexham on the Roman Wall. Upon this he was able
not only to reunite Deira to Bernicia, but being a zealous Christian to
begin the reconversion of both districts. To effect this he called to his
aid, not the exiled Paulinus, but a band of Irish-Scot missionaries from
the renowned monastery of Iona on the west coast of Scotland where he
had himself learnt Christianity, when in exile. The struggle between
the adherents of Christ and Wodan was thus again renewed, but this time
not under the auspices of Rome; for the Scots were quite independent
of the Papacy and had their own traditions and a peculiar organisation.
The leader of the new mission to Bernicia was Aidan (correctly Aedan),
whom Oswald established, not at York amid Roman surroundings, but
on the island of Lindisfarne in the North Sea, hard by Bamborough,
the Bernician capital. The detailed story of this second attempt to
Christianise Northumbria will be found elsewhere; its effect on the newly
formed Mercian kingdom is what now concerns us; for Oswald, as a
champion of Christ, was bound to attack Penda, even if he had not also
felt it his duty to regain for Northumbria its lost political supremacy.
In this enterprise Oswald was not long without allies. The numerous
petty chiefs, whom Penda had subdued, were naturally not very heartily
on his side. Any overlord, even one who adhered to the old religion,
was distasteful to them, and this made it easy to stir up rebels. Besides,
notwithstanding Penda's opposition, Christianity was making headway
all round him, in East Anglia under Anna who was crowned king in
spite of a victorious Mercian invasion, and in Wessex under Cynegils
C. MED. B. VOL. II. Oil. XVII. 36
## p. 546 (#578) ############################################
546 Battle of Maserfield. Oswald slain by Penda [640-651
who was converted about this time by an Italian missionary, named
Birinus.
These two folk-kings were necessarily Oswald's allies, and if we are
to believe Bede, even accepted him as their overlord. At any rate
Oswald encouraged Cynegils to set up Birinus as bishop of the West
Saxons with his see at Dorchester a few miles below Oxford on the
upper Thames, and was himself present as sponsor when Cynegils was
baptised. By 640 the allied princes were clearly pressing Penda hard;
for Oswald was able to regain Elmet and Lindsey and collect his forces
for an attack on the district of " Westerna" round Chester. But here,
as it proved, the Christian champion over-reached himself. In this
quarter Penda could rely on British help and probably was joined by
Cadwalader of Gwynedd. At any rate in 642 he faced Oswald in the
north-east corner of Shropshire at the foot of the Welsh hills in the
woodlands called Maserfield, and here Oswald was slain and his army
destroyed. Penda had his body mutilated, but tradition says that his
head was subsequently buried at Lindisfarne, while his arms and his
hands were preserved at Bam borough as precious relics of the fight with
heathendom. Later he was canonised as St Oswald. The Welsh too
preserved his memory, calling the site of the battle Croes Oswallt, while
the English called it Oswestry.
The same results followed from the disaster in Maserfield as from
Edwin's disaster in Heathfield. Bernicia and Deira again parted com-
pany, this time for thirteen years, while Penda retained his position as
leading king. Northumbria however did not go back to heathendom,
though Penda ravaged it as far as Bamborough. The Irish missionaries
had obtained too great a hold on the people to be repudiated, and Aidan
did not think of abandoning his flock. In Wessex heathenism had
greater success. Cynegils died in 643, and his son Coenwalch, who had
married Penda's daughter, succeeded and practised heathen rites. But
even here Birinus seems to have maintained a foothold. At any rate
Coenwalch soon quarrelled with Penda, and fleeing for refuge to Anna of
East Anglia was shortly afterwards baptised by Felix, the missionary
bishop of Dunwich. Penda, indeed, as the years went by, must gradu-
ally have realised that in spite of his victories he was fighting against the
inevitable. In 648 Coenwalch, aided by his kinsman Cuthred, returned
to Wessex and openly proclaimed himself a Christian. Peada, too, who
had been set over the Midland Angles, was also found among the converts,
while missionaries from Lindisfarne headed by Cedd, an Englishman,
were invited into Essex by the local chiefs, who had remained heathens
ever since the expulsion of Bishop Mellitus in 617.
The prime mover in all this was Oswy, Oswald's younger brother,
who after Maserfield had become king of Bernicia and who in 651 tried
to regain Deira as well, by putting to death Oswin, a chieftain who was
ruling that district with the support of Penda. In this he did not succeed,
## p. 547 (#579) ############################################
654-655] Battle of the Winwaed. Penda slain by Oswy 547
but it heralded a new struggle in which heathendom had once more to
fight for its existence. Penda as usual met the danger with vigour. In
654 he made a savage attack on East Anglia and slew Anna, and the
year following collected all his strength to march against Oswy. At first
Oswy offered tribute, but Penda refused all terms. His levies, we are
told, were organised under thirty different chiefs and included contin-
gents from Wales, East Anglia and Deira. Oswy's forces in comparison
were far inferior, but they had the better spirit, some of Penda's allies
being half-hearted and some actually treacherous. The collision took
place at the ford of the Winwaed, apparently a stream half-way between
Doncaster and Ledstone. Here in the district of the Elmetsaete
Penda's life-long good fortune deserted him. The Deirans would not
fight for him, one of the Welsh contingents took to flight, and in the
end Penda himself fell together with the king whom he had recently set
up in East Anglia and many of his other vassals.
Oswy's somewhat unexpected victory not only gave him great prestige,
but was decisive for the religious destiny of the English. Sussex and
much of Wessex and Mercia were still heathen, and Cedd's mission to the
men of Essex and Middle Anglia had still much work to do; but from
this time onwards active heathen resistance was at an end, for Peada the
heir to Mercia already stood for Christianity, and had married Oswy's
daughter. It must not be thought that Penda's career had been in
vain. He had failed, it is true, to maintain the old religion; but the
Mercian State which he had evolved out of a congeries of tiny tribes,
was destined to prove permanent, and in spite of Oswy's momentary
triumph soon shewed itself able to resist all efforts to bring about its
dismemberment. It remained in fact the leading factor in English
politics for the next hundred and fifty years.
It may be well at this point to glance at the chief changes from the
social and political point of view, which each English tribe underwent
as soon as its leaders discarded heathenism. The most far-reaching
change of all, next to the introduction of a higher moral standard, is
clearly the rise in each kingdom of a small class who could read and
write and who had some knowledge of Mediterranean civilisation. The
English of all ranks, as pagans, must have lived almost without writing.
They were indeed acquainted with the Runic alphabet, and used it for
mottoes on weapons and coins, for recording names on gravestones, and
now and again for secret messages; but this method of writing was
altogether useless for the ordinary needs of civilisation. Here and there,
too, there may have been court bards, who may have been capable of
reading messages for the kings in the Roman alphabet, but the ordinary
chief knew nothing of writing and put nothing on record. Everything
that needed to be remembered had to be put in the form of rhythmic
verses suitable for chanting to the harp, and all the laws and customs
of the tribes were handed down orally by this method. All this now
ch. xvii. 35—2
## p. 548 (#580) ############################################
548 Changes introduced with Christianity
began to change. Wherever the missionaries came, they brought the
Roman alphabet with them and were ready to write down and record,
at first of course in Latin, but after a few years in the vernacular also,
not only accounts of deeds of importance but every-day bargains and
contracts. The new learning might be meagre, and the class of writers
a small one, but a new epoch had begun. A book ceased to mean a
tablet of beechwood and became a book of parchment, and hereafter
there was a new leaven ceaselessly at work making for social progress.
Hardly less important politically was the new division set up between
clergy and laity, a distinction which dominates all later periods, and
which introduced a dualism into the framework of government and
society which is now difficult to apprehend in all its subtle bearings.
The new class of clergy, the godcund estate as opposed to the zeoruld-
cund or laity, did not merely step into the places of the priests of
heathen days. As already suggested the heathen priests for the most
part had not been a class apart, but, like the later Godis of Iceland,
were probably leading landowners who acted the part of chieftains,
judges and priests combined, and enjoyed the right of conducting
the sacrifices on national feast-days as an hereditary office appendant
to their estates. The edifices, too, which served as temples, if they
were like the Icelandic hovs, had not been buildings solely devoted to
religious uses, but were attached to the big halls of the chieftains used
equally for social purposes, so that a sacrifice and a banquet were easily
merged together.
The new order of clergy, on the other hand, from the outset did
everything they could to mark off their position from that of the
heathen priests, asserting themselves to be a caste apart, superior to
the lay classes and fenced about by special sanctions definitely recognised
by the law. And this in itself led to further developments, causing the
bishops to be ever urging on the kings the necessity of recording in
writing what the rights were which the clergy were to enjoy, and by
what fines and punishments their teaching was to be made effective and
their privileges guarded. It thus came about not only that the laws
were materially supplemented but that the amendments were put into
writing, a step forward in the path of civilisation of the utmost
importance. It is true that only one amending code, that for Kent,
issued by King Aethelberht, is now extant which dates from the
first advent of the missionaries, but there can be no reasonable doubt
that similar codes must also have been written down at any rate for
Northumbria and East Anglia, as without them the position of the
clergy, with no tradition to appeal to, could not have been made secure
or their views on morality enforced.
In considering these changes in the laws, it would be unjust to
suppose that the work of the bishops was mainly directed to securing
the status of their own order. It would be truer to maintain that their
-
## p.
