authority, because from the earlier times of my predecessors the bishop
of the city Arles received the pallium, whom we ought not to degrade nor
to deprive of the received authority. But, if thou happen to go into the
province of Gaul, have thou a conference and consultation with the said
bishop what is to be done, or, if any vices are found in bishops, how
they shall be corrected and reformed; and if there be a supposition that
he is too lukewarm in the vigor of his discipline and chastisement, then
is he to be inflamed and abetted by thy brotherliness's love,[45] that
he may ward off those things which are contrary to the behest and
commands of our Maker, from the manners of the bishops. Thou mayest not
judge the bishops of Gaul without their own authority; but thou shalt
mildly admonish them, and show them the imitation of thy good works. All
the bishops of Britain we commend to thy brotherliness, in order that
the unlearned may be taught, the weak strengthened by thy exhortation,
and the perverse corrected by thy authority.[46]
Augustine likewise bade [his messengers] acquaint him that a great
harvest was here present and few workmen. And he then sent with the
aforesaid messengers more help to him for divine learning, among whom
the first and greatest were Mellitus and Justus and Paulinus and
Rufinianus, and by them generally all those things which were needful
for the worship and service of the Church--communion vessels,
altar-cloth, and church ornaments, and bishops' robes, and deacons'
robes, as also reliques of the apostles and holy martyrs, and many
books. He likewise sent to Augustine the bishop a pallium, and a letter
in which he intimated how he should hallow other bishops, and in what
places [he should] set them in Britain.
The blessed Pope Gregory likewise at the same time sent a letter to King
Ethelbert, and along with it many worldly gifts of diverse sorts. He
wished likewise by these temporal honors to glorify the King, to whom he
had, by his labor and by his diligence in teaching, opened and made
known the glory of the heavenly kingdom.
And then St. Augustine, as soon as he received the bishop-seat in the
royal city, renewed and wrought, with the King's help, the church which
he had learnt was wrought long before by old Roman work, and hallowed it
in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ; and he there set a dwelling-place
for himself and all his after-followers. He likewise built a monastery
by east of the city, in which Ethelbert the King, by his exhortation and
advice, ordered to build a church worthy of the blessed apostles Peter
and Paul, and he enriched it with various gifts, in which church the
body of Augustine, and of all the Canterbury bishops together, and of
their kings, might be laid. The church, however, not Augustine, but
Bishop Laurentius, his after-follower, hallowed.
The first abbot at the same monastery was a mass-priest named Peter, who
was sent back as a messenger into the kingdom of Gaul, and then was
drowned in a bay of the sea, which was called Amfleet, and was laid in
an unbecoming grave by the inhabitants of the place. But the Almighty
God would show of what merit the holy man was, and every night a
heavenly light was made to shine over his grave, until the neighbors,
who saw it, understood that it was a great and holy man who was buried
there; and they then asked who and whence he was: they then took his
body, and laid and buried it in a church in the city of Boulogne, with
the honor befitting so great and so holy a man.
Then it was that Augustine, with the help of King Ethelbert, invited to
his speech the bishops and teachers of the Britons, in the place which
is yet named Augustine's Oak, on the borders of the Hwiccii and West
Saxons. And he then began, with brotherly love, to advise and teach
them, that they should have right love and peace between them, and
undertake, for the Lord, the common labor of teaching divine lore in the
English nation. And they would not hear him, nor keep Easter at its
right tide, and also had many other things unlike and contrary to
ecclesiastical unity. When they had held a long conference and strife
about those things, and they would not yield any things to Augustine's
instructions, nor to his prayers, nor to his threats, and [those] of his
companions, but thought their own customs and institutions better than
[that] they should agree with all Christ's churches throughout the
world; then the holy father Augustine put an end to this troublesome
strife, and thus spoke:
"Let us pray Almighty God, who makes the one-minded to dwell in his
Father's house, that he vouchsafe to signify to us by heavenly wonders
which institution we ought to follow, by what ways to hasten to the
entrance of his kingdom. Let an infirm man be brought hither to us, and,
through whose prayer soever he be healed, let his belief and practice be
believed acceptable to God, and to be followed by all."
When his adversaries had hardly granted that, a blind man of English kin
was led forth: he was first led to the bishops of the Britons, and he
received no health nor comfort through their ministry. Then at last
Augustine was constrained by righteous need, arose and bowed his knees,
[and] prayed God the Almighty Father that he would give sight to the
blind man, that he through one man's bodily enlightening might kindle
the gift of ghostly light in the hearts of many faithful Then soon,
without delay, the blind man was enlightened, and received sight; and
the true preacher of the heavenly light, Augustine, was proclaimed and
praised by all. Then the Britons also acknowledged with shame that they
understood that it was the way of truth which Augustine preached; they
said, however, that they could not, without consent and leave of their
people, shun and forsake their old customs. They begged that again
another synod should be [assembled], and they then would attend it with
more counsellors.
When that accordingly was set, seven bishops of the Britons came, and
all the most learned men, who were chiefly from the city Bangor: at that
time the abbot of that monastery was named Dinoth. When they then were
going to the meeting, they first came to a [certain] hermit, who was
with them holy and wise. They interrogated and asked him whether they
should for Augustine's lore forsake their own institutions and customs.
Then answered he them, "If he be a man of God, follow him." Quoth they
to him, "How may we know whether he be so?" Quoth he: "[Our] Lord
himself hath said in his gospel, Take ye my yoke upon you, and learn
from me that I am mild and of lowly heart. And now if Augustine is mild
and of lowly heart, then it is [to be] believed that he bears Christ's
yoke and teaches you to bear it. If he then is unmild and haughty, then
it is known that he is not from God, nor [should] ye mind his words."
Quoth they again, "How may we know that distinctly?" Quoth he, "See ye
that he come first to the synod with his fellows, and sit; and, if he
rises toward you when ye come, then wit ye that he is Christ's servant,
and ye shall humbly hear his words and his lore. But if he despise you,
and will not rise toward you since there are more of you, be he then
despised by you." Well, they did so as he said.
When they had come to the synod-place, the archbishop Augustine was
sitting on his seat. When they saw that he rose not for them, they
quickly became angry, and upbraided him [as being] haughty, and gainsaid
and withstood all his words. The archbishop said to them: "In many
things ye are contrary to our customs and so to [those] of all God's
churches; and yet if ye will be obedient to me in these three
things--that first ye celebrate Easter at the right tide; that ye fulfil
the ministry of baptism, through which we are born as God's children,
after the manner of the holy Roman and apostolic Church; and that,
thirdly, ye preach the word of the Lord to the English people together
with us--we will patiently bear with all other things which ye do that
are contrary to our customs." They said that they would do none of these
things, nor would have him for an archbishop; they said among
themselves, "If he would not now rise for us, much more, if we shall be
subjected to him, will he contemn us for naught." It is said that the
man of God, St. Augustine, in a threatening manner foretold, "if they
would not receive peace with men of God, that they should receive
unpeace and war from their foes; and, if they would not preach among the
English race the word of life, they should through their hands suffer
the vengeance of death."
And through everything, as the man of God had foretold, by the righteous
doom of God it came to pass; and very soon after this Ethelfrith, king
of the English, collected a great army, and led it to Legcaster, and
there fought against the Britons, and made the greatest slaughter of the
faithless people. While he was beginning the battle, King Ethelfrith saw
their priests and bishops and monks standing aloof in a safer place,
that they should pray and make intercession to God for their warriors:
he inquired and asked what that host was, and what they were doing
there. When he understood the cause of their coming, then said he, "So!
I wot if they cry to their God against us, though they bear not a
weapon, they fight against us, for they pursue us with their hostile
prayers and curses." He then straightway ordered to turn upon them
first, and slay them. Men say that there were twelve hundred of this
host, and fifty of them escaped by flight; and he so then destroyed and
blotted out the other host of the sinful nation, not without great
waning of his [own] host; and so was fulfilled the prophecy of the holy
bishop Augustine, that they should for their trowlessness suffer the
vengeance of temporal perdition, because they despised the skilful
counsel of their eternal salvation.
After these things Augustine, bishop [of Britain], hallowed two bishops:
the one was named Mellitus, the other Justus. Mellitus he sent to preach
divine lore to the East Saxons, who are shed off from Kentland by the
river Thames, and joined to the east sea. Their chief city is called
Lundencaster (_now London_), standing on the bank of the foresaid
river; and it is the market-place of land and sea comers. The King in
the nation at that time was Seabright (_or Sabert_), Ethelbert's
sister-son, and his vassal. Then he and the nation of the East Saxons
received the word of truth and the faith of Christ through Mellitus, the
bishop's lore. Then King Ethelbert ordered to build a church in London,
and to hallow it to St. Paul the apostle, that he and his
after-followers might have their bishop-seat in that place. Justus he
hallowed as bishop in Kent itself at Rochester, which is four-and-twenty
miles right west from Canterbury, in which city likewise King Ethelbert
ordered to build a church, and to hallow it to St. Andrew the apostle;
and to each of these bishops the King gave his gifts and bookland and
possessions for them to brook with their fellows.
After these things, then, Father Augustine, beloved of God, departed
[this life], and his body was buried without [doors], nigh the church of
the blessed apostles Peter and Paul, which we mentioned before, because
it was not then yet fully built nor hallowed. As soon as it was
hallowed, then his body was put into it, and becomingly buried in the
north porch of the church, in which likewise the bodies of all the
after-following archbishops are buried but two; that is, Theodorus and
Berhtwald, whose bodies are laid in the church itself, because no more
might [be so] in the foresaid porch. Well-nigh in the middle of the
church is an altar set and hallowed in name of St. Gregory, on which
every Saturday their memory and decease are celebrated with mass-song by
the mass-priest of that place. On St. Augustine's tomb is written an
inscription of this sort: Here resteth Sir[47] Augustine, the first
archbishop of Canterbury, who was formerly sent hither by the blessed
Gregory, bishop of the Roman city; and was upheld by God with working of
wonders. King Ethelbert and his people he led from the worship of idols
to the faith of Christ, and, having fulfilled the days of his ministry
in peace, departed on the 26th day of May in the same King's reign.
JOHN RICHARD GREEN
Years had passed by since Gregory pitied the English slaves in the
market-place of Rome. As bishop of the imperial city he at last found
himself in a position to carry out his dream of winning Britain to the
faith, and an opening was given him by Ethelbert's marriage with Bertha,
a daughter of the Frankish king Charibert of Paris. Bertha, like her
Frankish kindred, was a Christian; a Christian bishop accompanied her
from Gaul; and a ruined Christian church, the church of St. Martin
beside the royal city of Canterbury, was given them for their worship.
The King himself remained true to the gods of his fathers; but his
marriage no doubt encouraged Gregory to send a Roman abbot, Augustine,
at the head of a band of monks to preach the Gospel, to the English
people. The missionaries landed in 597 in the Isle of Thanet, at the
spot where Hengist had landed more than a century before; and Ethelbert
received them sitting in the open air, on the chalk-down above Minster
where the eye nowadays catches miles away over the marshes the dim tower
of Canterbury.
The King listened patiently to the long sermon of Augustine as the
interpreters the abbot had brought with him from Gaul rendered it in the
English tongue. "Your words are fair," Ethelbert replied at last with
English good sense, "but they are new and of doubtful meaning." For
himself, he said, he refused to forsake the gods of his fathers, but
with the usual religious tolerance of his race he promised shelter and
protection to the strangers.
The band of monks entered Canterbury bearing before them a silver cross
with a picture of Christ, and singing in concert the strains of the
litany of their church. "Turn from this city, O Lord," they sang, "thine
anger and wrath, and turn it from thy holy house, for we have sinned."
And then in strange contrast came the jubilant cry of the older Hebrew
worship, the cry which Gregory had wrested in prophetic earnestness from
the name of the Yorkshire king in the Roman market-place,
"Alleluia!"[48]
It was thus that the spot which witnessed the landing of Hengist became
yet better known as the landing-place of Augustine. But the second
landing at Ebbsfleet was in no small measure a reversal and undoing of
the first. "Strangers from Rome" was the title with which the
missionaries first fronted the English King. The march of the monks as
they chanted their solemn litany was in one sense a return of the Roman
legions who withdrew at the trumpet-call of Alaric. It was to the tongue
and the thought not of Gregory only, but of the men whom his Jutish
fathers had slaughtered or driven out that Ethelbert listened in the
preaching of Augustine.
Canterbury, the earliest royal city of German England, became a centre
of Latin influence. The Roman tongue became again one of the tongues of
Britain, the language of its worship, its correspondence, its
literature. But more than the tongue of Rome returned with Augustine.
Practically his landing renewed that union with the western world which
the landing of Hengist had destroyed. The new England was admitted into
the older commonwealth of nations. The civilization, art, letters, which
had fled before the sword of the English conquerors returned with the
Christian faith. The great fabric of the Roman law indeed never took
root in England, but it is impossible not to recognize the result of the
influence of the Roman missionaries in the fact that codes of the
customary English law began to be put in writing soon after their
arrival.
A year passed before Ethelbert yielded to the preaching of Augustine.
But from the moment of his conversion the new faith advanced rapidly and
the Kentish men crowded to baptism in the train of their King. The new
religion was carried beyond the bounds of Kent by the supremacy which
Ethelbert wielded over the neighboring kingdoms. Sebert, king of the
East Saxons, received a bishop sent from Kent, and suffered him to build
up again a Christian church in what was now his subject city of London,
while the East Anglian king Redwald resolved to serve Christ and the
older gods together.
FOOTNOTES:
[43] Translated by King Alfred the Great.
[44] That is, with their near kinsfolk.
[45] A brother is here styled "his brotherliness," as a pope "his
holiness."
[46] The remainder of this is not translated here.
[47] "Sir" in English (_Schir_, Scottish) equal to _Dominus_, Latin, was
five or six centuries ago prefixed to the name of every ordained priest.
[48] See introduction to _Augustine's Missionary Work in England_.
THE HEGIRA
CAREER OF MAHOMET: THE KORAN: AND MAHOMETAN CREED
A.D. 622
IRVING OCKLEY
The flight of Mahomet from Mecca to Medina occurred June 20, 622,
and was called the _hegira_, or departure of the prophet. That
event marks the commencement of the Mahometan era, which is called
there-from the _Hegira_. According to the civil calculation it is
fixed at Friday, July 16th, the date of the Mahometans, although
astronomers and some historians assign it to the day preceding.
While primarily referring to the flight of Mahomet, the term is
applied also to the emigration to Medina, prior to the capture of
Mecca (630) of those of Mahomet's disciples, who henceforth were
known as Mohajerins--Emigrants or Refugees--which became a title of
honor.
A scion of the family of Hashem and of the tribe of Koreish, the
noblest race in Arabia, and the guardians of the ancient temple and
idols of the Kaaba, Mahomet was born at Mecca, August 20, A.D. 570.
He acquired wealth and influence by his marriage with Kadijah, a
rich widow, but, about his fortieth year, by announcing himself as
an apostle of God, sent to extirpate idolatry and to restore the
true faith of the prophets Abraham, Moses, and Jesus, he and his
converts were exposed to contumely and persecution.
It was, as Irving's recital shows, necessary for the preservation
of his life--which was threatened by his own tribe, the
Koreishites--that Mahomet should leave Mecca, and he escaped none
too soon. It must also be observed that by this going out he found
ampler means for the spread of his doctrine and the increase of his
followers. His very presence among strangers drew multitudes to the
support of his cause, and the enthusiasm aroused by the prophet at
Medina made that city the centre of his first great propaganda.
There Mahomet died; in the Great Mosque is his tomb, and Medina is
sometimes called the "City of the Prophet." From this centre began
the development and spread of Islam into a world-religion, which
has flourished to the present day, when its followers are estimated
at nearly two hundred millions, having large empire and still wider
influence among some of the most important races of the East.
WASHINGTON IRVING
The fortunes of Mahomet were becoming darker and darker in his native
place. Kadijah, his original benefactress, the devoted companion of his
solitude and seclusion, the zealous believer in his doctrines, was in
her grave; so also was Abu-Taleb, once his faithful and efficient
protector. Deprived of the sheltering influence of the latter, Mahomet
had become, in a manner, an outlaw in Mecca; obliged to conceal himself,
and remain a burden on the hospitality of those whom his own doctrines
had involved in persecution. If worldly advantage had been his object,
how had it been attained? Upward of ten years had elapsed since first he
announced his prophetic mission; ten long years of enmity, trouble, and
misfortune. Still he persevered, and now, at a period of life when men
seek to enjoy in repose the fruition of the past, rather than risk all
in new schemes for the future, we find him, after having sacrificed
ease, fortune, and friends, prepared to give up home and country also,
rather than his religious creed.
As soon as the privileged time of pilgrimage arrived, he emerged once
more from his concealment, and mingled with the multitude assembled from
all parts of Arabia. His earnest desire was to find some powerful tribe,
or the inhabitants of some important city, capable and willing to
receive him as a guest, and protect him in the enjoyment and propagation
of his faith.
His quest was for a time unsuccessful. Those who had come to worship at
the Kaaba[49] drew back from a man stigmatized as an apostate; and the
worldly-minded were unwilling to befriend one proscribed by the powerful
of his native place.
At length, as he was one day preaching on the hill Al Akaba, a little to
the north of Mecca, he drew the attention of certain pilgrims from the
city of Yathreb. This city, since called Medina, was about two hundred
and seventy miles north of Mecca. Many of its inhabitants were Jews and
heretical Christians. The pilgrims in question were pure Arabs of the
ancient and powerful tribe of Khazradites, and in habits of friendly
intercourse with the Keneedites and Naderites, two Jewish tribes
inhabiting Mecca, who claimed to be of the sacerdotal line of Aaron. The
pilgrims had often heard their Jewish friends explain the mysteries of
their faith and talk of an expected messiah. They were moved by the
eloquence of Mahomet, and struck with the resemblance of his doctrines
to those of the Jewish law; insomuch that when they heard him proclaim
himself a prophet, sent by heaven to restore the ancient faith, they
said, one to another, "Surely this must be the promised messiah of which
we have been told." The more they listened, the stronger became their
persuasion of the fact, until in the end they avowed their conviction,
and made a final profession of their faith.
As the Khazradites belonged to one of the most powerful tribes of
Yathreb, Mahomet sought to secure their protection, and proposed to
accompany them on their return; but they informed him that they were at
deadly feud with the Awsites, another powerful tribe of that city, and
advised him to defer his coming until they should be at peace. He
consented; but on the return home of the pilgrims, he sent with them
Musab Ibn Omeir, one of the most learned and able of his disciples, with
instructions to strengthen them in the faith, and to preach it to their
townsmen.
Thus were the seeds of Islamism first sown in the city of Medina. For a
time they thrived but slowly. Musab was opposed by the idolaters, and
his life threatened; but he persisted in his exertions and gradually
made converts among the principal inhabitants. Among these were Saad Ibn
Maads, a prince or chief of the Awsites, and Osaid Ibn Hodheir, a man
of great authority in the city. Numbers of the Moslems of Mecca also,
driven away by persecution, took refuge in Medina, and aided in
propagating the new faith among its inhabitants, until it found its way
into almost every household.
Feeling now assured of being able to give Mahomet an asylum in the city,
upward of seventy of the converts of Medina, led by Musab Ibn Omeir,
repaired to Mecca with the pilgrims in the holy month of the thirteenth
year of "the mission," to invite him to take up his abode in their city.
Mahomet gave them a midnight meeting on the hill Al Akaba. His uncle Al
Abbas, who, like the deceased Abu-Taleb, took an affectionate interest
in his welfare, though no convert to his doctrines, accompanied him to
this secret conference, which he feared might lead him into danger. He
entreated the pilgrims from Medina not to entice his nephew to their
city until more able to protect him; warning them that their open
adoption of the new faith would bring all Arabia in arms against them.
His warnings and entreaties were in vain; a solemn compact was made
between the parties. Mahomet demanded that they should abjure idolatry,
and worship the one true God openly and fearlessly. For himself he
exacted obedience in weal and woe; and for the disciples who might
accompany him, protection; even such as they would render to their own
wives and children. On these terms he offered to bind himself to remain
among them, to be the friend of their friends, the enemy of their
enemies.
"But, should we perish in your cause," asked they, "what will be our
reward?"
"Paradise," replied the prophet.