A Source Book for Ancient Church History - Mirrors

§ 100. The Foundation of the Anglo-Saxon Church 665synod should be held in the monastery of Streaneshalch, whichsignifies the bay of the lighthouse, where the Abbess Hilda, awoman devoted to God, presided; and that there the controversyshould be decided. The kings, both father and son, came hither.Bishop Colman, with his Scottish clerks, and Agilbert, 259 and [607]the priests Agatho and Wilfrid. James and Romanus were ontheir side. But the Abbess Hilda and her associates were forthe Scots, as was also the venerable bishop Cedd, long beforeordained by the Scots.… Then Colman said: “The Easter whichI keep, I received from my elders who sent me hither as bishop;all our fathers, men beloved of God, are known to have kept itin the same manner; and that the same may not seem to any tobe contemptible or worthy of being rejected, it is the same whichSt. John the Evangelist, the disciple especially beloved of ourLord, with all the churches over which he presided, is recordedas having observed.…”Wilfrid, having been ordered by the king to speak, said: “TheEaster which we observe we saw celebrated by all at Rome, wherethe blessed Apostles, Peter and Paul, lived, taught, suffered, andwere buried; we saw the same done in Italy and France, whenwe travelled through those countries for pilgrimage and prayer.We found the same practised in Africa, Asia, Egypt, Greece, andin all the world, wherever the Church of Christ is spread abroad,through several nations and tongues, at one and the same time …except only those and their accomplices in obstinacy, I mean thePicts and the Britons, who foolishly, in these two remote islandsof the world, and only in part of them, oppose all the rest of theuniverse.… John, pursuant to the custom of the law, began thecelebration of the feast of Easter on the fourteenth day of themonth, in the evening, not regarding whether the same happenedon a Saturday or any other day.… Thus it appears that you,Colman, neither follow the example of John, as you imagine,259 Bishop of the West Saxons, temporarily in Northumbria.