Chap. I. dorus Archbishop of Canterbury to resign the see to him: after which for some time he lived a monastical life at Lestingeag; till, by the means of the same Theodorus, he was made Bishop of Lichfield, under Wolfhere, King of Mercia, whom he is said to have converted. He died March 2, A. D. 672. 7. Perpetua, nian Mar tyr. §. 3. Perpetua was a lady of quality, who suffered mara Maurita- tyrdom in Mauritania, under the Emperor Severus, about the year 205. She is often very honourably mentioned by Tertullian and St. Austin; the last of whom lets us know that the day of her martyrdom was settled into a holy-day in his time; and remarks of her, that she gave suck to a young child at the time of her sufferings. 12. Gregory Bishop of §. 4. Gregory the Great, who stands next in the calenthe Great, dar, was descended from noble parents. He very early Rome and addicted himself to study and piety, giving all his estate Confessor. to the building and maintaining of religious houses. He 18. Ed of the West Saxons. was consecrated Pope about the year 590, but vigorously opposed the title of universal Bishop (which the Bishops of Constantinople did then, and the Bishops of Rome do now affume) as blasphemous, antichristian, and diabolical. Among other his glorious and Christian deeds, his me mory was annually celebrated here in England, for his devout charity to our nation, in sending Austin the monk, with forty other missionaries, to convert the Saxons, (who had testified their desire to embrace Christianity,) which in a short time they happily achieved. Having held the Popedom fourteen years, he died about the year 604, leaving many learned books behind him, which are still extant. §. 5. Edward was descended from the West Saxon ward, King Kings, and the son of King Edgar, who first reduced the Heptarchy into one kingdom: after whose death, in the year 975, this Edward succeeded to the crown at twelve years of age, but did not enjoy it above two or three years. For paying a visit to Elfride his mother-in-law at Corfe-castle, in Dorsetshire, he was by her order stabbed in the back, (whilst he was drinking a cup of wine,) to make way for her son Etheldred, his half-brother. His favour to the monks made his barbarous murder to be esteemed a martyrdom; the day of which was appointed to be kept festival by Pope Innocent IV. A. D. 1245. 21. Benedict, Abbot. §. 6. Benedict was born in Norcia, a town in Italy, of an honourable family. Being much given to devotion, he set up an order of monks, which bears his name, about the year 529. He was very remarkable for his mortifica tion; and the monks of his own order relate, that he Part II. would often roll himself in a heap of briars to check any carnal desires that he found to arise in himself. St. Gregory 20 tells us of a very famous miracle wrought upon his account, viz. That the Goths, when they invaded Italy, came to burn his cell; and being set on fire, it burnt round him in a circle, not doing him the least hurt: at which the Goths being enraged, threw him into a hot oven, stopping it up close: but coming the next day, they found him safe, neither his flesh scorched, nor his clothes singed. He died on the twenty-first of March, A. D. 542. SECT. IV. Of the Romish Saints-days and Holy-days in April. Bishop of RICHARD, surnamed de Wiche, from a place so called April 3. in Worcestershire, where he was born, was brought Richard, up at the universities of Oxford and Paris. Being come Chichester. to man's estate, he travelled to Bononia; where having studied the canon law seven years, he became public reader of the same. Being returned home, he was, in the vacancy of the see of Chichester, chosen Bishop by that chapter which the King opposing, (he having nominated another,) Richard appealed to Rome, and had his election confirmed by the Pope, who consecrated him also at Lyons, in the year 1245. He was very much reverenced for his great learning and diligent preaching, but especially for his integrity of life and conversation. Strange miracles are told of him: as that, by his blessing, he increased a single loaf of bread to satisfy the hunger of three thousand poor people; and that in his extreme old age, whilst he was celebrating the Eucharist, he fell down with the chalice in his hand, but the wine was miraculously preserved from falling to the ground. About seven or eight years after his death, he was canonized for a saint by Pope Urban IV. A. D. 1261. Milan. §. 2. St. Ambrose was born about the year 340. His 4.Ambrose, father was Prætorian Præfect of Gaul, in whose palace Bishop of St. Ambrose was educated. It is reported, that in his infancy a swarm of bees settled upon his cradle; which was a prognostication, as was supposed, of his future eloquence. After his father's death, he went with his mother to Rome, where he studied the laws, practised as an Advocate, and was made Governor of Milan and the 20 Greg. Dial. lib. iii. Chap. I. neighbouring cities. Upon the death of Auxentius, Bishop of Milan, there being a great contest in the election of a new Bishop, this good father, in an excellent speech, exhorted them to peace and unanimity; which so moved the affections of the people, that they immediately forgot the competitors whom they were so zealous for before, and unanimously declared that they would have their Governor for their Bishop. Who, after several endeavours by flight and other artifices to avoid that burden, was at last compelled to yield to the importunities of the people, and to be consecrated Bishop. From which time he gave all his money to pious uses, and settled the reversion of his estate upon the church. He governed that see with great piety and vigilance for more than twenty years, and died in the year 396, being about fifty-seven years old: having first converted St. Augustin to the faith; at whose baptism he is said miraculously to have composed that divine hymn, so well known in the church by the name of Te Deum. 19. Al phege, of Canterbury. §. 3. Alphege was an Englishman of a most holy and austere life, which was the more admirable in him, beArchbishop 'cause he was born of great parentage, and began that course of life in his younger years. He was first Abbot of Bath, then Bishop of Winchester, in the year 984, and twelve years afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury. But in the year 1012, the Danes being disappointed of a certain tribute which they claimed as due to them, they fell upon Canterbury, and spoiled and burnt both the city and church nine parts in ten of the people they put to the sword, and after seven months miserable imprisonment, stoned the good Archbishop to death at Greenwich; who was thereupon canonized for a saint and martyr, and had the nineteenth of April allowed him as his festival. 23. Saint George, Martyr. §. 4. St. George, the famous patron of the English nation, was born in Cappadocia, and suffered for the sake of his religion, A. D. 290, under the Emperor Dioclesian, (in whose army he had before been a Colonel,) being supposed to have been the person that pulled down the edict against the Christians, which Dioclesian had caused to be affixed upon the church doors". The Legends relate several strange stories of him, which are so common, they need not here be related: I shall only give a short account how he came to be so much esteemed of in England. 21 See Lactantius de Mortibus Persecutorum. When Robert Duke of Normandy, son to William the Part II. Conqueror, was prosecuting his victories against the Turks, How he and laying siege to the famous city of Antioch, which came to be was like to be relieved by a mighty army of the Saracens ; patron of St. George appeared with an innumerable army coming the English. down from the hills all in white, with a red cross in his banner, to reinforce the Christians; which occasioned the infidel army to fly, and the Christians to possess themselves of the town. This story made St. George extraordinary famous in those times, and to be esteemed a patron, not only of the English, but of Christianity itself. Not but that St. George was a considerable Saint before this, having had a church dedicated to him by Justinian the Emperor. SECT. V. Of the Romish Saints-days and Holy-days in May. : of the Cross. THE third of this month is celebrated as a festival by May 3. the Church of Rome, in memory of the Invention of the Invention Cross, which is said to be owing to this occasion. Helena, the mother of Constantine the Great, being admonished in a dream to search for the Cross of Christ at Jerusalem, took a journey thither with that intent and having employed labourers to dig at Golgotha, after opening the ground very deep, (for vast heaps of rubbish had purposely been thrown there by the spiteful Jews or Heathens,) she found three crosses, which she presently concluded were the crosses of our Saviour and the two thieves who were crucified with him. But being at a loss to know which was the Cross of Christ, she ordered them all three to be applied to a dead person. Two of them, the story says, had no effect; but the third raised. the carcase to life, which was an evident sign to Helena, that That was the Cross she looked for. As soon as this was known, every one was for getting a piece of the Cross; insomuch that in Paulinus's time (who, being a scholar of St. Ambrose, and Bishop of Nola, flourished about the year 420) there was much more of the reliques of the Cross, than there was of the original wood. Whereupon that father says, "it was miraculously in"creased; it very kindly afforded wood to men's impor"tunate desires, without any loss of its substance." §. 2. The sixth of this month was anciently dedicated 6. St. John to the memory of St. John the Evangelist's miraculous Evang.ante deliverance from the persecution of Domitian: to whom Port. Lat. Chap. I. being accused as an eminent asserter of atheism and impiety, and a public subverter of the religion of the empire, he was sent for to Rome, where he was treated with all the cruelty that could be expected from so bloody and barbarous a prince; for he was immediately put into a cauldron of boiling oil, or rather oil set on fire, before the gate called Porta Latina, in the presence of the senate. But his Master and Lord, who favoured him when on earth above all the Apostles, so succoured him here, that he felt no harm from the most violent rage; but, as if he had been only anointed, like the athlete of old, he came out more vigorous and active than before: the same divine Providence that secured the three children in the fiery furnace, bringing the holy man safe out of this, one would think, inevitable destruction; and so vouchsafing him the honour of martyrdom, without his enduring the torments of it. 19. Dun bury. §. 3. Dunstan, of whom we are next to speak, was well stan, Arch-extracted, being related to king Athelstan. He was very bishop of well skilled in most of the liberal arts, and among the rest Canterin refining metals and forging them; which being qualifications much above the genius of the age he lived in, first gained him the name of a conjuror, and then of a saint. He was certainly a very honest man, and never feared to reprove vice in any of the kings of the West Saxons, of whom he was confessor to four successively. But the monks (to whom he was a very great friend, applying all his endeavours to enrich them and their monasteries) have filled his life with several nonsensical stories: such as are, his making himself a cell at Glastenburg all of iron at his own forge; his harp's playing of itself, without a hand; his taking a she-devil, who tempted him to lewdness under the shape of a fine lady, by the nose with a pair of redhot tongs; and several other such ridiculous relations not worth repeating. He was promoted by king Edgar, first to the bishopric of Worcester, soon after to London, and two years after that to Canterbury. Where having sat twenty-seven years, he died May 19, A. D. 988. 26. Augustin, first Archbishop bury. §. 4. Augustin was the person we have already mentioned, as sent by Pope Gregory the Great to convert the of Canter Saxons, from whence he got the name of the Apostle of the English. Whilst he was over here, he was made Archbishop of Canterbury, A. D. 596. He had a contest with the monks of Bangor, about submission to the see of Rome, who refused any subjection but to God, and the bishop of Caerleon. Soon after this difference, Ethelfride, |