at some sacred spot–and there the priests and thegns declared their
willingness to accept the new religion. Coifi, chief priest of the
heathen gods, himself led the way, and flung a lance in derision at the
temple of his own deities. To the surprise of all, the gods did not
avenge the insult. Thereupon "King Æduin, with all the nobles and most
of the common folk of his nation, received the faith and the font of
holy regeneration, in the eleventh year of his reign, which is the year
of our Lord's incarnation the six hundred and twenty-seventh, and about
the hundred and eightieth after the arrival of the English in Britain.
He was baptized at York on Easter-day, the first before the Ides of
April (April 12), in the church of St. Peter the Apostle, which he
himself had hastily built of wood, while he was being catechised and
prepared for Baptism; and in the same city he gave the bishopric to his
prelate and sponsor Paulinus. But after his Baptism he took care, by
Paulinus's direction, to build a larger and finer church of stone, in
the midst whereof his original chapel should be enclosed." To this day,
York Minster, the lineal descendant of Eadwine's wooden church, remains
dedicated to St. Peter; and the archbishops still sit in the
bishop-stool of Paulinus. Part of Eadwine's later stone cathedral was
discovered under the existing choir during the repairs rendered
necessary by the incendiary Martin. As to the heathen temple, its traces
still remained even in Bæda's day. "That place, formerly the abode of
idols, is now pointed out not far from York to the westward, beyond the
river Dornuentio, and is to-day called Godmundingaham, where the priest
himself, through the inspiration of the true God, polluted and destroyed
the altars which he himself had consecrated." So close did Bæda live to
these early heathen English times. From the date of St. Augustine's
arrival, indeed, Bæda stands upon the surer ground of almost
contemporary narrative.