may be allowed to expatiate somewhat on the sanctity of certain of them; and at the same time to contemplate what splendour of divine love beamed on this people, from the first dawning of their faith: since I believe you can no where find the bodies of so many saints entire after death, typifying the state of final incorruption. I imagine this to have taken place by God's agency, in order that a nation, situated, as it were, almost out of the world, should more confidently embrace the hope of a resurrection from the contemplation of the incorruption of the saints. There are, altogether, five which I have known of, though the residents in many places boast of more; Saint Etheldrida,[1] and Werburga, virgins; king Edmund; archbishop Elphege;[2] Cuthbert the ancient father: who with skin and flesh unwasted, and their joints flexile, appear to have a certain vital warmth about them, and to be merely sleeping. Who can enumerate all the other saints, of different ranks and professions? whose names and lives, singly to describe, I have neither intention nor leisure: yet oh that I might hereafter have leisure! But I will be silent, lest I should seem to promise more than I can perform. In consequence, it is not necessary to mention any of the commonalty, but merely, not to go out of the path of my subject history, the male and female scions of the royal stock, most of them innocently murdered; and who have been consecrated martyrs, not by human conjecture, but by divine acknowledgment. Hence may be known how little indulgence they gave to the lust of pleasure, who inherited eternal glory by means of so easy a death.
In the former book, my history dwelt for some time on the praises of the most holy Oswald, king and martyr; among whose other marks of sanctity, was this, which, according to some copies, is related in the History of the Angles.[3] In the monastery at Selsey, which Wilfrid of holy memory had
- ↑ Sometimes called St. Audry. She was abbess of Ely monastery. St. Werburga was patroness of Chester monastery.
- ↑ Archbishop of Canterbury, from a.d. 1006 to 1012. See Sax. Chronicle, pp. 402, 403.
- ↑ Bede, book iv, chap. 14. There are some MSS. which want this chapter. The former editor of Bede accounts for it very satisfactorily; stating that a very ancient MS. in the Cotton Collection has a note marking that a leaf was here wanting; and that those which want the chapter were transcripts of this imperfect MS.
