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I think it is on the whole fair to say that the more you study the early history of episcopacy in these parts of Europe, the less need you feel to find a see for Bishop Luidhard. There is one very interesting fact, which deserves to be noted in connection with this mysterious Gallican bishop. The Italian Mission paid very special honour to his memory and his remains.
I shall make no apology for dwelling a little upon the circumstances of this Christian work, immediately before the coming of Augustine. It may seem a little discursive; but it forms, I think, a convenient introduction to our general subject. Who Bishop Luidhard was, is a difficult question.
His wife Bertha, whose marriage dates the arrival of Luidhard, was the daughter of Charibert, king of that part of the domains of his grandfather Clovis which gave to its sovereign the title of King of Paris.
It is this: "Though he was a voracious eater, and drank immoderately, exceeding the bounds which priestly caution should impose, no one ever accused him of adultery ." If we must choose a bishop of Soissons to be represented by Luidhard, we may fairly prefer the vegetable-gardener to the immoderate drinker.
This assignment of Luidhard to the bishopric of Soissons may perhaps be explained by an interesting story. The Bishop of Soissons, a full generation earlier than the time of which we are speaking, was Bandaridus.
The facts suggest that Luidhard was now quite an old man, and had failed to get any Gallican bishop to take up the work he could no longer carry on. And accordingly, tradition makes him die a month or two after Augustine's arrival. If we look to the language of Bede, we shall see, I think, that Luidhard had become incapable of carrying on his work when Augustine and his companions arrived.
Modern research has decided that it is of later date, but there is no doubt that on the spot on which it now stands, Bertha, the wife of Ethelbert who was ruling when Augustine landed with his monks had a little chapel, as Bede relates, "in the east of the city," where she worshipped, before her husband's conversion, with her chaplain, Luidhard, a French priest.
I have said more about the diocese to which Luidhard may have belonged than I think the question deserves. This is done out of respect to my predecessors in the enquiry. The idea that a bishop must have had a see is natural enough to us, but is not according to knowledge.
Up to the year 597 this Saxon capital, of practically all south-eastern England, was completely heathen, saving only the King's Frankish wife Bertha and Bishop Luidhard, who had come over as her chaplain about the year 575, when the marriage with the heathen Ethelbert had taken place.
It is a significant note on this difference of language, that in the ordinary lists, where a distinction, more or less arbitrary, is made between bishops and popes, the break comes between Gregory and Boniface. On the whole, then, I believe that Ethelbert and Bertha had been married many years when Augustine came, and, by consequence, that Luidhard had been living among the English many years.
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