Saint Edwin

Thanks to the generous inspirations of the queen, not only did Redwald not surrender the refugee prince, but having sent back the ambassadors laden with the rich gifts of Ethelfrid, he declared war upon him. Ethelfrid being defeated and killed, Edwin was established as king in Northumbria by his protector Redwald, who had become the head of the Anglo-Saxon federation. Like his brother-in-law Ethelfrid, Edwin reigned over the two united kingdoms of Deira and Bernicia; then, like him, he waged a vigorous war against the Britons of Cambria. Having thus become the feared leader of the Northern Angles, he found himself sought after and admired by the East Angles who, upon the death of their king Redwald, offered him the kingship. But Edwin preferred to repay the protection he had received from Redwald and his wife by leaving the kingdom of East Anglia to their son. He reserved for himself, however, the military suzerainty that Redwald had exercised with the title of Bretwalda, which had passed from the King of Kent to the King of East Anglia, but which, from Edwin onwards, was no longer to be separated from the Northumbrian kingship.

Having reached this unexpected elevation and being deprived by death of his first wife, daughter of the King of East Anglia, he sought another, and asked for the hand of the sister of the King of Kent, the daughter of Ethelbert and Bertha, a descendant of Hengist and Odin through her father, and of Saint Clotilda through her mother. Her name was Ethelburga. Her brother Eadbald, brought back to the Christian faith by Archbishop Laurence, at first rejected the request of the King of Northumbria. He replied that it was not permitted for him to give a Christian virgin to a pagan, for fear of profaning the faith and the sacraments of the true God by having her cohabit with a king alien to her worship. Far from being offended by this refusal, Edwin promised that if the princess were granted to him, he would do nothing against the faith she professed, and that on the contrary, she could freely practice her religion with all those who accompanied her, men or women, priests or laypeople. He added that he himself would not refuse to embrace his wife's religion if, after having it examined by the wise men of his council, he recognized it as holier and more worthy of God.

It was under these conditions that her mother, Bertha, had left her country and her Merovingian family to cross the sea and come to marry the King of Kent. The conversion of that kingdom had been the price of her sacrifice. Ethelburga, destined like her mother, and even more so than she, to be the Christian initiative for an entire people, followed the maternal example. She provides us with new proof of the great role of women in the history of the Germanic races, of the noble and touching empire that these races attributed to her. In England as in France, as everywhere, it is always through the fervor and devotion of the Christian woman that the victories of the Church are initiated or consummated. But the royal virgin was only delivered to the Northumbrians under the guard of a bishop, charged with preserving her from all pagan pollution, through his exhortations and als o thro Paulin Roman monk and bishop, apostle of Northumbria. ugh the daily celebration of the heavenly mysteries. This bishop, named Paulinus, was still one of those Roman monks who had been sent by Pope Saint Gregory to serve as coadjutors to Augustine. Having arrived with Ethelburga in Edwin's kingdom, after marrying them, he still wished that this entire unknown nation, where he had just pitched his tent, could become the bride of Christ. He therefore worked with all his might to add some Northumbrian neophytes to the small flock of faithful who had accompanied the queen. But these efforts were long fruitless; he was allowed to preach, but no one converted.

However, the successors of Gregory watched over his work with that marvelous and tireless perseverance which is charact Boniface V Pope who wrote to Edwin and Ethelburga to encourage their faith. eristic of the Holy See. Boniface V addressed two epistles to the King and Queen of Northumbria that recall those of Gregory to the King and Queen of Kent. He exhorted the one he called the glorious King of the English to follow the example of so many other emperors and kings, and especially of his brother-in-law Eadbald, by submitting to the greatness of the true God, and not to let himself be separated in the future from that dear half of himself, who had already received through baptism the pledge of blessed eternity. He conjured the queen to spare no effort to soften and inflame the hard and cold heart of her husband, to make him understand the beauty of the mysteries in which she believed, and the admirable reward she had received from her own rebirth; so that those whom human love had made into one body here below might remain united in the other life by an indissoluble union. To his letters he added some modest gifts, which certainly testify either to his poverty or to the simplicity of the time: for the king, a linen shirt adorned with gold embroidery and an oriental wool cloak; for the queen, a silver mirror and an ivory comb; for both, the blessings of their protector Saint Peter.

But neither the letters of the Pope, nor the sermons of the bishop, nor the urgings of the queen were enough to overcome Edwin's uncertainties. A providential event came to shake him without absolutely conquering him. On the Easter day that followed his marriage, an assassin sent by the king of the West Saxons gained access to the king, and under the pretext of communicating a message from his master, tried to strike him with a double-edged poisoned dagger that he kept hidden under his garment. Driven by that heroic devotion to their princes, which was mingled among all the Germanic barbarians with such constant attempts against them, a lord named L illa, Lilla A faithful thegn who sacrificed himself to save Edwin from an assassin. having no shield at hand, threw himself between his king and the assassin, who had struck with such force that his blade reached Edwin even through the body of his faithful friend. On the very night of this principal feast of the Christians, the queen gave birth to a daughter. While Edwin was giving thanks to his gods for the birth of this child, Bishop Paulinus began on his side to thank Our Lord, affirming to the king that it was he who, through his prayers to the true God, had obtained that the queen should give birth for the first time without accident and almost without pain. The king, less moved by the mortal danger he had just avoided than by the joy of being a father without the life of his dear Ethelburga having been compromised, was charmed by the words of Paulinus, and promised him to renounce idols to serve Christ, if Christ granted him life and victory in the war he was about to undertake against the king who had wanted to have him assassinated. As a pledge of his good faith, he gave the newborn child to the bishop to consecrate her to Christ. This newborn daughter of the king, who was the first Christian of the Northumbrian nation, was baptized on the day of Pentecost with eleven people of her household. She was name d Eanfle Eanfleda Daughter of Edwin, the first person baptized in Northumbria. da: she was destined, like most Anglo-Saxon princesses, not to be without influence on the fate of her country.

Edwin emerged victorious from the struggle against the guilty king. Having returned to Northumbria, and although since his promise he had ceased to worship idols, he did not wish to receive the sacraments of the Christian faith immediately and without further reflection. But he had Bishop Paulinus give him more precisely what Bede calls the reasons for believing. He often conferred with the wisest and most learned of his nobility on the course of action they advised him to take. Finally, as he was naturally sagacious and reflective, he spent long hours in solitude, his mouth closed, but discussing in the depths of his heart many things, and examining tirelessly which religion should be preferred.

However, Paulinus saw time passing without the word of God that he preached being heeded, and without Edwin being able to decide to bow the height of his intelligence before the life-giving humility of the cross. Informed of the prophecy and the promise that had ended the king's exile, he believed the moment had arrived to remind him of them. One day, therefore, when Edwin was sitting all alone, meditating in the secret of his heart on the religion he ought to follow, the bishop suddenly entered and placed his right hand on his head, as the stranger in his vision had done, asking him if he recognized this sign. The king, trembling, wanted to throw himself at the feet of Paulinus, who raised him up and said to him gently: "Well, you are now delivered from the enemies you feared by the goodness of God. You are, moreover, provided by Him with the kingdom you desired. Remember to fulfill your third promise, which obliges you to receive the faith and to keep His commandments. Only in this way, after having been filled with divine favor here below, will you be able to enter with God into the participation of the heavenly kingdom." — "Yes," finally answered Edwin, "I feel it; I must and I want to be a Christian." But, always faithful to his measured character, he stipulated only for himself; he said that he would confer with the great nobles, his friends, and with his counselors, so that if they decided to believe as he did, they would all be consecrated together to Christ in the fountain of life.

All having been unanimous in recognizing the falsity of the worship rendered to the gods, the king immediately declared publicly that he adhered to the gospel preached by Paulinus, that he renounced idolatry, and that he adopted the faith of Christ. All the Northumbrian nobility and a large part of the people followed the example of the king, who was solemnly baptized on Eas ter York Principal episcopal see of Wilfrid. day (627) by Paulinus, at York, in a wooden church, built in haste while he was being prepared for baptism. Immediately after, he had a large stone church built around this improvised sanctuary, which he did not have time to finish, but which has since b ecome the admi Minster d'York Cathedral founded by Edwin following his baptism. rable York Minster and the metropolis of the north of England. The Northumbrians had made it their capital, and Edwin established there the seat of the episcopate with which his master Paulinus was invested. Thus was realized the great design of Gregory, who, thirty years earlier, from the beginning of the English mission, had prescribed to Augustine to send a bishop to York and to confer upon him the character of metropolitan of the twelve suffragan bishoprics of which he was already dreaming the foundation in the north of the country conquered by the Anglo-Saxons.

For six years, the king and the bishop worked in concert for the conversion of the Northumbrian people, and even of the English population of the neighboring regions. The heads of the nobility and the principal servants of the king were the first to be baptized, with the sons of Edwin's first marriage. The example of a king was, moreover, far from sufficient among the Anglo-Saxons to determine the conversion of an entire people, and, no more than Ethelbert and Augustine, did the first Christian king and the first bishop of the Northumbrians think of employing constraint. It undoubtedly took them more than one effort to overcome the roughness, ignorance, or indifference of the pagan Saxons. But consolations also abounded, for the fervor of this poor people and their thirst for baptism were often prodigious. Paulinus having come with the king and the queen, who accompanied him many times during his missions, to a certain royal villa, quite far to the north, they all three had to remain there for thirty-six consecutive days, and during all this time, the bishop did nothing from morning to evening but catechize the crowd that flocked from all the surrounding villages, then baptize them in the river that flowed nearby.

Pope Honorius wrote to King Edwin to congratulate him on his conversion, as well as on the ardor and sincerity of his faith, and to urge him to read extensively the works of Saint Gregory, whom he calls the preacher of the English and whom he recommends the king take as a perpetual intercessor before God. But when this letter arrived in England, Edwin was no more. The six years that elapsed from his conversion until his death are certainly among the most glorious and happiest that any Anglo-Saxon prince has ever known. He quickly placed Northumbria at the head of the Heptarchy. In the south, his ardent zeal for the faith he had embraced after such mature reflection overflowed even to populations that, without being subject to his direct authority, belonged to the same race as his subjects. The East Angles, or Eastern English, had offered him to rule over them and he had refused. But he used his influence over the young king, who owed him his crown, to determine him to embrace the Christian religion with his entire country. Eorpwald thus expiated his father's apostasy, and Edwin thus paid the ransom for the generous pity that the East Anglian royalty had lavished upon his youth and his exile. In the north, he extended and consolidated Anglo-Saxon domination up to the isthmus that separated Caledonia from Britain. He left an indelible mark of his reign in the name of the fortress built by him on the rock that henceforth dominated the mouth of the Forth and which still raises its dark and alpine flanks, a true Acropolis of the barbarian north, in the heart of the great and picturesque city of Edinburgh (Edwin's burgh). In the west, he continued, with less ferocity than Eth Edimbourg Fortress founded by Edwin on the rock overlooking the Forth. elfrid, but with no less bravery and success, the struggle against the Britons of Cambria; he pursued them as far as the islands of the strait that separate Great Britain from Ireland; he seized the Isle of Man and that other island which had been the last shelter of the Druids against Roman domination, and which, from the time of Edwin's conquest, took the name of the victorious race of the Angles, Angles-ey. Within his states, he caused a peace and security so unknown before and after his reign to prevail that it became a proverb, for it was said that, in the time of Edwin, a woman with her newborn child could have crossed England from the Irish Sea to the North Sea without meeting anyone who would do her the slightest harm. He was thanked for this meticulous care for the well-being of his subjects, which led him to have copper cups hung near the fountains on the main roads so that passersby could drink at their ease, without anyone thinking of stealing them, whether out of fear or love for the king. Thus, no one reproached him for the unusual pomp that signaled his procession, not only when he went to war, but when he rode peacefully through the towns and provinces, having carried before him and in the midst of the military banners the lance surmounted by a large tuft of feathers that the Saxons had borrowed from the Roman legions and of which they had made the sacred standard of the Bretwalda and the sign of supreme domination in their confederation. But all this greatness and prosperity were about to be engulfed in a sudden catastrophe.

There were other Angles than those of Northumbria and East Anglia already softened or touched by Christian influence; there were the Angles of Mercia, that is to say, of the great central region that extended from the Humber to the Thames. The kingdom of Mercia was the last state born of the Anglo-Saxon conquest; it had been founded by those invaders who, finding all the places taken on the eastern and southern coast of the island, had been forced to push into the interior. It became the center of pagan resistance and its offensive returns against Christian propaganda. The pagans of Mercia found a formidable leader in the person of Penda, of royal race, but inflamed with all th e pas Penda King of Mercia, leader of the pagan resistance against Edwin. sions of barbarism and above all devoured by jealousy against the fortune of Edwin and the power of the Northumbrians. Since the conversion of Edwin, these fierce instincts had been reinforced by fanaticism. Penda and the Mercians remained faithful to the cult of Odin, of whom all the Saxon kings believed themselves to be descendants. Edwin and the Northumbrians were in their eyes nothing more than traitors and apostates. But more surprisingly, the primitive inhabitants of the island, the Christian Britons, more numerous in Mercia than in any other Anglo-Saxon kingdom, shared and excited the hatred of the Saxon pagans against the neophytes of the same race. These old Christians, always exasperated against the invaders of their island, took no account of the faith of the converted Angles and would not, under any title, enter into communion with them. The Britons of Cambria, who remained independent but were always threatened, defeated, and humiliated for nearly a century by Ida, Ethelfrid, and Edwin, professed and nourished their antipathy with even more fury than the others. Their leader, Cadwallon, the last hero of t he Celtic Cadwallon King of Gwynedd, ally of Penda against Edwin. race in Britain, first defeated by Edwin and forced to take refuge in Ireland and Armorica, had returned with a redoubling of rage and auxiliaries of Celtic race to resume the struggle against the Northumbrians. He succeeded in forming an alliance with Penda against the common enemy. Under these two leaders, an immense army, where the Christian Britons of Cambria rubbed shoulders with the pagans of Mercia, invaded Northumbria. Edwin awaited them at Hatfield, on the southe rn borde Hatfield Battle in which Edwin was killed while fighting Penda and Cadwallon. r of his kingdom. He was crushed there. He perished gloriously with arms in hand, barely forty-eight years old, a death that earned him a place among the martyrs, on October 14, 633. The body of the holy king was buried at Whitby; but his head was buried in the porch of the church he had built at York. He holds the title of martyr in the martyrology of Florus and in all the calendars of England. It is in the catalogue of Spelman that he was the titular patron of two ancient churches built, one in London and the other at Breve, in the province of Somerset.

De Montalembert, The Monks of the West; Acta Sanctorum; Godesca