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CHAPTER II
.
ROMAN AND CELTIC CHRISTIANITY
St. PATRICK, ST. COLUMBA, St. AGUSTINE, ST. COLUMBAN, ST. GALLST. AIDAN, St. CUTHBER
St. PATRICK
IT was in the days of Constantine and Athanasius that ancient Britain
was most Roman, cultivated, and prosperous. But even in the fourth century the
Picts and the Irish were ravaging Britain, and early in the next century the
Roman Empire left Britain to her fate. After 410 connections with Rome were at
an end and many of the Britons migrated to Gaul, where they gave the name of
Britannia to Armorica and planted the language which has survived until today.
Soon other and more terrible enemies came to Britain.
The Saxons and the Angles
came not to plunder only, but to settle. Canterbury and London were destroyed,
and the invaders steadily pressed westward. In the last quarter of the sixth
century Bath, Cirencester, and Gloucester were taken. Silchester was evacuated, Wroxeter was stormed. The Romano-British tradition was lost. Many Latin words continued
to be used by the conquered Britons, words which remain in Welsh disguised so
much as to escape the eyes of everyone who is not a trained philologist; but of
actual history we know very little. Gildas, a
well-educated priest who wrote about 540, has recorded some details of the
persecution of Diocletian and knows of the coming of the English about 450. But
he is walking in a land of shadows. And although he seems to have been
contemporary with the Celtic hero Arthur, who was to become a king of legendary
romance, he tells us nothing about the hero or his prowess. The history of
England and of the Church in England does not become clear and intelligible until
a real link was again forged to join the country with Rome. That link was
forged by Gregory the Great.
The best-known figure of the fifth century in our islands is St.
Patrick, a Briton who became the foremost apostle of Ireland. There were
Christians in Ireland before his time, and Prosper tells us that in 431 Palladius, consecrated by Pope Celestine, is sent to the Scots believing in Christ as their first
bishop. The work of Palladius was abruptly ended by
death. Patrick, whose Celtic name was Su-cat (strong in war) was born at ‘Bannauenta’, possibly Daventry, and was the son of Calpurnius, a deacon, the son
of Potitus, a presbyter. When sixteen years of age he
was carried off by a band of Irish raiders. After a bondage of six years he escaped to the coast and boarded a ship which was engaged in
the export of Irish wolf-dogs. Landing in Gaul, he made his way to the famous
monastery of Lerins, and then to Auxerre,
where he was ordained deacon by Bishop Amator. He was
later consecrated bishop by Germanus, probably not
until the death of Palladius. He returned to Ireland,
reaching the coast of Wicklow, and defied heathen
sentiment by lighting his Paschal fire within sight of Tara, before the king’s
own pagan fire was lighted at that sacred spot.
After a great success at Tara, won in spite of the Druids, he overthrew
a famous idol called Cenn Cruaich, in
what is now county Cavan. He is said to have visited
Connaught, but his work is more closely identified with the north of Ireland.
He went to Rome and obtained the approval of St. Leo, than which nothing was
more likely to further his own influence. This approval was ratified by the
gift of precious relics of St. Peter and St. Paul. Not long after his visit to
Rome he founded the church of Armagh, establishing it as the primatial church of Ireland. He died in 461 and was
probably buried quietly at Saul, though in the twelfth century St. Malachy of Armagh informed his friend St. Bernard that the
relics of the saint were at Armagh. An iron hand-bell of great antiquity, now
preserved in the National Museum at Dublin, is called Patrick's by a tradition
which is not improbable.
It is a remarkable fact that although Patrick was a man of work and not
of letters, he is the earliest Irish writer of whom we can say that writings
ascribed to him are really his. We possess in Irish the 'Breastplate' or 'Cry
of the Deer', and in Latin his 'Confession' and a
letter against Coroticus. The first is a rough hymn:
legend says that the saint made it on his way to visit King Laoghaire at Tara,
and that the assassins who had been posted by the king to kill Patrick thought
that the chant was the sound of a herd of deer passing by, and thus the saint
escaped.
The 'Confession' is a kind of Apologia pro vita sua, written in barbarous Latin
to describe his career and defend himself against
detraction. The letter against Coroticus was caused
by the sanguinary raid in which the soldiers of Coroticus,
a British king of Strathclyde, killed a number of
Christian neophytes on the day of their baptism and carried off others into
slavery. The saint, who admits his rusticity, could write with force and
indignation. He was a man of one book, and that book was the Bible; and in his
consciousness that God had dealt wonderfully with him he is at one with St.
Paul and St. Augustine.
The beginnings of Christianity in Scotland date back to Romano-British
times. Its oldest monuments are certain carved stones at Kirkmadrine,
in Wigtonshire, which have survived all the storms
which have swept over Britain from the fifth century to the present day. They
are far older than the work of St. Columba, and are in a region where St. Ninian or Nynias labored about
the time of the withdrawal of the Roman troops from Britain. He was himself a
Briton and trained in Rome. He planted the centre of his missions at what is
now the little town of Whithorn, and his church there
gave its name of “Candida Casa” to the bishopric. It is probable that Ninian went to the north of Scotland and labored in the
valley of the Ness. If he did not himself preach to the northern Picts, the
Gospel was brought to them by his immediate disciples.
St. Kentigern (otherwise Mungo,
'my dear one') was the apostle of the Britons of Strathclyde.
He became the hero of many fantastic tales, but with the help of Welsh
documents the outlines of his life are made plain. He labored near Glasgow, but
being opposed by a pagan king, Morken, fled to St.
David at Menevia, and founded a monastery at Llanelwy (St. Asaph). In 573 the
battle of Arderydd gave victory to the Christian
Britons and he went back to Glasgow. Soon after 584 he met St. Columba, and the
two venerable servants of God exchanged their pastoral staves in token of their
mutual regard. He died in 603.
ST. COLUMBA
With St. Columba we pass from a cloudy dawn into bright sunlight. He was
born in 521 at Gartan in Donegal, was the son of a
chief, was baptized and became the pupil of St. Finian.
After his ordination he and three of his fellow students lived a religious life
at Glasnevin. He built his first church at Derry in
545 and founded many others.
In 563 he crossed to the west of Scotland and received a grant of the
island known to us as Iona. It is most likely that this banishment to Scotland
was a voluntary penance for his action in stirring up a war in Ireland. Iona lay
on the geographical borderline between the Scots and the Picts, and the
conversion of the Picts became a definite part of his work.
He was the very type of Irish character. He was passionate, “fragile as
glass”, says an ancient writer. He had a fair face and large grey eyes, a voice
'sweet with more than the sweetness of the bards'. He was deeply loved by his
monks, and himself loved all things that God made, as
is shown by his kindness to a tired heron that fell upon the beach, and to the
old horse that he caressed on the last evening of his life. Coarsely clad and
devoting much time to prayer and manual labor, he allowed his community to eat
fish, eggs, and the flesh of seals, not enforcing too rigorous an abstinence,
and he practiced a generous hospitality.
His work spread far and wide in the west and north of Scotland, and he
ruled many important churches in Ireland. He governed with absolute authority
in his monastery, free from Episcopal jurisdiction. But he was only in priest’s
orders, and employed bishops to ordain, treating them with veneration as
members of a superior order. Blessed in his life, he was happy in his death,
which came on June the 9th, 597. He was happy also in the fact that his
biography was written by Adamnan, who had conversed
with persons acquainted with Columba, and whose work is of such value and
interest as to immortalize both the author and his subject.
St. AGUSTINE
Late in the spring of 597 St. Augustine landed in the Isle of Thanet on the coast of Kent. A few days later St. Columba
died in the isle of Iona. We can well imagine the dignified Roman missionary
coming, not altogether unbefriended or unexpected,
with forty monks, preceded by a cross and a picture of 'the Lord the Savior',
chanting a litany as they moved in procession to meet Ethelbert, the King of
Kent. And we can also imagine the Irish abbot, dying with a smile before the
altar of his church, surrounded by the devoted monks who hurried to him in the
dark night with the lanterns which they had just lighted to help them sing Mattins. Both men deserved success. More than any others
they founded the Christian religion of Great Britain.
Ethelbert’s wife, Bertha, was daughter of the Frankish king of Paris,
and a Christian. She and her chaplain had used for worship the church of St.
Martin, outside Canterbury, which had survived in a ruined state from Roman
times. And it was probably in this church that Ethelbert, quickly converted to
the faith by Augustine, was baptized on Whitsunday 597. He did not compel his
subjects to follow his example; but that example, reinforced by the
self-denying labors of the missionaries, bore rapid fruit. The Pope soon held
that it was time for Augustine to be consecrated Bishop of the English, so
Augustine crossed the channel and was consecrated at Arles.
Returning to England, he founded the monastery of Christchurch on the
site of a Roman basilica and of the present cathedral. And beyond the walls of
Canterbury he built another monastery dedicated to St. Peter and St. Paul, the
two patron saints of Rome. It was probably the first Benedictine monastery
founded outside Italy. Possibly he intended to separate the life of a cathedral
from the more purely missionary monastic centre. And by these two foundations
he made Canterbury a permanent stronghold of Christian life and civilization.
He found it necessary to direct several questions to Gregory which show his
anxiety to deal with new and perplexing circumstances. Among the replies sent
by Gregory is the famous maxim that things were not to be loved for the sake of
places, but places for the sake of good things, and that what was good in any
local custom might be brought into the Church of the English. He permits
Augustine alone by himself to consecrate a bishop in case of need. He is to
exercise no authority in Gaul, but “all the bishops of the Britains”
are to be under his care. These replies were conveyed by Mellitus, Paulinus, and other new missionaries, who brought also for
Augustine a pallium, the narrow scarf signifying
jurisdiction delegated by the Pope to a metropolitan. Augustine was further
directed to consecrate twelve bishops to be under his jurisdiction as Bishop of
London; and for the city of York a bishop was also to be ordained, who, as the
Church extended, was to be over twelve other bishops.
Ethelbert was not only the leading monarch over all England south of the
Humber; the East Saxons were indirectly but really under his control. Their
king Saebert was his nephew and reigned in dependence
on Ethelbert. Augustine, in 604, shortly before his death, consecrated Mellitus
as bishop and sent him to preach to the East Saxons. They accepted his message,
and then Ethelbert built in London a cathedral church dedicated to St. Paul, so
that Mellitus might have his see in a town of importance frequented by traders
from abroad. Augustine also consecrated Justus as bishop for the people of
western Kent, the see being placed at Rochester. Here the church was dedicated
to St. Andrew in memory of the missionaries’ old home in the centre of Latin
Christendom.
Augustine died on May the 26th, 604 or 605, and was buried outside the
unfinished church of St. Peter and St. Paul until it should be ready to cover
his relics. Some of the questions which he directed to Gregory are questions
which would only have been asked by a man unduly troubled by details of
ceremonial purity; and his summary treatment of the British bishops, which must
now be described, indicates a lack of Christian courtesy and meekness. But he
was always brave, laborious, and sincere, and often
prudent. And we can truly say of Augustine what Bede says of Gregory, “If he be
not an apostle unto others, yet he is unto us, for the seal of his apostleship
are we in the Lord”.
THE
BRITISH CHURCH
Augustine’s relations with the British bishops and Church were less
happy than his relations with the English. Helped by Ethelbert, he crossed the
country of the West Saxons and met the bishops at a place called Augustine's
Oak in the time of Bede, usually identified with Aust near the Severn. He urged upon them the need of Catholic unity and the duty of
joining in the task of preaching the Gospel to the English. No decision was
reached, for both sides were unyielding as to certain points of difference. No
divergence in doctrine appears to have separated the Celtic Christians from the
Roman missionaries, but the disciplinary differences were acute. The principal
were three in number.
First, in calculating the date of Easter, the Celts, following what had
been the rule at Rome about 300, celebrated the feast on a Sunday between March
the 25th and April the 21st, and on a day from the fourteenth to the twentieth day of the lunar month inclusive. The
Romans celebrated the feast on a Sunday between March the 22nd and April the
25th, and on a day from the fifteenth to the twenty-first of the lunar month. The Celtic custom was peculiarly
offensive to the Romans because it permitted Easter to coincide with the Jewish
Passover on the 4th of Nisan, a thing forbidden by the great Council of Nicaea.
Secondly, the tonsure of the Celtic priests differed from the Roman
tonsure. At an early period the clergy wore their hair short in order not to
appear effeminate. Later, the Romans shaved the whole head, and St. Patrick was
shaved in this fashion. This tonsure was called that of St. Paul (Acts XVIII. 18).
Then the Romans of the time of St. Gregory had a circle shaved on the top of
the head, so as to leave a complete crown or garland of natural hair, the hair
being left rather longer at the back. This was known as the tonsure of St.
Peter. But the Celtic clergy were so shaved that their hair remained long at
the back and formed a fringe or semicircle on the front half of their head from
ear to ear, a tonsure nearly the same as that worn by the Celtic laity. This
was denounced by the Romans as the tonsure of Simon Magus, who was represented
in legends as opposing St. Peter in the Eternal City.
Thirdly, the Celts had some peculiarities of their own in administering
baptism. Their character remains a problem. It is clear that the Celtic rite
did not involve any repudiation of the doctrine of the Trinity, for we have no
trace of any accusation being based upon such a heresy. The most reasonable
theory is that the Celts administered baptism without confirmation, whether
confirmation by a bishop or by a presbyter who used oil consecrated by a
bishop. This would explain why Augustine demanded that the Britons should
'complete' baptism.
At a second meeting of Augustine with the Britons seven British bishops
were present. According to a well-known story told by Bede, they first
consulted a holy anchorite as to whether they ought at the preaching of
Augustine to abandon their own traditions. He replied that they ought to do so
if he were a man of God, and that he would be a man of God if he were humble.
They asked how they were to know whether he was humble. The reply was that if
Augustine rose to meet them, he would show himself to be a servant of Christ.
If he did not rise but despised them, “let him also be despised by you”. And
Augustine remained seated. Otherwise he was not unconciliatory.
He only insisted on three points, the celebration of Easter at the same
time as the Church elsewhere, the “completing of Baptism”, and a joint
preaching of the word of the Lord to the English nation. The Britons flatly
refused and said that they would not regard him as archbishop. The Church of
the Britons and the Church of the English were thus separated. It was the
Gaelic and not the Cymric monks who threw themselves
into the work of preaching Christ among the English of Northumbria and elsewhere. The intense British dislike of the English and the English
Church was of course connected with bitter recollections of the English
conquest; and their antipathy to Augustine was strengthened by their veneration
for their own saints such as Illtud, David, and
Samson.
After Augustine's death friendly attempts were made by his successor Laurentius to win over both the Irish and the Welsh, though
an Irish (Scot) bishop who came to England refused to eat in the same house
with him. His efforts met with no visible result. It was not until 755 that Elvod, Bishop of Bangor, induced the people of North Wales
to accept the Roman Easter, and some years later the people of South Wales
followed. In Cornwall there was some dissent as late as the time of Eadulf, the first (English) bishop of Crediton (909-93t).
The Irish Gaels were less persistent than the Celts of Wales and
Cornwall. The north of Ireland yielded to the influence of Adamnan (d. 704), the saintly abbot of Iona who, having candidly examined the subject,
came to the conclusion that the Roman reckoning was correct. A few years after
his death most of the monks of Iona followed his example.
As to the nature of the episcopate among the Celts of this period, much
remains somewhat obscure. But the ascertained facts do not point to such a wide
divergence between the Celts and other Christian nationalities in this respect
as has often been supposed. Among those facts is, first, the influence of the
clan or tribal system in determining the boundaries of a bishopric, and,
secondly, the limitation of Episcopal authority by powerful monasteries which
came to possess large estates of their own.
St. Gregory gave authority to St. Augustine over “all the bishops of the Britains”. It is more than probable that the British
bishops had been under no such metropolitan or archbishop, and that
ecclesiastical “provinces”, including several bishops, were unknown. Gildas knows of none. The title archiepiscopus in Latin is not
applied to the bishop of Menevia until it is so used
by Asser c. 893. But it is likely that St. David, Abbot and Bishop of Menevia, did in the sixth century exercise an influence
which anticipated the rather vague primacy that was claimed in turn by other
Welsh sees, first at Caerleon and finally at St.
David's. With regard to Ireland it is practically certain that Armagh would not
have gained its early prestige if St. Patrick had not exercised from Armagh,
and intended his successors to exercise, an authority similar to that of
metropolitans on the Continent. All Ireland was one province. And any early
Irish bishop who bore the title of primescop or principal bishop was not a metropolitan, but
the chief bishop over a clan, the other bishops belonging to a class which must
now be briefly described.
In all Celtic lands the monastic foundations were essential to the
spiritual structure of the Church. The prevalence in Wales, Cornwall, and
Brittany of the word Ilan or Ian, which signified a
monastery before it signified a church building, still testifies to the ancient
prevalence of monasticism. The monks served the needs of the surrounding
country; they included a staff of priests, and the abbot was often a bishop.
Even in Cornwall monastery bishops seemed to have survived after part of the
country had become settled by Saxons. But in Ireland the great increase of
monasteries led to a multiplication of bishops, each important new monastery
desiring to have a private prelate of its own. The confusion became more
confounded by the Danish invasions; numbers of bishops had no sees, and became bishops errant, and sometimes erring. There are traces of
the same abuse in Gaul. In fact the large number and the comparative
insignificance of bishops among the Celts is not a
survival of a primitive Christian practice, but a perversion of it. It was not
until the twelfth century that Gillebert, Bishop of
Limerick, and St. Malachy of Armagh, the friend of
St. Bernard of Clairvaux, began to put an end to the
chaotic condition of the Church of Ireland, and the boundaries of provinces and
dioceses were carefully defined. And it was not until that period that the pallium was worn by the metropolitans of Ireland.
ST. COLUMBAN
One of the most important and interesting features of Celtic
Christianity was the Irish apostolate on the continent of Europe. It began with
St. Columban, a contemporary of St. Augustine.
St. Columban (543-615) was born in Leinster and studied assiduously at the monastery of Bangor
in Down. He appears to have learned Greek, and even Hebrew, as well as Latin.
Longing to be a missionary, he started with twelve companions to preach the
Gospel in Gaul and made his home in Burgundy. He founded successively
monasteries at Anegray, Luxeuil,
and Fontaine. His name is especially associated with Luxeuil,
the site being that of a deserted Gallo-Roman town where he found the images of
the heathen gods still standing amid the ruins and the thickets. Here he
composed his famous and rigid monastic rule in two parts, one for the solitary
ascetics and the other for those who led the “common life”. Zealously
attracting the people to 'the medicines of penitence', he made private
confessions become more frequent, and drew up penitential rules for that
purpose. For a time he enjoyed the friendship of Theodoric II, King of
Burgundy, and nearly persuaded him to lead a virtuous life. But when the king’s
grandmother, the formidable Brunhild, pointedly asked
him to bless the king’s illegitimate children, she met with a rebuff more
peremptory than polite, and resolved to take revenge. He had previously had
trouble with the Frankish bishops on account of his observance of the Celtic
Easter. They intended to pass judgment on him at a Council held in 602. He had
written letters to Pope Gregory defending his custom, and, as he was then in
favor at the royal court, the matter was dropped. Now, however, Brunhild stirred up the bishops to find fault with his
monastic rule, and the king forced him to leave Burgundy.
ST. GALL
Among the faithful companions of St. Columban was St. Gall. Together they went to Switzerland and preached at Arbon and Bregenz. St. Gall took
especial pleasure in burning heathen temples and throwing idols into convenient
lakes, but his combined fearlessness and knowledge of the language of the
country helped him to escape the doom which he had courted. Columban determined to go to Italy; but Gall stayed in Switzerland, where he made a cell
and lived in retirement. Over that cell there was built in the eighth century a
prodigious monastery and church of Saint Gall, a church replaced in the
eighteenth century by the gorgeous rococo building designed by Peter Thumb.
Columban, with
the remainder of his flock, descended the Alps and found rest for his feet, and
soon also for his soul, at Bobbio, in a valley of the
Apennines. Here are still preserved the dust of his bones, his knife, and other
relics. Bobbio continued for some time to be
frequently visited by Celtic pilgrims, and in modern times is always associated
in the minds of students with the famous Missal of Bobbio,
a priceless liturgical treasure of Gallican character
with traces of Irish influence. A signal indication of the spirit of the early
inmates of Bobbio is to be found in the fact that
they not only, like other Irish monks, claimed exemption from Episcopal
control, but were the first to obtain from the Pope a license for such
exemption. The monastery was placed directly under the Pope, a privilege of
grave omen for the future history of the Church.
FIRST PERSECUTION OF THE CATHOLICS BY ENGLISH IN ENGLAND’S HISTORY
It is in Northumbria that we best observe the
activity of Celtic and of Anglo-Roman missions side by side. Early in the
seventh century Edwin, King of Northumbria, was the
most powerful man in the country since the departure of the Romans. The King of
the West Saxons hated him and sent men with a poisoned dagger to kill him. The
dagger passed through the body of a faithful attendant and Edwin’s life was
saved. It was an Easter Eve at the royal palace near Aldby,
and that night Edwin’s Kentish wife safely bore her first child, a daughter.
Deeply moved, Edwin promised Paulinus, the bishop who
had accompanied the queen to her new home, that he would become a Christian if
he conquered the West Saxons. He conquered and returned.
He no longer worshipped idols, but he hesitated to receive baptism. Pope
Boniface V wrote to him, but still he hesitated. Then he called a council and
asked each magnate in turn what he thought of the new religion. First a heathen
priest, Coifi, gave a cynical reply. Then a layman
began to speak of the mystery of human life and added the famous simile, “The
king and his captains are sitting at supper on a dark winter’s day; rain or
snow are without, a bright fire is in their midst. Suddenly a little bird flies
in, a sparrow, in at one door and then out at another. It passes out of the
winter into the winter and vanishes from your sight. So is the life of man. As
to what follows it or what went before it we know absolutely nothing. If the new religion will tell us anything of these mysteries, the
before and the after, it is the religion that is wanted”. Then Coifi begged that Paulinus might
be heard. And Paulinus, who had known how to wait,
then had his opportunity, and he spoke with such effect that Coifi was the first to destroy the shrines at which he had
led the worship of his heathen tribesmen. Edwin and many of his people were
baptized, and York became a cathedral city.
The new converts were soon exposed to a cruel test. Mercia, the middle
kingdom in England, was under King Penda, a champion
of the old gods. Hemmed in by Christian states, he resolved to break the powers
that were closing round him, and went forth to war. He defeated and killed
Edwin at the battle of Hatfield in 633, and Christianity was reduced to such
straits that Paulinus returned to Kent.
Man’s necessity proved to be God’s opportunity, and the desertion of his
flock by Paulinus made the way plainer for a mission
which accomplished more than had been done by the Roman missions in the south
of England. St. Oswald came to the throne of Northumbria in 634. Like Alfred at a later time, he presents to us almost an ideal of royal
sanctity. Seeking to restore the fallen Church, he applied not to Rome or to
Kent, but to the monastery of Iona, the isle of saints. The learning of the
Irish-Scottish monks of Iona was united with fervent missionary zeal, and that
zeal was seen at its best in the bishop who came to the island of Lindisfarne near to Oswald’s royal castle of Bamborough.
ST. AIDAN
St. Aidan (d. 651) and some of his companions seem to have possessed
exactly those qualities which were undeveloped in the character of St. Augustine.
They were very simple, homely, and gentle, as well as rigorous in their
self-denial. The result was a personal influence over others which was deep and
lasting. Their external methods also differed from the methods of the Roman
missionaries. The Celtic monks were recluses from whom kings sought direction
in spiritual matters: the Roman monks moved in royal courts. The former built
small rude churches or worshipped in caves near the sound of the sea. The latter built stately basilicas that recalled the splendor of
the Italian churches in Rome and Milan. Both were truly men of God; but
the typical Celtic monk was a man of feeling, and the typical Roman monk was a
man of affairs. The good qualities of both were needed for the permanent life
and perfection of the Church. But the Celts were unrivalled as pioneers. The
people whom they made Christian remained Christian, and wherever they went they
planted convents of men and women which became fresh centers of missionary
work.
St. CUTHBERT
St. Cuthbert (d. 687), who absorbed these diverse influences, is one of
the first of thoroughly English saints. Probably a Northumbrian, he was born in
the Lothians, and was a shepherd when in 651 he
believed he saw a vision of the soul of Aidan. He entered the monastery at Old
Melrose, of which the first abbot was Eata, one of
the twelve Northumbrian boys instructed by St. Aidan. Cuthbert had loved
wrestling and running and boyish pranks; and a story, which has been rather
refined than refuted, tells us that when he was eight years of age a child of
three rebuked him for standing on his head naked. He also suffered from a
swelling on his knee, a malady well known to athletes, but was cured by a hot
poultice of flour and milk.
After leading a life of great piety at Melrose, he accompanied Eata to the monastery at Ripon. When King Alchfrith, who built the monastery, adopted the Roman
Easter, Cuthbert went back to Melrose, and preached the Gospel with great
success to the ignorant country folk in the neighborhood. After the Synod of Whitby, in 664, he himself decided to abandon the Celtic
Easter, and Eata, then Abbot of Lindisfarne,
appointed him prior of the house.
Resolving to lead a more strictly ascetic life, Cuthbert in 676 first
retired to a lonely cave, and then built for himself a
cell on the island now known as House Island. He passed nine years in this
cell, withdrawing more and more completely from all human intercourse until he
only opened the window to give his blessing or accept some necessary food. More
against his will than otherwise, he was persuaded to become Bishop of Lindisfarne, being consecrated at York by Archbishop
Theodore and seven bishops in 685. Two years later he died in his cell, hardly
sixty years of age, and worn out by his austerities and an internal tumor which
was an evil legacy of the plague which attacked him at Melrose. He was neither
a great reformer nor a man of great intellectual gifts, but his sincerity,
gentleness, and humility won for him a veneration little, if at all, inferior
to that which has been paid to martyrs and doctors of the Church. In 999 his
relics were placed in Durham Cathedral, where they were found, together with
the head of St. Oswald, in 1827.
THE CELTIC CHISTIANITY
No exhaustive account can here be given of the causes which led to the
decline of Celtic Christianity. But among those causes are two which can be
easily understood. The first is the adoption of the Latin language by the
Celtic missionaries. This was a step which certainly was in the direction of a
higher civilization, and assisted the formation of the schools of learning for
which Ireland became famous. But it brought the Celtic Churches within the
orbit of Roman ideas. In the east of Europe Cyril and Methodius, the apostles
of the Slays, provided their converts with the Bible and the liturgy in
Slavonic. And the Arian Goths, in the fourth century, were provided by Ulfila with the Bible in Gothic. The result in each case
was a degree of vitality and power of resistance which could not have otherwise
been attained. If St. Patrick and St. Columba had provided their people with a
Gaelic Bible and a Gaelic missal the struggle with Rome would have been
indefinitely prolonged. But the diffusion of Latin among the Celts inevitably
meant a closer communion with the heart of Latin Christendom.
A second cause of the Celtic decline can be found in the character of
the Celtic monastic rules. Those rules found their fullest expression in the
scheme of St. Columban. They were terrible in their
severity. Obedience “even unto death” was required of his monks. The penal code
was minute, the least negligence, the least sin of omission or commission, was
to be punished with strokes of the rod. But there were no proper regulations
for the administration of the monastery or for the employment of time in daily
life. Now very near the time when St. Columban was
born there died the great monk St. Benedict, who had profited by observing the
mistakes of others, and had drawn up a rule which was both less impetuous and
more precise than the rule of the great Celtic saint. St. Benedict knew that
too harsh a system defeats itself, and knew that for “idle hands” work is
always found by the powers of evil. He therefore resolutely determined to be
gentle, and carefully prescribed what was to be done hour by hour. The
Benedictine rule was not known in France until after the death of St. Columban, but when it was known it quickly won its way, and
before the ninth century was victorious because it was intrinsically better.
Here as elsewhere the Celtic genius, so potent in attracting and stimulating
the individual, was less able than the Latin to organize and govern a
community. It taught men to confess their sins to a priest who was anmchara, friend
of the soul, it urged them to endure in journeying often, in order to spread
the Gospel, but it did not inspire them with a sense of the religious value of
unity and cohesion.
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