St. Peter Celestine, Pope, C.

From his two most authentic lives in Papebroke, t. 4, Maij, p. 419; also Bzovius and other continuators of Baronius. See likewise his life written by James, cardinal of St. George about the year 1295, in Muratori’s scriptor. Ital t. 3, p. 513.

A. D. 1296.

Humility raised this saint above the world, and preserved his soul free from its poison, both amidst its flatteries and under its frowns. He was born in Apulia about the year 1221. His parents were very virtuous, and charitable to the poor to the uttermost of their abilities. After his father’s death, his mother, though she had eleven other sons, seeing his extraordinary inclination to piety, provided him with a literary education. His progress gave his friends great expectations; but he always considered that he had only one affair in this world, and that an affair of infinite importance, the salvation of his soul: that no security can be too great where an eternity is at stake: moreover, that the way to life is strait, the account which we are to give of all our actions and thoughts most rigorous, the judge infinitely just, and the issue either sovereign happiness or sovereign misery. He therefore made the means, by which he might best secure to himself that bliss for which alone he was created, his constant study. An eremitical state is only the vocation of souls, which are already perfect in the exercises of penance and contemplation. Peter had made the practice of both familiar to him from his tender years; and by a long noviceship was qualified for such a state, to which he found himself strongly inclined. Therefore at twenty years of age he left the schools, and retired to a solitary mountain, where he made himself a little cell under ground, but so small that he could scarce stand or lie down in it. Here he lived three years in great austerities, during which he was often assailed by violent temptations; but these he overcame by the help of such practices and austerities as the grace of God suggested to him. Notwithstanding the care he took to sequester himself from the world, he was discovered, and some time after compelled to enter into holy orders. He was ordained priest at Rome; but in 1246 returned into Abruzzo, and lived five years in a cave on mount Morrom, near Sulmona. He received great favors from heaven, the usual recompense of contemplative souls who have crucified I their affections to this world: but then they are purchased through severe interior trials; and with such Peter was frequently visited. He was also molested with nocturnal illusions during his sleep, by which he was almost driven to despair, insomuch that he durst not say mass, and once determined to abandon his solitude; but was encouraged by the advice of a religious man, his confessor, who assured him that it was no more than a stratagem of the enemy, by which he could not be hurt if he despised it. For further satisfaction, he determined to go to Rome to consult the pope on that subject, and received great comfort by a vision he was favored with on the road; a certain holy abbot lately deceased appearing to him, who gave him the same counsel, and ordered him to return to his cell and offer every day the holy sacrifice, which he accordingly did. The wood on his mountain being cut down in 1251, he with two companions removed to mount Magella. There, with the boughs of trees and thorns, these three servants of God made themselves a little enclosure and cells, in which they enjoyed more solid pleasure than the great ones of the world can find in their stately palaces and gardens. The devil sometimes endeavored to disturb them; but they triumphed over his assaults. Many others were desirous to put themselves under his direction; but the saint alleged his incapacity to direct others. However, his humility was at length overcome, and he admitted those who seemed the most fervent.

Peter spent always the greatest part of the night in prayer and tears which he did not interrupt, while he was employed in the day in corporal labor or in copying books. His body he always treated as a most dangerous domestic enemy. He never ate flesh; he fasted every day except Sunday. He kept four lents in the year, during three of which, and on all Fridays, he took nothing but bread and water, unless it were a few cabbage leaves in lieu of bread. The bread which he used was so hard, that it could only be chopped in pieces. His austerities were excessive, till he was admonished in a vision not to destroy that body which his duty to God required him to support. If the Holy Ghost sometimes conducted the saints by extraordinary paths, we must learn from their fervor the condemnation of our sloth, who dare undertake nothing for the sake of virtue, and who shrink often under indispensable duties. St. Peter wore a shirt of horse-hair full of knots, and a chain of iron about his waist. He lay on the ground, or on a board, with a stone or log of wood for a pillow. It was his chiefest care always to nourish his soul with heavenly contemplation and prayer; yet he did not refuse to others the comfort of his spiritual succors. He gave advice, except on Wednesdays and Fridays, and during his lents, which he passed in inviolable silence. Finding his solitude too much disturbed, he went with some of his disciples to a cavern which was almost inaccessible on the top of mount Magella. This did but increase the ardor of others to pursue him. Wherefore he returned to mount Morroni, where many lived in scattered cells under his direction, till he assembled them in a monastery; and in 1274 obtained of pope Gregory X. the approbation of his religious order, under the rule of St. Bennet, which he restored to its primitive severity. The saint lived to see thirty-six monasteries, and six hundred monks and nuns; and this institute has been since propagated over all Europe, but is at present much mitigated.

Upon the death of Nicholas IV. the see of Rome continued vacant two years and three months, when the cardinals assembled at Perugia unanimously chose our saint for his successor, out of pure regard for his eminent sanctity. This election, on account of its disinterestedness, met with a general applause, and the saint seemed the only person afflicted on the occasion. He was indeed alarmed beyond measure at the news; and finding all the reasons he could allege for his declining the charge ineffectual, betook himself to flight in company with Robert, one of his monks, but was intercepted. He would gladly have engaged Robert still to attend him, but the good monk excused himself by an answer worthy of a disciple of the saint: “Compel me not,” says he, “to throw myself upon your thorns. I am the companion of your flight, not of your exaltation.” Peter thereupon dropped his request, and sighing before God, returned to Morroni, where the kings of Hungary and Naples, besides many cardinals and princes, waited for him. Thence he proceeded to the neighboring cathedral of Aquila, to be ordained bishop of Rome, being accompanied by the two kings, and an incredible number of princes and others; yet could not be prevailed upon to travel any other way than riding on an ass: he even thought it a great deal that he did not go on foot, as he desired to do. He was consecrated and crowned at Aquila on the 29th of August, taking the name of Celestine V., from an allusion to the Latin name of heaven, where he always dwelt in his heart: his monks have been distinguished by the name of Celestines ever since. Charles, king of Naples, persuaded him to go with him to his capital, to regulate certain ecclesiastical affairs of that kingdom, and to fill the vacant benefices. The new pope disgusted many of the cardinals by employing strangers in the conducting matters, the care of which had been usually intrusted to them. He was sometimes led by others into mistakes, which gave occasion to complaints, and increased his own scruples for having taken upon him so great a charge, to which he found himself unequal; especially on account of his want of experience in the world, and his not having studied the canon law. He continued his former austerities, and built himself a cell of boards in the midst of his palace, where he lived in solitude amidst the crowds which surrounded him, humble on the pinnacle of honor, and poor in the midst of riches. He shut himself up to spend the Advent in retirement, that he might prepare himself for Christmas, having committed the care of the church to three cardinals. This again was an occasion of fresh scruples, when he reflected that a pastor is bound himself to a personal attendance on the duties of his charge. These fears of conscience, the weight of his dignity, which he felt every day more and more insupportable, and the desire of enjoying himself in solitude, moved him at length to deliberate whether he might not resign his dignity. He consulted cardinal Benedict Cajetan, a person the best skilled in the canon law, and others, who agreed in their advice, that it was in the power of a pope to abdicate. When this became public, many vigorously opposed the motion; but no solicitations or motives could make the holy man alter his resolution. Wherefore, some days after, he held at Naples a consistory of the cardinals, at which the king of Naples and many others were present: before them he read the solemn act of his abdication, then laid aside his pontifical robes and ornaments, put on his religious habit, came down from his throne, and cast himself at the feet of the assembly, begging pardon for his faults, and exhorting the cardinals to repair them in the best manner they were able, by choosing a worthy successor to St. Peter. Thus, having sat in the chair four months, he abdicated the supreme dignity in the church, on the 13th of December, 1294, with greater joy than the most ambitious man could mount the throne of the richest empire in the world. This the cheerfulness of his countenance evidenced, no less than his words. Cardinal Benedict Cajetan, the ablest civilian and canonist of his age, was chosen in his place, and crowned at Rome on the 16th of January following.

Men, as it usually happens on such occasions, were divided in their sentiments with regard to this extraordinary action, of which we see a specimen in the writings of those great men who in that age began to restore at Florence the true taste of polite literature. Dante, who has stained his reputation with many blots in his moral and civil conduct, and his works with many falsities and unjust prepossessions, ascribes this cession of Celestine to pusillanimity. But this base censure is justly chastised by his country man Petrarch, who passed his unjust and glorious banishment at Vaucluse near Avignon, respected by the whole world, till he was courted by his fellow-citizens to honor his native country again with his presence, though he preferred to it a retirement to Padua.* This great man, speaking of the abdication of our holy pope, says: “This action I call a sublime and heavenly fortitude, which he only possesses who knows the emptiness of all worldly dignities. The contempt of honors arises from a heroic courage, not from a want of that virtue; as the desire of them shows that a soul raiseth not herself above herself.”

St. Celestine immediately stole away privately to his monastery of the Holy Ghost, at Morroni. But several who were offended at some acts of justice and necessary severity in the new pope, raised various reports, as if he had by ambition and fraud supplanted Celestine: others advanced that a pope could not resign his dignity. Boniface, moreover, was alarmed at the multitudes which resorted to Morroni to see Celestine, on account of the great reputation of his sanctity; and fearing he might be made a handle of by designing men, the consequence whereof might be some disturbance in the church, he entreated the king of Naples to send him to Rome. The saint, seeing that he could not be permitted to return to his cell, betook himself to flight, and put to sea, with a view to cross the Adriatic gulf; but was driven back by contrary winds into the harbor of Vieste, where he was secured by the governor, pursuant to an order of the king of Naples, and conducted to pope Boniface at Anagni. Boniface kept him some time in his own palace, often discoursing with him, that he might discover if he had ever consented to those that called his abdication null and invalid. The saint’s unfeigned simplicity bearing evidence to the contrary, many advised the pope to set him at liberty, and send him to his monastery. But Boniface, alleging the danger of tumults and of a schism, confined him in the citadel of Fumone, nine miles from Anagni, under a guard of soldiers. The authors of the life of the saint say, that he there suffered many insults and hardships, which yet never drew from his mouth the least word of complaint. On the contrary, he sent word to Boniface, by two cardinals who came to see him, that he was content with his condition, and desired no other. He used to say, with wonderful tranquillity: “I desired nothing in the world but a cell; and a cell they have given me.” He sang the divine praises almost without interruption, with two of his monks who were assigned him for his companions. On Whit-Sunday, in 1296, after he had heard mass with extraordinary fervor, he told his guards that he should die before the end of the week. He immediately sickened of a fever, and received extreme unction. Even in that dying condition he would never suffer a little straw to be strewed on the hard boards upon which he always lay, and prayed without interruption. On Saturday, the 19th of May, finishing the last psalm of lauds at those words, Let every spirit praise the Lord, he calmly closed his eyes to this world, and his soul passed to the company of the angels, he being seventy-five years old. During his ten months’ imprisonment he never abated any thing of his ordinary austerities. Pope Boniface, with all the cardinals, performed his funeral obsequies at St. Peter’s. His body was sumptuously buried at Ferentino; but was afterwards translated to Aquila, and is kept in the church of the Celestines near that city. Many miracles are authentically recorded of him, and he was canonized by Clement V., in 1313. Boniface fell into great calamities. Philip the Fair, king of France, who was his declared enemy, sent a body of troops, under the command of William Noggret, to support the conspiracy of Stephen and Chiarra Colonna against him, by whom he was made prisoner at Anagni. After much ill-treatment, he was rescued out of their hands by the Ursini from Rome; but died soon after of grief, in 1303.

A spirit of retirement, or a love of holy solitude and its exercises, and an habitual interior recollection, are essential to piety and a true Christian life. Some, by a particular call of God, dedicate themselves to his service in a state of perfect solitude, in which the first motive may be self-defence of preservation. In the world, snares are laid everywhere for us, and its lusts often endeavor to court and betray us, and the torrent of its example, or the violence of its persecutions, to drive and force us into death. Whoever, therefore, prudently fears that he is not a match for so potent an enemy, may, nay sometimes ought, to retire from the world. This is not to decline the service of God or man, but sin and danger: it is not to prefer ease and security before industry and labor, but before a rash presumption and a fatal overthrow. But entire solitude is a safer state only to those who are animated with such a love and esteem for all its exercises as give an assurance of their constant fervor in them; also who seriously cultivate interior solitude of mind, and will never suffer it to gad abroad after the objects of worldly affairs, vanities, or pleasures: lastly, whose souls are free from envy, emulation, ambition, desire of esteem, and all other busy and turbulent passions, which cannot fail by desires and hankerings to discompose the mind, and muddy the pure stream, and adulterate the relish of a retired life. The soul must be reduced to its native purity and simplicity, before it will be able to taste the blessings of true liberty, of regular devotion, and elevated meditation.

Secondly: An indication that God designs certain persons for retirement, is the discovery of talents fitted for this state rather than for any public station. For there are active and contemplative gifts. Those who are destined by heaven to a retired life, in it become most eminently serviceable to the world, by proving excellent examples of innocence, and the perfect spirit of every Christian virtue, and by their prayers and continual pure homages of praise and thanksgivings to God, from which others may reap far more valuable benefits than from the labors of the learned or the bountiful alms of the rich. Thus the world never loses a member, but enjoys its service in its proper place, and the most effectual manner, says an ingenious Protestant writer; who adds, that such a one retires not from the world to avoid its service, but its fooleries.

Thirdly: The same author observes, that the main end of retirement ought always to be to dedicate ourselves entirely to God by the exercises of compunction and holy contemplation. This may be easily demonstrated both from reason and religion, and from the examples of so many illustrious saints. Retirement is recommended by particular motives to persons who, after going through the station of a public life, are at liberty to embrace it in order to fit themselves for eternity.

St. Pudentiana, V.

She was sister of St. Praxedes, and daughter of Pudens, a Roman senator, who was converted to the faith by the apostles SS. Peter and Paul. Her festival is mentioned in the Sacramentary of St. Gregory. Her church in Rome is esteemed the most ancient that is known in the world. It was in the first ages called the church of the Pastor, and is said to have been the palace of Pudens, in which St. Peter lodged and celebrated the divine mysteries. See the Bollandists, and Tillem. t. 2.

St. Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury, C.

He was a native of the town of Glastenbury, of noble birth, and received his education under certain Irish monks who were excellent masters of the sciences, and at that time resided at Glastenbury, which the wars had left in a most ruinous condition. Dunstan outstripped his companions in every branch of literature which he thought worth his attention, and through the recommendation of Athelmus, archbishop of Canterbury, his uncle, with whom he had lived some time, was called to the court of the great king Athelstan, a lover of virtue and learned men. He enjoyed the favor of that prince above all the rest who had the honor to approach his person, till envy made him feel the usual instability of the fortune of courtiers. Dunstan had in his youth received the clerical tonsure and the lesser orders, and from his cradle been fervent in practising every means of virtue, especially of modesty, purity, and humility. After he left the court he took the monastic habit, being advised thereto by Elphegus the Bald, bishop of Winchester, also his uncle, who not long after ordained him priest. When he was well grounded in the knowledge and practice of the duties of his profession, the bishop, on giving him proper instructions for his conduct, sent him to Glastenbury, with the view of serving that church. Here he built for himself a small cell, five feet long, and two and a half broad, with an oratory adjoining to the wall of the great church, which was dedicated under the invocation of the Mother of God. In this hermitage he spent his time in prayer and fasting. He had also his hours for manual labor, which is a part of penance, and necessary to shun idleness. His labor consisted in making crosses, vials, censers, and sacred vestments; he likewise painted and copied good books. King Athelstan dying after a glorious reign of sixteen years, the throne was filled by his brother Edmund, who succeeded to the crown in 900. His palace of Chedder was but nine miles from Glastenbury, to which church he often resorted with singular devotion, and having been long acquainted with the sanctity of St. Dunstan, he installed him the nineteenth abbot of that house from St. Brithwald, who was the first Englishman who had governed it, two hundred and seventy years before.* King Edmund had reigned only six years and a half, when he was treacherously murdered, and buried at Glastenbury. His sons Edwi and Edgar being too young to govern, his brother Edred was called to the crown, who did nothing but by the advice of St. Dunstan. He ended his pious life in 955, and was succeeded by his nephew Edwi, a most debauched and profligate youth, who, on the very day on which he was anointed king, left his nobles at the royal banquet to go to see his harlot and impious flatterers. St. Dunstan followed him, and endeavored by a severe check to put him in mind of the duty which he owed to God and men. In requital, the tyrant banished him, persecuted all the monks in his kingdom, and ruined all the abbeys which had escaped the devastation of the Danes, except Glastenbury and Abingdon.

St. Dunstan spent one year in exile in Flanders, and, according to Osbern, at St. Peter’s at Ghent, where his vestment is still shown; but, according to John of Glastenbury, at St. Amand’s, the tradition and monuments of both places show, that he divided the year betwixt them. He filled all Flanders with the odor of his sanctity, and the example of his virtues; but the Mercians and northern provinces shaking off the yoke of the tyrant Edwi, placed the crown on Edgar, who immediately recalled St. Dunstan, made him his principal counsellor, and in 957 preferred him to the bishopric of Worcester, to which he was consecrated by St. Odo, archbishop of Canterbury. The see of London becoming vacant shortly after, he was compelled at the same time also to govern that diocese, notwithstanding his opposition, the public disorders requiring so strenuous a reformer of discipline and manners. King Edwi having reigned over all England one year, and over the southern part four years, ended a wicked life by an unhappy death in 959, when Edgar became sole monarch of the English nation, which he governed with the greatest courage, prudence, and glory. In 961 St. Dunstan was raised to the metropolitan see of Canterbury, though he used every device possible to decline that dignity. He was moreover appointed by the pope, John XII., legate of the holy see. Being vested with this authority, he set himself about re-establishing everywhere ecclesiastical discipline, which had been much impaired by the confusion of the Danish invasions, and the tyranny of king Edwi; in which he was powerfully protected by King Edgar, and assisted by his two disciples, St. Ethelwold, bishop of Winchester, and St. Oswald, bishop of Worcester and archbishop of York, These three prelates restored most of the great monasteries in England. To establish in them a uniform and perfect regular discipline, St. Dunstan compiled the Concord of Rules, extant in Reynet and Spelman, in which he incorporates several old monastic customs with the rule of St. Bennet. The reformation of the clergy was no less the object of his zeal. For their use he drew up excellent regulations, which may be seen in Spelman¹ under this title: Canons published under King Edgar Several among the secular clergy were, through the disorder of the times, fallen into so open a violation of the canons as to presume to marry. These St. Dunstan expelled from the churches and monasteries into which they had intruded themselves, and brought in monks in their place who had been in possession of divers of them before the Danish devastations. At Winchester, when St. Ethelwold had ejected the secular canons for incontinency, and placed monks in his cathedral, the former appealed from his proceedings. A synod therefore was held at Winchester in 968. In this venerable assembly was heard a voice as coming from a crucifix in the place, which said distinctly, “God forbid it should be so. You have judged well: to change your decree is not good.” Upon which the synod confirmed what St. Ethelwold had done, and king Edward the martyr made this decree a law of the state.

St. Dunstan was no less vigorous in maintaining discipline among the laity, in which no motives of human respect were ever able to daunt him, or to damp his zeal. King Edgar had the misfortune to fall into a scandalous crime, by deflouring a virgin who had been educated in the monastery of Wilton, and who, to elude his pursuits, had put on a religious veil, but had not made any profession or vows. St. Dunstan, being informed of this scandal, went in haste to the court, and like another Nathan reproved the king in a zealous, but respectful manner. The prince, struck with remorse, begged with many tears that a suitable penance might be enjoined him, and became a faithful imitator of the perfect royal penitent David. The archbishop enjoined him a penance for seven years; during which term he was never to wear his crown, was ordered to fast twice a week, and to give large alms. Another part of his penance was to found a nunnery, in which many holy virgins might consecrate themselves chaste spouses to Christ, in satisfaction for his crime in having violated a virgin. These conditions the king faithfully performed, and founded a rich monastery of nuns at Shaftsbury. The term of his penance being elapsed in 973, St. Dunstan, in a public assembly of the lords and prelates, set the crown again upon his head. This great king ruled sixteen years, and dying in the thirty-second year of his age, left the kingdom to his eldest son, Edward the martyr. The death of that pious young prince was a grievous affliction to St. Dunstan, who, when he crowned his younger brother, in 979, foretold the weakness and the dreadful calamities of his reign. The Welsh bishops had always been governed by the archbishop of Saint David’s till about the year 983, when we find Gacon consecrated bishop of Landaff by Saint Dunstan; from which time the see of Saint David’s lost its metropolitical jurisdiction.

St. Dunstan frequently visited the churches over the whole kingdom, everywhere preaching and instructing the faithful with great zeal. Such was the dignity and the eloquence with which he delivered the word of God, that few were so hardened as to withstand the power of his exhortations. He employed his revenues in relieving the poor ho reconciled differences, refuted errors, and labored incessantly in extirpating vices and abuses. But neither the care of his church, nor the attendance he was obliged often to give to the state, made him ever forget to find time for holy prayer and retirement; and after the occupations of the day, he watched late at night in the private communications of his soul with God. Glastenbury was his dearest solitude, and thither he would often retire from the world to devote himself entirely to heavenly contemplation. At Canterbury it was always his custom to visit in the night, even in the coldest weather, the church of St. Austin without the walls, and that of the blessed Virgin adjoining to it. Finding himself taken ill in that city, he prepared himself for his last hour by redoubling his fervor in all his practices of penance and devotion. On the feast of the ascension of our Lord, he preached thrice on that triumphant mystery, exhorting all to follow our Redeemer and Head in spirit and desire. While he spoke, his countenance, like that of Moses coming down from the mount, seemed to shine and dart forth rays of light. In the close of his last discourse, he begged the prayers of his audience, and told his flock that God called him from them. At which words all that heard him were filled with inexpressible grief. In the afternoon he went again to the church, and appointed a place for his burial; then he took to his bed, and on the Saturday following, the 19th of May, having received the viaticum, he calmly expired; closing his corporal eyes to the world, and at the same instant opening those of his soul to behold God with his angels in glory. His death happened the 19th of May, 988, the sixty-fourth year of his age, and the twenty-seventh of his archiepiscopal dignity. He was buried in his own cathedral, in the place he had appointed. John of Glastenbury relates that his bones were translated to Glastenbury in 1012, two years after the martyrdom of St. Elphege; but this at most could only be true of some portion thereof. For in 1508, archbishop Warham found his relics remaining under his monument, which was then on the south side of the high altar. See his life in Mabillon, (Sæc. Ben. 5, p. 659,) by Osbern, precentor of Canterbury in 1070, and that by Eadmer, in 1121; in Wharton, t. 1, p. 211. See also John of Glastenbury, in his history of that abbey, published by Mr. Hearne, t. 1, p. 115, ad p. 147, likewise Henschenius, t. 4, Maij, p. 344.

* Dante died in 1321, at Ravenna, whither he was exiled upon account of his factions and turbulent spirit. In his poetry there are many beauties, but his indecencies shock us. Petrarch was also exiled, but unjustly, and died at Arcqua in 1374. His works in prose and verse render his name immortai. See on Dante and Petrarch, Specimen Historiæ. Literariæ Fiorentinæ a Jannotia Manetto. Fiorentiæ 1747, in 8vo. a work composed in the fifteenth age.

* The West-Saxon kings exceedingly enriched the abbey of Glastenbury, as may be seen by their charters extant in John of Glastenbury, &c. But it had been famous in the times of the Britons, and its church was the oldest in Britain, founded by those who first planted the faith of Christ in this island: which happened about the end of the reign of Tiberius, says Gildas, though few at first embraced it, as he adds. Metaphrastes quotes a passage from Eusebius, importing that St. Peter preached in Britain. Fortunatus, Sophronius, &c., affirm the same of St. Paul. It is at least certain from Tertullian, Origen, Eusebius, Theodoret, &c., that the light of the gospel had diffused its rays into Britain soon after the dispersion of the apostles. William of Malmesbury, I. de Antiquitatibus Glastoniæ, published by the learned Thomas Gale, relates from very ancient records, that the old church of Glastenbury was built by those who had sown the first seeds of faith in Britain. This island amidst marshes was first called Avallona, or isle of apples, from the British word Aval, apples, because it abounded with apple-trees, which were very scarce in those parts. When twelve brothers came from North-Britain to seek settlements in that country, the youngest, named Glasteing, settled in this island, which from him took the name of Glastenbury. William of Malmesbury, I. de Antiq. Glaston, says, that St. Patrick in 433, finding in this island twelve anchorets, gathered them together in a monastery which he built near the old church and was himself the first abbot. Some think this St. Patrick the same who was the apostle of Ireland; but all the Glastenbury writers agree, that this St. Patrick died and lay buried at Glastenbury. Most of the British saints of note, who lived before the coming of the Saxons, are said to have been buried here, or at least to have for some time retired to this place of devotion. In Powel’s History of Wales, pp. 13, 14, it is related that Cadwallader, the last king of the Britons, fled from the swords of the Saxons into Wales, and soon after went to Rome, never to return. Alan his cousin, a British king, reigned in Armorica, where a great number of Britons who followed Maximus by his grant, had settled themselves with their leader, named Conan, lord of Meriadoc. This prince, hearing of the retreat of Cadwallader, sailed to Wales, and having raised an army, sent his son Ivor at the head of it against the West-Saxons, whom he defeated. The conquest of Cornwall, Devon, and Somersetshire, was the fruit of his victory, and by a treaty and intermarriage he obtained quiet possession of the same, and was first king of that British state. This historian tells us that Ivor founded the monastery of Glastenbury, called by the Britons Inys-Avalon; for though he found there a church which was as ancient as Christianity in Britain, he first converted it into an abbey about the year 700. If monks had been placed there before, the wars had probably dispersed them, or much reduced their number. The annals of the abbey of Morgan, in Glamorganshire, published by Gale, relate that in 1191, in digging a grave for a monk, were found here the bones of king Arthur, of an enormous size, with this inscription: “Here lies the illustrious king Arthur, buried in the isle Avallona.” Those of his wife, queen Guenhavere, with the hair entire, lay above his coffin in the same grave. Powel places this discovery in 1179, and mentions that their bodies were laid in a hollow elder-tree, buried fifteen feet in the earth. Over the bones was laid a stone with a cross of lead, and on the lower side the above-mentioned inscription. On the king’s skull were the marks of ten wounds, one of them very large. The queen’s hair seemed to the sight fair and yellow, but when touched crumbled presently to dust. This discovery is also related by John of Glastenbury, in his history of that abbey, published by Mr. Hearne. This last author enumerates the principal relics which were possessed by this abbey, as those of SS. Aidan, Ceolfrid, Boisil, Bede, Bennet, Biscop, Oswald, &c., (brought thither from the north by king Edmund the elder in his victorious wars;) also of St. Valerius, B. M., St. Anastasius, and SS. Abdon and Sennen. given by king Edgar, St. David, &c.; likewise a considerable portion of the true cross of Christ, given by king Alfred, who had received it from pope Martin. Some account of the rich treasury formerly belonging to this most venerable church, in which were Innumerable monuments of the piety of all the most glorious among the West-Saxon kings, may be seen in the history of the said John, and on the Moaasticons.

¹ Conc. Aug 1. p 447

 Butler, A. (1903). The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs and Other Principal Saints (Vol. 2, pp. 358–366). New York: P. J. Kenedy.