issionaries came from, as well
as serves as a pattern for the worship which the {186} English, under
Augustine's guidance, should follow. What was this litany? Litanies
at Rome were regulated by S. Gregory himself, and he was very likely
only revising and setting in order a form of service already well
known. But this very litany S. Augustine and his companions had most
likely heard during their passage through Gaul. There the Rogation
litanies had been over a hundred years in use; and these words form
part of a Rogation litany used long after in Vienne, through which
doubtless Augustine travelled. Thus the missionaries were using a part
of the Gallican service-books, and not of the Roman; and the legation
procession, which lasted so long in England, which still lingers in
some places in the form of "beating the bounds," and which in late
years has been here and there revived among us, comes to us with
Augustine from Gaul, and not from Rome, where it was not yet in use.
"Alleluia!" too, a strange ending to a penitential litany in modern
ears, was the close of Gallican litanies at Rogationtide, as later in
Christian England itself, and its use outside the Easter season was
especially authorised by Gregory the Great. And if Augustine's own
first public prayers were Gallican, so most probably was the use of the
chapel of the Kentish Queen Bercta, who was daughter of the West
Frankish king, and who had with her a Frankish bishop, Liudhard. But
his own use would be the Roman, just as his own manner of chanting,
long preserved at Canterbury, was after the manner of the Romans. And
thus, with the strong sense of unity natural to a man trained in the
school of the great Gregory, Augustine was startled at the contrast of
customs when it came to him in practical guise. Why, {187} the faith
being one, are there the different customs of different churches, and
one manner of masses in the holy Roman church, another in that of the
Gauls? So he asked the great teacher who had sent him. A wise answer
came from the wise pope, disclaiming all peculiar authority or special
sanctity for the use of Rome. "Things are not to be loved for the sake
of places, but places for the sake of things." "Select, then," he
advises, "from many churches, whatever you have found in Gaul, or in
Rome, or in any other church, that is good; make a rite for the new
church of the English, such as you think pious and best."

[Sidenote: English uses.]