Page:The Saxon Cathedral at Canterbury and The Saxon Saints Buried Therein.djvu/121

ST. ALPHAGE twentieth century, are as true as in the tenth, and still more needed to be taken to heart.

In 984 Ethelwold, Bishop of Winchester, died, and Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury (admonished by St. Andrew in a vision, as he believed), called upon the Abbot to leave his monastery at Bath, take on the office of Bishop and administer the See of Winchester. Ethelwold, the late Bishop, had evacuated the secular clerks who had been serving that Cathedral, and had installed Regulars. Both classes of clergy were, therefore, interested in the appointment of his successor. The choice of the Archbishop was wise—Alphage was a holy and devoted Bishop, as the history of his life shows. He ruled the See for twenty-two years, and it was whilst he was Bishop of Winchester that an event occurred which probably gave rise in after years to the terrible hatred which Osbern says was exhibited and the animosity which was shown at the martyrdom of the saint by the heathen Danes; this was on account of his preaching and the success which attended it.

Olaf of Norway and Sweyn of Denmark "sat," as the Chronicler says, in Southampton in the winter of 994, the King, Ethelred the Unready, sent the Bishop of the Diocese, Alphage, as an Ambassador to the Northerners. Olaf was already a Christian—at least he had been baptized in his own land by English missionaries; he travelled with Alphage to Andover to meet Ethelred, and whilst there he received the rite of Confirmation from the Bishop, and at the same time made a solemn promise, which he kept, that he would never invade the Realm of England again.

This confession of Faith on the part of the Norwegian King so angered the Pagans, that they took the barbarous revenge on the Bishop when they had him in their power in after years.

Alphage, when he became Bishop of Winchester, was about thirty years of age. He was an ascetic from the beginning of his career. We are told that even in winter, he rose at midnight, and went out, however cold it might be, and prayed, barefoot and without even putting on his scapular, i.e. the upper garment of the monk. He only very occasionally ate flesh meat, and was no less remarkable for charity to his 83