Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 14.djvu/25

 conference of Augustine with the British bishops (, Hist. Eccles. ii. 2). Daniel cannot therefore have died in 544, and the story of the foundation of Bangor Iscoed thirty years earlier is impossible. The date of the ‘Annales Cambriæ’ (584) lessens but does not remove the difficulty. If Daniel ‘episcopus Cinngarad,’ who is said to have died in 660 (Annals of Ulster in, Chron. Picts and Scots, p. 349), be the same person, the date of the Ulster chronicler would be almost as much too late as that of the Welsh writer too early.

[Ussher's Britannicarum Eccles. Antiquitates; Cressy's Church History of Britain, x. 7; W. J. Rees's Lives of Cambro-British Saints, Welsh MSS. Society, pp. 20, 111, 266, 271; Annales Cambriæ, s. a. 584; Chron. Picts and Scots; Giraldi Cambrensis Itinerarium Kambriæ in Opera, vi. 124, 170, Rolls Ser.; and especially Rice Rees's Essay on the Welsh Saints, pp. 258–260, and Dict. of Christian Biography, i. 802, which gives copious references to authorities.] 

DANIEL, or according to Bæda  (d. 745), bishop of the West Saxons, made Winchester his episcopal see from his consecration by Archbishop Brihtwald [q. v.] in 705, as successor to Heddi, till his resignation, on the loss of his sight, in 744. The subdivision of the enormous diocese over which Heddi had exercised episcopal jurisdiction had been recommended by Archbishop Theodore, and had been decreed by the yearly synod of 704, but Heddi appears to have been unwilling to assent to the change, which was not carried out till Daniel's consecration. Berkshire, Wiltshire, Somersetshire, and Dorsetshire were then constituted as a new diocese, with Sherborne as its see and Aldhelm as its bishop, leaving Hampshire, Surrey, and Sussex to Daniel. A few years later (Matthew of Westminster gives the date 711) Daniel's jurisdiction was still further reduced by the establishment of Sussex as a separate diocese, having its see at Selsea and Eadbert as its first bishop ( Hist. Eccl. v. 18; ed. Thorpe, i. 46). As some compensation for this loss of territory Daniel added the Isle of Wight to his diocese, which had remained unattached to any bishopric since its evangelisation by Wilfrid on its conquest by Cædwalla in 686. Daniel, who, like Aldhelm, had been a disciple of Maelduff at Malmesbury, takes rank among the most learned, energetic, and influential bishops of the great period of the development and missionary activity of the Saxon church in which his lot was cast, ‘Vir in multis strenuissimus’ ( Vit. S. Aldhelmi, iii.). He is chiefly known to us as the contemporary and literary coadjutor of Bæda, whom, as Bæda gratefully records, he assisted in the compilation of his history by communicating materials relating to Wessex and Sussex and the Isle of Wight ( Hist. Eccl. Præfat.), and as ‘the encourager, counsellor, and correspondent’ of the great St. Boniface, who had been a member of the monastery of Nursling, near Winchester, in his mission to carry christianity to the heathen tribes of Germany. When Boniface, still bearing his baptismal name of Winfrid, after his first unsuccessful mission to the Frisians in 716, was two years later taking his final departure from England, Daniel furnished him with ‘letters of commendation’ to all christian kings, dukes, bishops, abbots, presbyters, and other ‘spiritual sons’ he might meet with, charging them, after the patriarchal model, to show him hospitality (Bonifacii Epist. ed. Jaffé, No. 11; ed. Würdtwein, No. 1). We have two other letters of Daniel's, addressed to Boniface himself, which ‘give us an insight into his mind and character, showing how he could advise and comfort’ (, Early English Ch. Hist. p. 425). One of these, fixed by Haddan and Stubbs between 719 and 722 (Councils and Eccl. Doc. iii. 304–6; ed. Jaffé, No. 15; ed. Würdtwein, No. 14), is a document of peculiar interest, parts of which may still be read with advantage by missionaries to the heathen. In this Daniel counsels Boniface as to the conduct of his mission and suggests arguments against polytheism by which, through a Socratic method of questioning, its absurdity may be made evident and the contrast between christianity and paganism shown. These points he advises should be advanced with calmness and moderation, so as not to exasperate or insult those whom he is seeking to win over. The closing arguments of Daniel's letter are based on the world-wide spread of the gospel, as well as on the far more doubtful ground of the superior temporal happiness of christians, who enjoy lands fruitful in wine and oil, nothing but countries stiff with perpetual frost being left to the pagans. At the time of the writing of this letter Daniel was in feeble health, and he requests the prayers of Boniface that he may profit by his bodily affliction. Daniel's second letter was written at a much later period (732–745), in answer to one from Boniface asking his advice how to deal with bad priests, and requesting that Daniel will send him a copy of the six major prophets which had once belonged to his master Winbert, the former abbot of Nursling, written in a large and clear hand suitable to his failing sight. From this letter we learn that Daniel had become blind, a calamity on which Boniface