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Pope Gregory and St. Augustine—Calumnies against the Jews—The Three “St. Hugh’s.”

Perhaps here it may be well to say something of the life of Paulinus, the first Christian missionary in Lincoln. And in doing so I must acknowledge the debt I owe to Sir Henry Howorth’s most interesting book, “The Birth of the English Church.”

PAULINUS BISHOP OF YORK

When Pope Gregory, having been struck by the sight of some fair-haired Anglian boys being sold as slaves in the Roman Forum, had determined to send a Mission to preach the Gospel in their land, he chose the prior of his own monastery of St. Andrew’s, which was on the site where now stands the church of San Gregorio on the Cælian Hill in Rome. The name of the prior was Augustine. With his companion monks, he set out, apparently in the spring of 596. They went from Ostia by sea to Gaul, but lingered in that country for above a year, and landed on the Isle of Thanet in April 597. He was well received by Æthelbert King of Kent and his wife Bertha, daughter of Charibert King of Paris. She was a Christian, and had brought her Christian chaplain with her. This made Augustine’s mission comparatively easy. Quarters were given him in Canterbury, and he began to build a monastery and was allowed to make use of the little church dedicated to St. Martin, where the Queen’s chaplain had officiated. Having then sent to the Pope for more missionaries, he received instructions from Gregory to establish a Metropolitan See in London and other Bishoprics in York and elsewhere. At the same time several recruits were sent to him among whom Bede particularises Mellitus, Justus, Paulinus, and Rufinianus. The first three became respectively Bishops of London, Rochester, and York, and Rufinianus Abbot of St. Augustine’s monastery at Canterbury. By the Pope’s command all these bishops were to be subject to Augustine during his life, and he was to be the Archbishop of Canterbury. Augustine died in the same year as St. Gregory, A.D. 604. A few years later, about 616, Mellitus and Justus both withdrew for a year to Gaul, but were recalled by King Eadbald, Justus to Rochester and Mellitus to become Archbishop of Canterbury after Laurence, a priest whom Augustine himself had selected to succeed him in 604, and who died in 619. To this post Justus succeeded in 624, and, as Archbishop, consecrated Romanus to the See of Rochester. Shortly after this Paulinus was consecrated Bishop of York by Justus in 625, and he accompanied Æthelbert’s daughter Æthelberga to the Court of Ædwin King of Deira, who ruled from the Forth to the Thames and who had sought her hand, promising that she should be free to worship as she liked and that if on inquiry he found her religion better than his own he would also become a Christian. He discussed the matter with Paulinus, and after many months’ delay summoned a Witenagemote and asked each counsellor what he thought of the new teaching, which at present had no hold except in Kent. Coifi, the Chief Priest of the old religion, was the first to speak; he said he had not got any good from his own religion though none had served the gods more faithfully—so if the new doctrine held out better hopes he would advise the king to adopt it without further delay. Coifi was followed by another of the king’s Ealdormen. His speech was a very remarkable one, and is accurately rendered by the poet Wordsworth in his Sonnet called Persuasion, which runs thus:—

“Man’s life is like a sparrow, mighty King!

That—while at banquet with your Chiefs you sit

Housed near a blazing fire—is seen to flit

Safe from the wintry tempest. Fluttering,

Here did it enter; there, on hasty wing,

Flies out, and passes on from cold to cold;

But whence it came we know not, nor behold

Whither it goes. Even such that transient thing,

The human Soul; not utterly unknown

While in the Body lodged, her warm abode;

But from what world she came, what use or weal

On her departure waits, no tongue hath shown;

This mystery if the Stranger can reveal,

His be a welcome cordially bestowed!”

THE FIRST ENGLISH BISHOP

After this the king gave Paulinus permission to preach the Gospel openly, and he himself renounced idolatry, and in April 627, with a large number of his people, he was baptized at York in the little church which was the first to be built on the site of York Minster. After this Paulinus baptized in the river Swale, and later he came to the province of “Lindissi,” and spent some time in Lincoln, converting Blaecca the “Reeve” of the city, and baptizing in the presence of the king a great number of people in the Trent either at Littleborough or Torksey.

He appears to have spent some time in Lincoln, and to have come back to it after 633, for early in 635 he consecrated Honorius the successor to Justus, and fifth Archbishop of Canterbury. The ceremony taking place probably in the little “church of stone” that he had built, possibly where St. Paul’s Church now stands. It was probably thatched with reeds, for eighty years later Bede speaks of it as being unroofed. If St. Paul’s church really was originally the church of Paulinus, it helps to remove the stigma that though Paulinus preached and baptised with effect, unlike Wilfrith, he founded nothing.

In 633 King Ædwin and both his sons were killed after a great battle against Penda King of Mercia and Coedwalla King of the Britons, at Haethfelth near Doncaster, and Christianity in Northumbria came to an abrupt end; though, when Paulinus left, to escort the widowed queen back to Kent, his faithful deacon James remained behind him, whose memorial we probably have in the inscribed cross shaft with its unusual interlaced pattern at Hawkswell near Catterick. To York Paulinus never returned; but on the death of Romanus, who had been sent by Archbishop Justus on a mission to the Pope but was drowned in the Bay of Genoa, he took charge of the See of Rochester, and there he remained till his death on October 10, 644, after he had been Bishop at York for eight and at Rochester for eleven years. Archbishop Honorius, who was consecrated just a year before the death of a Pope of the same name, ordained Ithamar to succeed Paulinus. He was a native of Kent and the first Englishman to be made a bishop. After the death of Paulinus in 644, more than four centuries passed before Remigius began to build the cathedral in 1075, which was altered and amplified so remarkably about 100 years later by Hugh of Lincoln.