Bede's Ecclesiastical History of EnglandBede, the Venerable, Saint
History
Bede's Ecclesiastical History of England
Bede, the Venerable, Saint
England -- Church history -- 449-1066
“Wherefore, in accordance with your request, and that of the kings our
sons,(261) we do hereby in the name of the blessed Peter, chief of the
Apostles, grant you authority, that when the Divine Grace shall call
either of you to Himself, the survivor shall ordain a bishop in the room
of him that is deceased. To which end also we have sent a pall to each of
you, beloved, for celebrating the said ordination; that by the authority
which we hereby commit to you, you may make an ordination acceptable to
God; because the long distance of sea and land that lies between us and
you, has obliged us to grant you this, that no loss may happen to your
Church in any way, on any pretext whatever, but that the devotion of the
people committed to you may increase the more. God preserve you in safety,
most dear brother! Given the 11th day of June, in the reign of these our
lords and emperors, in the twenty-fourth year of the reign of Heraclius,
and the twenty-third after his consulship; and in the twenty-third of his
son Constantine, and the third after his consulship; and in the third year
of the most prosperous Caesar, his son Heraclius,(262) the seventh
indiction; that is, in the year of our Lord, 634.”
Chap. XIX. How the aforesaid Honorius first, and afterwards John, wrote
letters to the nation of the Scots, concerning the observance of Easter,
and the Pelagian heresy. [640 A.D.]
The same Pope Honorius also wrote to the Scots,(263) whom he had found to
err in the observance of the holy Festival of Easter, as has been shown
above, with subtlety of argument exhorting them not to think themselves,
few as they were, and placed in the utmost borders of the earth, wiser
than all the ancient and modern Churches of Christ, throughout the world;
and not to celebrate a different Easter, contrary to the Paschal
calculation and the decrees of all the bishops upon earth sitting in
synod. Likewise John,(264) who succeeded Severinus, successor to the same
Honorius, being yet but Pope elect, sent to them letters of great
authority and erudition for the purpose of correcting the same error;
evidently showing, that Easter Sunday is to be found between the fifteenth
of the moon and the twenty-first, as was approved in the Council of
Nicaea.(265) He also in the same epistle admonished them to guard against
the Pelagian heresy,(266) and reject it, for he had been informed that it
was again springing up among them. The beginning of the epistle was as
follows:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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