¹ In the year of the Lord’s incarnation 664 a sudden pestilential plague, having first depopulated the southern regions of Britain, also seized the province of the Northumbrians, and raging far and wide for a long time with cruel destruction, laid low a great multitude of people. This same plague afflicted the island of Ireland with an equal destruction. There were in Ireland at that time many of the nobles and common folk of the English people, who in the time of the bishops Finan and Colman, leaving their country, had withdrawn there either for divine reading or for a more continent life. Some at once gave themselves over to monastic conversation; others, going round through the cells of the masters, rejoiced to give attention to reading. All of whom the inhabitants most gladly received, taking care to offer them daily food without price, books also for reading, and gratuitous teaching. Among them were two young men of great promise, of the English nobles, Ethelhun and Egbert; who, being in the monastery named Rathmelsige, when all their companions had either been snatched from the world by the mortality or dispersed through other places, were both seized by the disease of that same mortality and most grievously afflicted. For Egbert, when he reckoned he would die, went out at morning time from his chamber, and sitting alone in a fitting place, began to think earnestly of his deeds; and, stricken by the memory of his sins, washed his face with tears, and prayed God from his inmost heart that he might not yet have to die, before he had more perfectly chastised his past negligences and exercised himself more abundantly in good works. He vowed also that he wished so to live as a pilgrim that he would never return to the island in which he was born, namely England; and that besides the canonical and daily psalmody, if bodily health did not prevent him, he would each day chant the whole psalter, and in every week pass a day with a night fasting. And when, his tears, prayers and vows finished, he returned home, he found his companion sleeping. And when he was resting little by little in his bed, his companion, awakening, looked at him and said: “O brother Egbert, O what have you done? I hoped that we would enter eternal life together. Nevertheless know that you will receive what you have asked.” For he had learned by a vision both what he had asked and that he had obtained his request. Ethelhun indeed dying the following night, Egbert, casting off the trouble of the illness, recovered; and persevering long afterwards in good deeds, in the year of the Lord 729, and the ninetieth year of his age, on the eighth kalends of May he departed to the heavenly kingdoms. And he led his life in great perfection of humility, meekness, continence, simplicity and justice. So he greatly profited both his own people and those nations in which he was an exile, by the example of his living and the earnestness of his teaching, by his authority in correcting and his piety in bestowing from what he had received from the rich. He added moreover to the vows we have mentioned, that always in Lent he would take refreshment no more than once a day, tasting nothing other than bread and the thinnest milk in measure. Which milk indeed he used to set fresh the day before in a phial, and after the night, removing the thicker surface, drank the remainder with a little bread. Which manner of continence he also took care to observe for the forty days before the Nativity, and for as many after Pentecost.

² About the year of the Lord 690 the venerable servant of Christ Egbert purposed to profit many, and to preach the word of God to nations who had not yet heard it. He knew that in Germany there were very many nations, from which the English are known to have drawn their race and origin, still serving pagan rites: to whom he resolved to come, sailing round Britain, if perhaps he could rescue any of them from Satan and transfer them to Christ. To his purpose heavenly oracles and works alike stood opposed. For companions having been chosen, most strenuous and suited to preach the word of God, distinguished both in action and erudition, and necessaries prepared, a certain one of the brothers came to him, saying: “When, the nocturnal praises finished, I had laid my limbs in bed and a light sleep had crept over me, there appeared to me my former master and fosterer Boisil, provost of Melrose, asking me whether I could recognise him. To whom I answered: ‘You are indeed Boisil.’ And he: ‘For this,’ he said, ‘I have come, that I may bring the answer of the Lord the Saviour to Egbert, which it is fitting you report to him. Tell him therefore that the journey he proposes he cannot fulfil: it is God’s will that he go rather to the monasteries of Columba to teach.’” Hearing these things, Egbert commanded him to report this to no one, lest perhaps the vision should prove illusory. Again the same brother came to him, saying that the servant of Christ Boisil, appearing to him a second time, said: “Why have you spoken and commanded to be spoken so negligently and tepidly? Go and tell him: whether he will or no, he must come to the monasteries of Columba, because their ploughs do not go straight, and he must call them back to the right path.” And again he commanded the brother to disclose this to no one: and none the less he attempted to begin the planned journey with the brothers. And when he hastened to sail with a favourable wind blowing, so savage a storm of the sea arose that, most of the things in the ship being lost — though the goods of Egbert and his companions were saved — he was compelled to remain, this tempest as it were uttering that prophetic saying, “because of me is this tempest.” Seeing therefore that he was not permitted to go to preach to the nations, being retained for another service of holy Church, of which he had been forewarned by the oracle, he attempted to send into the work of God’s word twelve holy and industrious men, among whom the distinguished Willibrord shone by priestly rank and merit. Who, sustained by the aid of Pippin, duke of the Franks — as is told below in the Life of Saint Willibrord — won a great people for God.

³ In the year of the Lord 716 the monks who inhabited the island of Iona, with the monasteries subject to them, were brought by the Lord’s procuring to the canonical rite of Easter and tonsure. For when there had come to them from Ireland the father beloved of God, Egbert, he was honourably received by them and with much joy. Who, since he was both a most sweet teacher and a most devoted performer of what he taught must be done, was gladly heard by all. He changed by devout and assiduous exhortations that inveterate tradition of their parents, of whom that apostolic saying may be uttered, “that they had a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge”; he thoroughly taught them to make the celebration of Easter in the catholic and apostolic manner, under the figure of a perpetual crown. Which it is agreed was done by a wondrous dispensation of divine goodness, that since that nation, which he knew, had freely and without envy taken care to share the knowledge of divine understanding with the peoples of the English, the same might afterwards, through the English people, in what it had lacked, come to the perfect rule of living. And the Ionan monks received, Egbert teaching, the catholic rites of living about eighty years after they had sent bishop Aidan to preach to the English people.

⁴ That Ionan island lies in the Scottish sea, separated from the rest of the land by an arm of the sea; where also the body of Saint Columba — who is also named Columkill, from “dove” and “cell” — rests awaiting the day of the great resurrection. And the man of the Lord Egbert remained in the same island thirteen years, which he himself had consecrated to Christ with a new grace as it were of ecclesiastical fellowship and peace shining forth: and in the year of the Lord 729, in which the Lord’s Passover was being celebrated on the eighth kalends of May, when he had celebrated the solemnities of masses in memory of the same Lord’s resurrection, on the same day he himself departed to the Lord, and the joy of the highest festivity which he had begun with the brothers whom he had converted to the grace of unity, he completed with the Lord and the apostles and the other citizens of heaven — indeed, he does not cease to celebrate the same without end.

⁵ For in those days in the monastery of Lindisfarne and the other monasteries of that province, excepting the church, very few houses were built — namely only those without which civil life could not exist. They had no money besides cattle. For whatever money they received from the rich, they at once gave to the poor. For it was not necessary either to collect money or provide houses for the reception of the powerful of the world, who never came to the church except for the sake of prayer alone and hearing the word of God. The king himself, when occasion required, would come with only five or six attendants, and having finished his prayer in church would depart. But if it happened that they were refreshed there, content with the brothers’ simple and daily food, they sought nothing more. For the whole solicitude of those teachers was then in serving God, not the world; the whole care in cultivating the heart, not the belly. The religious habit was held in great veneration at that time, so that wherever some cleric or monk came, he was joyfully received by all as God’s servant; and even if he were found going on a journey, they ran to him and with bowed neck rejoiced to be signed by his hand or blessed by his mouth; they gave diligent hearing to their words of exhortation. On the Lord’s days they flocked eagerly to the church or the monasteries, not for refreshment of body but for the sake of hearing the word; and if one of the priests happened to come into a village, at once the neighbours, gathered into one, took care to seek from him the word of life. For priests and clerics had no other cause of going to the villages than to preach, to baptize, to visit the sick and, to say it briefly, to care for souls. Who were so chastened from all the pestilence of avarice that none would accept territories and possessions for building monasteries unless compelled by the secular powers. Which custom was preserved in every respect for some time after these things in the churches of the Northumbrians. — Bede

An account. #

¹ Long before those times, when the Arian heresy was sprouting within Gaul — which, believing the persons of the holy Trinity to be unequal, said that the Son was less than the Father — the Lord, correcting the erring, showed by a plain miracle that God is of one and equal substance in three persons, and that divinity must not be treated of by the unworthy. For when the city of Bazas had been freed from a siege of the Huns by divine aid, while the bishop was celebrating the giving of thanks aloft before the people, looking up he saw fall above the altar, as though from the roof of the temple, three drops of equal size, clearer than crystal, which, joined into one, made as it were a single most beautiful gem. When they had placed it in the centre of a golden cross, the other gems fell out. But set apart, it gave healing to the infirm and increased devotion in those adoring the cross, since it appeared bright to the pure, but dark to the impure.