Ofaiii, an indulgence -box, a sort of charm pur- chased from the Japanese priests by the pilgrims who go to Isje.
Offa OF Essex, a pious and valiant Saxon prince, deserv'es a place here for his great devotion to Chris- tianity. He flourished near the opening of the 8th cen- tury. He ^vas a youth of great personal beauty, says Bede, and his pleasing manners made him most accep- table to the people, who looked forward with hopes to the time when he should be called to govern them. He was also honorably affianced to a princess of Mercia ; but he left all the wealth and power and pleasure that courted him for Christ's sake and the Gospel's :
"He gave his honors to the world again, His better part to heaven."
We must confess, though a mistaken sense of duty ruled his choice, that it was no common power of religion which could take him at such an early age from all the advantages of birth and state, to live in a foreign land, in unknown society and an obscure position, and to give himself up to a life of prayer and fasting and alms- giving.
Offa, an Anglo-Saxon prince, who flourished as king OF ]Mkucia for about forty years, in the second half of the 8th century, is noted in ecclesiastical history for the dependent relation in which he placed his part of Brit- ain to the papal see. He was a valiant soldier and am- bitious ruler; and as he extended his possessions large- ly, his negotiations with Rome become of importance to every student of English ecclesiastical history. He compelled the king of Kent to acknowledge his author- ity, and at the instigation of Cynedrida, his wife, he put to death Ethelbert, king of East Anglia, and seized his states. Charlemagne called him the most powerful of the Christian kings of the West, and maintained friendly relations with him, except during a short pe- riod when traders in OITa's dominions committed depre- dations upon Frankish merchants. But though Offa was successful in his acquisition of temporal power, he lost much by ecclesiastical relations with Rome, upon
the good-will of which he finally came to be very de- pendent. Anxious to establish the ecclesiastical inde- pendence of his kingdom from other British territory, he appealed to pope Adrian — the same pontiff who wrote in defence of image-worship — to send an archbishop's pall to Higbert, bishop of Lichfield, making the six other bishoprics between the Thames and Humber sub- ject to him instead of archbishop Eanbert of Canter- bury. It is no great credit to pope Adrian that he con- sented so easilj' to this project, for which there was no reason but the worldly ambition of Offa ; and his hon- esty is somewhat impeached by it, inasmuch as Offa began a practice, which was long afterwards continued, of sending a yearly present in money, called "Peter- pence," to Rome. The Saxon law speaks of this pres- ent as " the king's alms." It was not a tax paid to the pope, but to the king's officers ; it led, however, after- wards to further encroachments of the bishop of Rome. A council of the English Church, held at Cliffs- hoe, A.D. 803, censured this royal act as surreptitious and deceitful. King Offa was also the first prince since the days of St. Augustine to receive a papal legate for the ordering of British ecclesiastical affairs. The legates came ostensibly to j-eneio the faith and peace that had connected England with Rome ever since Augustine's mission. Their object was, ho;vever, to give public papal countenance to Offa's ecclesiastical departures. Offa died soon after his cruel slaughter of king Ethel- bert, overcome with remorse. He was succeeded by his son Egferth, who reigned only a few months. Offa is commended by the learned Alcuin as a prince of en- gaging manners, and studious to promote good Chris- tian morals among his people. At the same time the prelate does not disguise that these better qualities were tarnished by deeds of avarice and cruelty; and he mentions it as a probable mark of divine ven- geance that his only son Egferth, whom he had made the sharer of his throne, died a few days after his fa- ther, in the flower of his age. Among the oppres- sive acts of Offa towards the Church, he seems to have usurped the property of bishops and abbots in the monasteries; not suppressing the religious houses, but giving them as preferments to his friends, particularly one at March, in Cambridgeshire, and the abbey at Bath, which he made bishop Heathored of Worcester surrender to him. To establish his power the more, he enriched the abbeys of Bredon and Evesham, founded by his grandfather, with lands taken from the same bishopric or its dependent monasteries. But at a late period of his life he was led, by remorse of conscience, to found the famous abbey of St. Alban's, which he en- dowed with large estates in Hertfordshire, and which became one of the most splendid of the old Benedictine houses in early Norman times. Offa compiled laws which are mostly included in the Anglo-Saxon code of Alfred the Great. See Churton, Early Engl. Ch. ch. x ; Soames, Anglo-Saxon Ch. (Lond. 1856, 12mo), p. 101- 104; ejusd. Latin Ch. during Anglo-Saxon Times (ibid. 1848, 8vo), p. 146 sq. ; Inett, Origines Anglicanm (see In- dex in pt, ii of vol. ii). (J. H. W.)