Being Myself Of Cymric Blood, And Of A Christianity Several Hundred
Years Older Than That Of The Ordinary Anglo-Saxon
Traveller, I am afraid
that it was from a rather patronizing piety that I visited the church
where the great
St. Gregory dismissed to their mission in England St.
Augustine and his fellow-apostles on one of the greatest days of the
sixth century. I might have stayed to imagine them kneeling among the
people who then thronged the genially irregular piazza, but as we came
up some ecclesiastical students were playing ball there, their robes
tucked into their girdles for their greater convenience, and we made our
way at once into the church. It forms one of a consecrated group of
edifices enshrining the memory of the best of the popes, who was also
the greatest; and here or in the adjacent convents a score of miracles
were wrought through the heavenly beauty of his life. Of these miracles,
of whose inspiration you must feel the poetry even if you cannot feel
their verity, the loveliest has its substantial witness in one of the
little chapels next the church. There you may see with your eyes and
touch with your hands the table at which St. Gregory fed every morning
twelve poor men, till one morning a thirteenth appeared in the figure of
Christ the Lord, as if to own them His disciples. The chapel which
enshrines the table is one of three, quaint in form and rich in art,
standing in the garden called St. Silvia's, after the mother of St.
Gregory.
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