Page:Elizabeth Elstob - An English-Saxon homily on the birth-day of St. Gregory.djvu/83

^[1] scortlice eow be him
^[2] bereccan. For ðan þe seo
foresæde boc nis eow eal-
lum cuð. þeah þe heo on
Englisc awend ^[3] is჻ Ðes
eadig ^[4] papa Gregorius
wæs of æþelre mægðe &
of eawfæste acenned჻
Romanisce witan wæron
his magos. his fæder
hatte Gordianus. & Felix
se eawfæsta papa wæs his
fifta fæder჻ He wæs swa

in few words concerning
him; because the aforesaid
Book is not known to you
all, altho it is translated
into English. ^[5] This blessed
Father Gregory was born of
Noble and Religious Pa-
rents. His Ancestors were
of the Roman Nobility, his
Father called Gordianus,
and Felix that pious Bi-
shiop was his ^[6] fifth Fa-
ther. He was, as we

1. sceortlice. C. Hatt.
2. gereccan. C. H.
3. sy. C. H.
4. The word Papa, which is used in the Saxon, and which I have translated sometimes Bishop, sometimes Father, and sometimes Pope, is not to be understood as if the Bishop of Rome did then pretend to the Title of Universal Bishop, as the Popes at present do; for how much this holy Bishop disliked any one's assuming to himself that Character, appears from the several Epistles referred to in Mr. Lefty’s Letter to the Bishop of Meaux, printed at the end of Dr. Hickes’s
   Letters in Answer to a Popish Priest, and particularly in the Letter of this Excellent Bishop to Mauricius the Emperor, in which he so notably taxes the Arrogance of John Patriarch of Constantinople, for assuming to himself the Title of an Universal Supremacy; which Letter I have therefore given you in the Appendix.
5. This account of him may be also seen at large in Bede’s Eccl. Hist. lib. 2. c. 1 altho' that part of it by the Royal Translator was omitted, or has some way at least been lost.
6. The Saxon Homilist has learnedly express'd the original word Atavus by fifta fæder, that is, the fourth from his Father, or his Great-Grandfather's Grandfather: agreeable to that old Verse of Plautus the Comedian,