Series 1 > History of Greater Britain, as well England as Scotland

92
JOHN MAJOR’S HISTORY
[book II.
faithful, and the Catholic faith approved itself to him. His
messenger received from the Scots the warmest welcome, as
was right; wherefore they sent to him a bishop. But
this bishop used at the first too great austerity, and so did
little good with the English. And, returning to his own,
he said that the English were a race no way inclinable to what
was good. Now when he was speaking thus in an assembly of
The wisdom most religious fathers, one of them, Aidan by name, a most
of Aidan. honourable man, and withal of utmost perspicacity in judg¬
ment, makes objection in these words: ‘ Perchance thou hast
not followed the teaching of Paul, and given, first of all, milk,
and afterwards the stronger food. For thy part it was to lead
the people by degrees to the faith and to right conduct,—to
make easy the foundation, and afterward to build upon it a
lofty pile. For ’tis an old proverb: “ Feeble beginning shall
be followed by happier fortune ”1.’ And since Aidan spoke so
shrewdly, and since he was known to be a man of holy life—
albeit not by all men, for it had been hid under a bushel—they
make him bishop, and send him with a following of religious
Aidan is made monks to the English. Upon this matter I prefer to quote
bishop. English Bede rather than our own chroniclers. For the
Venerable Bede, in the third chapter of the third book of his
History of the Church of the English people, writes as follows:
‘ [They sent to him] Aidan, a man of a singular mildness of
disposition and piety and moderation, full of zeal to God,
although not altogether according to knowledge; for he was
wont to keep Easter Sunday after the custom of his own
people from the fourteenth to the twentieth moon, since in
this manner too the northern province of the Scots and the
whole nation of the Piets were in use to celebrate Easter,
believing that they followed therein the written precept of the
holy and praiseworthy father Anatolius2, the truth of which
almost every one can easily determine 3. On the arrival of the
bishop the king granted him, according to his desire, his
1 Debile principium melior fortuna sequetur.
2 Bishop of Laodicea ; the inventor in a.d. 276 of the Paschal computation.
3 ‘Quod quidem an verum sit, penitus quisque facillime agnoscet.’ In
Holder’s edition of Bede, the reading is ‘ quod an uerum sit, peritus quisque
facillime cognoscit ’.