Concil.p.

97, 98, 99, &c.] [** Augustine asks, "Si mulier menstrua consuetudine tenetur, an ecclesiam intrare et licet, aut sacrae communionis sacramenta percipere ?" Gregory answers, "Santae communionis mysterium in eisdem diebus percipere non debet prohiberi.

Si autem ex veneratione magna percipere non praesumitur, laudanda est." Augustine asks, "Si post illusionem, quae par somnum solet accidere, vel corpus Domini quilibet accipere valeat; vel, si sacerdos sit, sacra mysteria celebrare ?" Gregory answers this learned question by many learned distinctions.] And as the pagans practised sacrifices, and feasted with the priests on their offerings, he also exhorted the missionary to persuade them, on Christian festivals, to kill their cattle in the neighborhood of the church, and to indulge themselves in those cheerful entertainments to which they had been habituated.[*] These political compliances show that, notwithstanding his ignorance and prejudices, he was not unacquainted with the arts of governing mankind.

Augustine was consecrated archbishop of Canterbury, was endowed by Gregory with authority over all the British churches, and received the pall, a badge of ecclesiastical honor, from Rome.[**] Gregory also advised him not to be too much elated with his gift of working miracles;[***] and as Augustine, proud of the success of his mission, seemed to think himself entitled to extend his authority over the bishops of Gaul, the pope informed him that they lay entirely without the bounds of his jurisdiction.[****] The marriage of Ethelbert with Bertha, and, much more his embracing Christianity, begat a connection of his subjects with the French, Italians, and other nations on the continent, and tended to reclaim them from that gross ignorance and barbarity, in which all the Saxon tribes had been hitherto involved.[*****] Ethelbert also enacted,[******] with the consent of the states of his kingdom, a body of laws, the first written laws promulgated by any of the northern conquerors; and his reign was in every respect glorious to himself and beneficial to his people.

He governed the kingdom of Kent fifty years; and dying in 616, left the succession to his son, Eadbald.