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READING HALLCAMBRIDGE MEDIEVAL HISTORY |
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THE
CHAPTER XVI
(A)
CONVERSION OF THE CELTS
BY the British Church is meant the Christian Church
which existed in England and Wales, before the foundation of the English Church
by Augustine of Canterbury, and after that event to a limited extent in
Cornwall, Wales, Cumbria, and Strathclyde.
How, when, where, and by whom was it founded? To these
questions no answer is forthcoming. The legends connecting various Apostles, and
other scriptural personages, especially Joseph of Arimathaea,
with Britain may be dismissed at once. They first appear in very late writings, and have no historical foundations.
We next come to a story which has obtained some
considerable credence because it is found in the pages of Bede. It is to the
effect that in the year A.D. 156 a British king named Lucius (Lles ap Coel) appealed to Pope
Eleutherius to be instructed in the Christian religion, that the application
was granted, and that the king and nation were then converted to Christianity.
The story first appears in a sixth century recension of the Liber Pontificalis at Rome, whence Bede must have borrowed
it. It was unknown to the British historian Gildas,
and it has no other support. Bede's version of it involves chronological
errors, and Professor Harnack has recently driven the
last nail into its coffin by his brilliant suggestion or discovery that Lucius
was not a British king at all, but king of Birtha (confused with Britannia) in Edessa, a Mesopotamian realm whose sovereign was
Lucius Aelius Septimus Megas Abgarus IX.
But there is indirect and outside evidence that Christianity
had penetrated Britain at the end of the second century. The evidence is
patristic in its source, and general in its character. Tertullian writing c.
208 speaks of places in Britain inaccessible to the Romans, yet subject to
Christ; and Origen writing about thirty years later refers in two passages to
the British people having come under the influence of Christianity. But how did
they so come? In the absence of precise information, the most probable
supposition is that Christianity came through Gaul, between which country and
Britain commercial intercourse was active. There may also have been individual
Christians among the Roman soldiers who were then stationed in Britain. In fact the almost universally Latin, or at least non-Keltic
names of such British martyrs, bishops, etc., as have been preserved point to a
preponderating Roman rather than Keltic element in the British Church; though
against this it must also be remembered that, as in the cases of Patricius and Pelagius, the names known to us may be
assumed Christian names superseding some earlier Keltic names, of which in most
cases no record has come down. Possibly the British Church consisted at first
of converts to Christianity among the Roman invaders, and of such natives as
came into immediate contact with them, and the native element only gradually
gained ground when the Roman troops were withdrawn.
The known facts are too few for a continuous British
Church history to be built upon them. The only early British historian, Gildas, c. 540, is the author of a diatribe rather than a
history. Nennius writing in the ninth century is
uncritical, and too far removed from the events which he records to be relied
upon. Geoffrey of Monmouth writing in the twelfth century is notoriously
untrustworthy and hardly deserves the name of historian; and all extant Lives
of British saints are later than the Norman Conquest and historically almost
valueless.
Yet from these and other sources the following persons
and facts emerge as historical, with probability if not certainty.
(a) Among martyrs: Alban of Verulamium, martyred,
as Gildas asserts, or according to another MS. reading,
conjectures, in the persecution of Diocletian. But as this persecution is not
known to have reached Britain, it is more probable that the persecution in
question was that of Decius in 250-251, or that of Valerian in 259-260. Bede
tells the story at greater length, and says that the martyrdom took place at
Verulamium, now St Albans. Both Gildas and Bede
evidently quote from some early but now lost Passio S. Albani. The details may be unhistorical, as is
frequently the case in such Passiones, but it would
be unreasonable to doubt the main story, because we have the fifth century
evidence of the Gallican presbyter Constantius who writing
a life of St Germanus describes a visit of Germanus and Lupus to his sepulchre at St Albans; and the sixth century evidence of a line in the poetry of the Gaulish Venantius Fortunatus.
(b) Aaron and Julius of Caerleon-upon-Usk. These two martyrs are likewise mentioned by Gildas, and though there is no early corroborative evidence
as in the case of St Alban they may be regarded as historical personages.
Bede's mention, and all later mentions of them, rested upon the original
statement of Gildas, who does not say that they were
martyred at Caerleon-upon-Usk, though this is not
unlikely.
British Bishops and British Saints
In the Martyrology of Bede, and in many later
Martyrologies and Kalendars, 17 Sept. is marked In Britanniis [natale] Socratis et Stephani, and in Baronius'
edition of the Roman Martyrology, in 1645, this has grown to Sanctorum Martyrum Socratic et Stephani. So 7 Feb. is marked in Augusta London] natale Augusti or Auguli episcopi et martyris. There is no
early authority for the existence of these saints, and nothing is known of
their history.
(c) Among bishops: the existence of the following
bishops is known to us:
Three British bishops are recorded to have been present
at the Council of Arles in 314. They were
1. Eborius, episcopus de civitate Eboracensi provincia Britannica.
2. Restitutus, episcopus de civitate Londinensi provincia supra-scripta.
3. Adelfius, episcopus de civitate Colonia Londinensium.
These British sees were fixed in Roman cities, York,
London, and Lincoln, if we may suppose that “Londinensium”
is a mistake for “Lindumensium”. Some however would
read “Legionensium” and interpret the word of
Caerleon-upon-Usk; but this suggestion is negatived
by the fact that Caerleon never was a Roman colony.
“Eborius” has a suspicious
look as the name of a bishop de civitate Eboracensi, but similarity need not here suggest
forgery. It is a Latinized form of a common Keltic name. There was a bishop Eburius in Ireland in St Bridget’s time. They were attended
by a priest named Sacerdos, and a deacon named Arminius. Sacerdos has been
thought to be a suspicious name for a presbyter, but though we have been unable
to find any other instance, it may be pointed out that Priest may be found as a
proper name in the clergy list of today.
There is no evidence for the suggestion sometimes made
that. British bishops were present at the Council of Nicaea in 325. The only
difficulty in proving a direct negative is the incomplete and unsatisfactory
state of the list of signatories.
Athanasius tells us that British bishops were among
the more than three hundred bishops who voted in his favour at the Council of Sardica in 345. But he does not
mention the names of any of these bishops, or of their sees.
There were British bishops among the four hundred or
more who met at the Council of Ariminum in 359. We
know this on the authority of Sulpicius Severus, who
unfortunately mentions neither the names nor the numbers of these bishops nor
of their sees, yet adds that “there were three bishops
from Britain who, because they lacked private means, made use of the public
bounty, refusing contributions offered to them by the rest”. The public bounty
refers to the provision for their entertainment (annonas et cellaria) which the emperor had ordered to be offered at the public expense.
(d) Another British bishop whose name has come
down to us is Riocatus who made two journeys from
Britain to Gaul to see Faustus, a Breton and bishop of Ries (died c. 492), and carried certain works of Faustus
back to Britain.
(e) There is extant a book addressed by a British
bishop named Fastidius to a widow named Fatalis in the first half of the fifth century. He is
mentioned by Gennadius, but his see is not named, de Viris illustr. cap. 57. His book
De Vita Christiana is printed in Migne, Pat. Lat.
102, 4.
The only other bishops known to us by name before A.D.
600 are the famous Welsh bishops.
(f) There are in existence lists of early British,
Welsh, Manx, and Cornish bishops, for the majority of whom no certain evidence
can be produced. Some of them, such as St David, first bishop of Menevia; St Dubritius, first
bishop of Llandaff, and his immediate successors Teilo and Oudoceus; Kentigern and Asaph, the first two
bishops of St Asaph; Daniel, first bishop of Bangor, together with a few less known names on the lists, are historical personages,
but these belong to the sixth and seventh century Welsh Church and stand partly
outside the period covered by this article.
It must not be forgotten that Patrick and Ninian, bishop of Candida Casa (Whithern),
were Britons, but their history belongs rather to Ireland and Scotland than to
England. The following facts may be also worth recording as events of the sixth
century.
Two bishops of the Britons came from Alba to sanctify
St Bridget. Fifty bishops of the Britons of Cell Muine visited St Moedoc of Ferns. These figures indicate
that the British episcopate, like that of other parts of the Keltic Church, was
monastic and numerous, rather than diocesan and limited in number.
The Keltic saints of Britain like those of Ireland
were great travellers. Gildas asserts this. Palladius in his Historia Lausiaca speaks of British pilgrims in Syria, and Theodoret writing c. 440 speaks of their arrival in the
Holy Land. These early independent outside testimonies make it possible to
believe many otherwise incredible stories in later Vitae Sanctorum, e.g. that David, Teilo, and Padarn went to Jerusalem where David received episcopal
consecration, and that the Cornish St Keby (Cuby) made a pilgrimage to the same city. References to
British travellers in Rome and Italy cease to excite
wonder after this. It does not of course follow that the Jerusalem stories are
true, only that they are within the bounds of possibility. The legends are
late, and they were probably invented to give independence and prestige to the
Keltic episcopate, as compared with the later episcopate of the English Church.
Orthodoxy of the Britons
There is no serious doubt about the orthodoxy of the
British Church. Gildas accuses its clergy of
immorality, and of venality, not of heresy. On the other hand testimony to its orthodoxy is plentiful. Athanasius stated that the British
Churches had signified by letter to him their adhesion to the Nicene faith.
Chrysostom said that “even the British Isles have felt the power of the word,
for there too churches and altars have been erected. There too, as on the
shores of the Euxine or in the South, men may be heard discussing points in
Scripture, with differing voices but not with differing belief, with varying
tongues but not with varying faith”. Jerome asserted that “Britain in common
with Rome, Gaul, Africa, Persia, the East, and India, adores one Christ,
observes one rule of faith”. Venantius Fortunatus speaks of Britain cherishing the faith, and
Wilfrid himself, though openly hostile to the British Church, asserted before a
Council held in Rome in 680 that the true Catholic faith prevailed throughout
the British, Irish, and Pictish as well as the
English race, thus claiming for the whole Keltic Church in these islands what
Columbanus claimed for his own Irish Church, when he told Pope Boniface that it
was not schismatical or heretical, but that it held
the whole Catholic faith.
Victricius, bishop of Rouen, came to Britain c. 396 at the
request of the bishops of North Italy. Nothing is known of the purpose of his
journey, except that in his own language it had to do with the making of peace,
it has been conjectured, in connection with the attempted introduction of
Arianism, or of some other form of false doctrine. In 429 Germanus,
bishop of Auxerre, and Lupus, bishop of Troyes, were sent by a Gallican synod
according to Constantius, but by Pope Celestine
according to Prosper, to Britain to stem Pelagianism, and in 447 the same Germanus, and Severus, bishop of Treves, came to Britain
for the same purpose. Pelagianism would naturally establish a footing in
Britain because Pelagius himself was most probably a Briton by birth, a member
of one of those Gaelic families who had crossed from Ireland and settled
themselves on the south-western coast of Great Britain. His companion Caelestius, no doubt, was an Irishman, but Faustus of Riez and Fastidius, both
semi-Pelagian authors, were the first a Breton, the second British, and the
same may be surmised of a certain Agricola, the son of a Pelagian bishop named Severianus, who taught and spread Pelagianism in Britain,
as Prosper tells us sub an. 429. Their names have more a Roman than a Keltic sound,
but that point cannot be pressed, because Britons frequently assumed a Roman or
a Romanized name. But thanks mainly to the Gallican bishops previously referred
to all efforts to Plagiaries the British Church were unsuccessful. The last
recorded communication between the British Church and Western Christianity took
place in 455, in which year, according to an entry in the Annales Cambriae, the British Church changed its ancient mode of
calculating Easter, and adopted the cycle of 84 years
then in use at Rome. This was shortly afterwards exchanged at Rome for the
Victorian cycle of 532 years, and that again was changed there in the next
century for the Dionysian cycle of 19 years; but neither the Victorian nor the
Dionysian cycle was ever adopted in the British Church, which still retained an
older Roman cycle.
The archaeological evidence which is forthcoming as to
the character and even as to the existence of Christianity in Britain in Roman
times is extremely limited; nor is this to be wondered at when we consider the
wave of destruction which swept over Britain through the Saxon invasions.
In only one case has a whole church so far survived
that we can trace the outline of the building, and measure its dimensions. This church was recently discovered at Silchester (Calleva Atrebatum). It bears a close resemblance to fourth century
churches discovered in Italy, Syria, and Africa. Traces of the foundations of a
Roman basilica have likewise been found underneath the churches at Reculver and Lyminge in Kent, and
at Brixworth in Northamptonshire; but whether those
basilicas were used for secular or ecclesiastical purposes is uncertain. The
only claim of the above-named churches, and of a few other churches, such as St
Martin’s at Canterbury, to be regarded as Romano-British, lies in the fact that
they have a few stones or bricks of Romano-British date used up a second time
in their construction.
Apart from churches the Chi-Rho monogram has been
found in the mosaics, pavements, or building stones of three villas at Frampton
in Dorsetshire, Chedworth in Gloucestershire, and Harpole in Northamptonshire; on a silver cup at
Corbridge-on-Tyne; on two silver rings from a villa at Fifehead Neville in Dorsetshire; on some bronze fragments at York; on some masses of
pewter found in the Thames, on one of which it is associated with A and w and
with the words spes in deo; on the bezel of a bronze
ring found at Silchester, though the nature of the
ornament in this case has been doubted. There was also found at Silchester a fragment of white glass with a fish and a palm
roughly scratched upon it.
There are no distinctively Christian inscriptions of a very early date, but there are several which suggest a
Christian origin by the use of the phrase plus minus with reference to the
length of a person’s life, a phrase often found on early Christian inscriptions
abroad; and there are some pagan altar inscriptions which point to a pagan
restoration and a revival after some other influence—possibly the Christian
influence—had allowed such altars to fall into neglect or decay.
Archaeological evidence is therefore in itself
distinctly weak; and yet it may be considered sufficiently strong to support
facts which are known to us on other and independent grounds; while further evidence of this kind may be discovered hereafter.
(2)
IRELAND
No exact answer can be given to the question, When was Christianity first introduced into Ireland?
The popular idea is that it was introduced into
Ireland for the first time by St Patrick. This is negatived by the following
facts—St Patrick's mission work in Ireland commenced in 432. It is quite true
that Patrick as a youth, aged 15-21, had spent six years in captivity in
Ireland under a heathen master named Miliucc,
405-411, but it is impossible that at that age and under those conditions he
can have done any evangelistic work. Indeed he himself
nowhere claims to have done any. In the year before the date of St Patrick’s
missionary advent to Ireland, that is to say in 431,
we find the following distinct statement made in the Chronicle of Prosper of
Aquitaine, “Ad Scotos in Christum credentes ordinatur a Papa Celestino Palladius,
et primus episcopus mittitur”.
This statement must be accepted as historical. There
may be some difficulty in interpreting it, but there is no ground whatever for
doubting it. Prosper has sometimes been accused of bias; but bias is one thing,
deliberate invention or forgery is another. Nor is there the slightest ground
for suggesting that Prosper may have been misinformed. Though not himself a
native of Great Britain or Ireland, Prosper belonged
to the neighbouring country of Gaul, which he
permanently left when he went to Rome in 440, and became secretary to Leo I as
bishop of Rome. Prosper was alive in 463, but the exact date of his death is
unknown.
If Prosper’s statement that
there were Christians in Ireland before the arrival there of Palladius were unsupported we should feel bound to accept
it; and we are much more bound to accept it if we find it corroborated by a
series of incidents or facts which, if not conclusive singly, have a combined
weight in substantiating it.
Before enumerating these facts reference must be made to a passage written by Prosper about six years later.
In his Liber contra Collatorem, written when
Sixtus III was Pope, i.e. between 432 and 440, and
speaking in praise of that Pope’s predecessor Celestine, he says, et ordinato Scottis episcopo dum Romanam insulam studet servare catholicam fecit etiam barbaram Christianam.
There is no allusion here to the early death of Palladius—the episcopus referred
to—nor to the failure of his mission; obviously, writing a panegyric on
Celestine, it was not to Prosper’s purpose to refer
to them: nor on the other hand is there any reference to the mission of St
Patrick; though, as Professor Bury has pointed out, if Celestine had sent
Patrick, and still more if he had consecrated him, Prosper would almost
certainly have referred to the fact, as enhancing the achievements and the
reputation of that Pope. The passage is obviously rhetorical and need not be
pressed as superseding or cancelling any part of his statement about the
mission of Palladius previously quoted.
Its truth is supported by the following statements and
allusions, which may be legendary, because the earliest form in which they have
come down to us is several centuries later than the events to which they refer,
but which may still be true. It is hardly possible to say more of them than
this, that if they are true they imply the existence
of a pre-Patrician church in Ireland.
Tirechan records that when St Patrick ordained a certain Ailbe as presbyter he showed him or told him of a wonderful
stone altar in the mountain of the children of Ailill,
to which the Tripartite Life, calling Ailbe an archpresbyter, adds that this altar was in a cave, and that
there were four glass chalices standing at the four angles of it.
In the Additions to Tirechan’s Collections it is recorded that Bishop Colman at Cluain Cain in Achud (Clonkeen)
presented his own church to St Patrick for ever.
The Lives of the Irish Saints represent some of them, e.g. Ailbeus Ibar,
Declan, Ciaran, etc., as older, or as partly older, partly contemporaneous with
St Patrick. But these Lives are too late in their present form to be accepted
as historical, and are only or chiefly valuable for Irish words, and for
incidental allusions surviving in them.
The general policy of Loigaire,
High King of Ireland, 428-463, who without apparently becoming himself a convert
to Christianity was not hostile to its promulgation by St Patrick, and the
curious policy of the Druids concerning the advent of Patrick, betraying in its
language some acquaintance with the ritual of the Christian Church, have been
noted as indicating the previous existence of Christianity in Ireland.
Pelagius, who must have been born c. 370 though the
exact date of his birth is unascertained, is known on the authority of St
Jerome, and on other grounds, to have been an Irishman, and as such the presumption
is in favour of his having been born in Ireland, and
of Christian parents; but too much stress must not be laid upon this fact, or supposed fact. Though accepted as a fact by
Professor Zimmer, it has been rejected by Professor Bury, who thinks that the
evidence points to Pelagius having been born in western Britain. His
contemporary and chief disciple, Caelestius, was
likewise an Irishman, and probably born in Ireland.
An Irish Christian named Fith,
better known under his Latin or Latinized name of Iserninus,
was with St Patrick at Auxerre, was ordained there, and also went, though somewhat against his will, when St Patrick went, as a missionary
to Ireland.
All these facts go to substantiate the statement of
Prosper that there were “Scoti in Christum credentes” in Ireland in 431, before the great mission of
St Patrick was commenced. But how did they get there? How did Christianity in
Ireland originate? To these and suchlike questions no certain answer is
forthcoming. Although Ireland was never conquered by the Romans, and therefore
never became an integral portion of the Roman Empire, as England and the larger
part of Great Britain did, yet there are traces of Roman influence in Ireland
at a very early date.
Times before St Patrick
Large and not infrequent discoveries of Roman coins in
Ireland, ranging from the first to the fifth century, prove that there must
have been considerable intercourse during that time between Ireland and Great
Britain and the Continent; and some knowledge, possibly some seeds, of
Christianity may have been sown by Roman sailors, or merchants, or commercial
travelers.
In the third century an Irish tribe, named the Dessi, were driven out of their home in Meath and migrated partly south into Co. Waterford, and partly across the sea to
South Wales, where they were permitted to form a settlement, and there are
indications that they penetrated into Somerset, Devon,
and Cornwall. The Dessi at this time were of course
not Christians, but they paved the way, or they formed a highway, by which a
century or so later British Christianity may have reached, and probably did
reach, Ireland. Irish raids into England and Wales in the
course of the fourth century may have brought Christian captives back
into Ireland, as one of such raids in the early part of the fifth century
brought the captive youth Patrick.
Inhabitants of the south-west of England, whether
Brythonic occupiers or Goidelic settlers, establishing and pursuing intercourse
with Ireland would naturally land at Muerdea at the
mouth of the Vartry near Wicklow,
or at some other port on the south-east coast of Ireland, which is the nearest
coast of Ireland to that of England; and Christian settlers from Britain would
thus influence first of all the south rather than the
north of Ireland.
There is an ingenious argument of a philological
character which we owe to the keen insight of Professor Zimmer, and which has
been explained by him at length in his Celtic Church in Britain and Ireland. We
can hardly reproduce all the linguistic details here, but a convenient and
concise summary of Zimmer's argument has been printed by Professor Bury. It is
to this effect. A number of ecclesiastical loan-words
assume forms in Irish, which they could not have assumed if they had been
borrowed straight from the Latin, and which can only be explained by
intermediate Brythonic forms. The presence of these forms in Ireland can,
again, be best explained on the supposition that Christianity was introduced
into Ireland in the fourth century by Irish-speaking Britons; and the further
conjecture arises that the transformation of Brythonic Latin loan-words into
Irish equivalents was made in the Irish settlements in western, and especially
south-western, Britain, which are thereby indicated as the channel through
which the Christian religion was transmitted originally into Ireland.
There is no authority for the legend that the British Ninian laboured in Ireland about
the commencement of the fifth century, other than an Irish life existing in the
time of Archbishop Ussher, but now lost. Ussher unfortunately does not give its
date, or supposed date, but he quotes from it several facts which, if not
impossible, do not seem to be at all credible. Yet the story of Ninian’s connection with Ireland gained some footing there,
for his name under the affectionate form of Moenenn or Moinenn or Monenn—"my Nynias or Ninian”— is found
at 16 Sept. in the Martyrologies of Tallaght, Gorman, Oengus and Donegal.
Though, then, there is sufficient evidence to prove
the existence of some Christianity in Ireland before A.D. 432, yet the majority of the population of Ireland at that date was
pagan, and the conversion of Ireland to Christianity was mainly though not
entirely the work of St Patrick: he is not, therefore, to be robbed of his
title of Apostle of the Irish.
Arrival of St Patrick [432
Pre-Patrician Christianity in Ireland was scanty,
sporadic, and apparently unorganized. Exactly when and by whom it was
introduced we know not and it is unlikely that we ever
shall know. The Roman mission of Palladius in 431 was
a failure either through his missionary incapacity, or more probably through
his early death, though his death is not recorded; or less probably through his
withdrawal from Ireland, according to Scottish legends, to preach the Gospel
among the Picts in Scotland, or as is more probable the Pictish population in Dalaradia in the northern part of
Ulster, amongst whom he was working, and died before he had spent a whole year
in Ireland. Then on learning of the death or departure of Palladius,
St Patrick went to Ireland as his successor.
A complete biography of St Patrick cannot be attempted
here, but a compressed account of his mission work in Ireland is necessary. It
was in the year 432 that Patrick, then in his forty-third year, was consecrated
bishop by Germanus, bishop of Auxerre, and started
from Gaul for Ireland, fired by a love for that country in which many years
before he had spent six years as a captive slave (405-411).
His wise policy was to approach the kings of the petty
kingdoms which went to make up Ireland in the fifth century, and among them Loigaire, son of Niall, who in the year of Patrick's
arrival in Ireland ranked as High King, with certain rights over all other
kings. Tribal loyalty was strong, and if the petty king or chieftain was won
over (or even if like king Loigaire he sanctioned the
mission without being converted himself), the conversion of his tribe was much
facilitated, if not certain to follow.
Landing near Wicklow,
Patrick coasted northwards, stopping at the little island afterwards called Inis-patrick, eventually passing up the narrow sea-passage
into lake Strangford in that southern part of Dalaradia which is now Co. Down. On the southern shore of
this lake he landed, and Dichu the proprietor of that
part became his first convert, and granted him, after his return from an
ineffectual attempt to convert his old master Miliucc,
a site for a Christian establishment at Saul; and in its vicinity Bright, Rathcolpa, Downpatrick also have a legendary connection
with him. Then in Co. Meath, Trim and Dunshaughlin, both not far from the royal hill of Tara, Uisnech, and Donaghpatrick where
Conall, brother of king Loigaire, was converted, are
all places associated with the activities of Patrick. Thence he advanced into
Ulster, destroying the idol Crom Cruaich in the plain of Slecht, founding churches at Aghanagh, Shancough, Tannach, and Caisselire-all in
Co. Sligo. Then turning south he founded the church of Aghagower on the confines of Mayo and Galway, not far
from the hill Crochan-Aigli (Croagh Patrick), on the
summit of which he was believed to have spent forty days and nights in solitude
and contemplation.
Traces survive of a second journey into Connaught full
of interesting incidents, and of a third journey (to be dated thirteen years
after Patrick’s arrival in Ireland), into the territory of king Amolngaid including the wood of Fochlad,
where, according to the most probable interpretation of documents, he had
wandered in the days of his early captivity. Here a church was built and a cross set up, in a spot which still bears the
local name of Crosspatrick.
The year 444 saw the foundation of Armagh (Ardd Mache) on a small tract of ground assigned to Patrick
by Daire, king of Oriel or of one of the tribes of
Oriel, at the foot of the hill of Macha, subsequently exchanged for a site on
the hill-top.
Traces of Patrick’s work in south Ireland are less
distinct, but tradition points to his having been there, and he is said to have
baptized the sons of Dunlang king of Leinster, those
of Natfraich king of Munster, and Crimthann son and successor of Endoe a sub-king, whose
residence and territory were on the banks of the river Slaney in Co. Wexford.
But Christianity had an earlier footing in the south than in the north of
Ireland. Patrick’s mission work was therefore less needed there, and his glory
clusters rather round northern Armagh than round any place in the south of
Ireland.
In 461 Patrick died and was buried at Saul near the
mouth of the river Slaney in Co. Down, where he had first landed at the
commencement of his missionary enterprise in Ireland.
Subject to the necessary limitations of one man’s life
and powers, and to the exceptions already described, Patrick was both the
converter of Ireland to the Christian religion, and the founder and organizer
of the Church in that island. Not that he extinguished heathenism. An ever increasing halo of glory surrounded his memory in later
times, until it came to be believed that he converted the whole of Ireland. We
are told in a late Life of a saint that “the whole of Hibernia was through him
filled with the faith and with the baptism of Christ”. But such a sudden and
complete conversion of a whole country is unlikely, unnatural, and practically
impossible; and there are proofs that paganism survived in Ireland long after
St Patrick's time, though the successive steps of its disappearance, and the
date of its final extinction cannot be traced or stated with certainty.
Survivals of Heathenism
Very little light is thrown on this point by the Irish Annals.
They are a continuous and somewhat barren record of storms, eclipses,
pestilences, battles, murders, famines, and so forth. But there are occasional
allusions to charms of a Druidical or heathen nature, which imply either that
heathenism was not extinct or that heathen practices continued to exist under
the veil of Christianity.
In A.D. 560 at the famous battle of Culdreimne (Cooledrevny) we are
told in the Annals of Ulster that, “Fraechan, son of Temnan, it was that made the Druids' erbe for Diarmait. Tuatan, son
of Diman ... it was that threw overhead the Druids' erbe”.
The exact meaning of erbe is
not known, but it was evidently some kind of Druidical charm.
For example, in the form of baptismal exorcism used in
Ireland in the seventh and ninth centuries we find the clause expelle diabolum et gentilitatem, but the last two words have disappeared
from the same form as used in Continental and English service-books of the
tenth century—in countries where the extinction of paganism had by that time
rendered the words obsolete.
The Canon of the Mass in the earliest extant Irish
Missal contains a petition that God would accept the offering made “in this
church which thy servant hath built to the honour of
thy glorious name; and we beseech thee, O Lord, that thou wouldest rescue him and all the people from the worship of idols, and convert them to
thee the true God and Father Almighty”.
It is true, as has been already noted, that a fresh
inroad of heathenism into Ireland took place through the Danish invasions which
began in A.D. 795, and that one of the fleets of their leader Turgesius sailed up the Shannon, which forms the northern
boundary of Tipperary; but their paganism was fierce, and it is impossible to
think of any Danish settler being sufficiently favourable to Christianity to allow the building of a Christian church at all events
within two centuries after the date of their first arrival.
(3)
SCOTLAND
When and by whom and under what circumstances was
Christianity first introduced into Scotland? It is not easy to reply to these
questions with certainty because of the unsatisfactory character of the later
authorities and the scanty character of the earlier authorities on which we have to rely.
Writing c. A.D. 208 Tertullian refers to the fact that
Christianity had already reached Britannorum inaccessa Romanis loca,—an
expression which must include the north of Scotland, and probably also some of
its numerous adjacent islands.
Origen, c. 239, speaks of the Christian Church having
extended to the boundaries of the world, yet evidently not as all-embracing,
for he refers to very many among Britons, Germans, Scythians, and others who
had not yet heard the word of the Gospel.
Scotland possesses no early historian at all resembling
Bede. The earliest formal history of Scotland is the Chronicle of John of Fordun, who died in 1385, and which takes us up to the
reign of David I, inclusive. It was afterwards re-edited and continued from
1153 to 1436 by Walter Bower or Bowmaker, abbot of Inchcolm,
a small island in the Firth of Forth, and in that form is generally known as
the Scotichronicon. After Fordun come such writers as Andrew of Wyntoun, who between
1420-24 wrote the “orygynale Chronykil of Scotland” from the Creation to 1368; Maurice Buchanan, a cleric in the
priory of Pluscarden, a cell of the abbey of
Dunfermline, who compiled the Liber Pluscardensis in
1461 at the desire of Bothuele, abbot of Dunfermline,
which was largely, and especially in the earlier books, a reproduction of the Scotichronicon; Hector Boethius (Boece),
1470-1526, who wrote a history of Scotland in seventeen books (Scotorum Historiae Libri XVII).
Later Scottish historians need not be enumerated or referred to here.
Now these writers make a definite statement that the
inhabitants of Scotland were first converted to Christianity in A.D. 203, in
the time of Pope Victor I in the seventh year of the reign of the Emperor
Severus. Fordun (lib. II. cap. 35) gives no further
details, and the only authority quoted consists of four lines of anonymous
Latin poetry which look very much as if they had been composed by himself.
Hector Boece writing later, gives further details of
the conversion of Donald I by the missionaries of Pope Victor in 203, the
seventh year of Severus.
Legends, then, and fiction apart, when was
Christianity introduced into Scotland?
In answering this question we
have to remember that Scotland as we know it, and as it exists today, was not
in existence in the earlier centuries of the Christian era. In the seventh
century the country which now makes up Scotland comprised four distinct kingdoms.
(1) The English kingdom of Bernicia, extending
from the Tyne to the Firth of Forth, with its capital at Bamborough.
(2) The British kingdom of Cumbria, or Cambria,
or Strathclyde, extending from the Firth of Clyde on the north, to the river Derwent
in Cumberland, and including the greater part both of that county and of
Westmoreland; its capital being the rock of Dumbarton on the Clyde, with the
fortress of Alclyde on its summit.
(3) The kingdom of the Picts, north of the Firth
of Forth, extending over the northern and eastern districts of that part of
Scotland, with its capital near Inverness.
(4) The Scottish kingdom of Dalriada,
corresponding very nearly to the modern county of Argyle, with the hill-fort of Dunadd as its
capital.
In addition to these four kingdoms there was a central
neutral ground corresponding to the modern counties of Stirling and Linlithgow,
with a mixed population drawn from all four of the above populations though
specially from the first three; and there was a British settlement in Galloway,
corresponding to the modern counties of Wigtown and
Kirkcudbright, known in Bede's time as the county of the Niduarian Picts. Niduari probably means persons living on the
banks or in the neighbourhood of the river Nith, which runs into the Solway Firth between the counties
of Kirkcudbright and Dumfries, though the derivation of the word is not
certain.
Conversion of Strathclyde
In discussing the introduction of Christianity into
these various parts of Scotland we may at once dismiss (1). The history of
Bernicia falls more properly under the history of England than under that of
Scotland.
(2) The conversion of Strathclyde has been generally
ascribed to St Ninian (Nynias)
who was engaged in building a stone church at Whithern (Ad Candidam Casam)
in Galloway at the close of the fourth century, in 397, if we may accept the
statement of Ailred that he heard of St Martin's
death while the church was in building, and that he dedicated it, when
finished, to that saint. But we really know nothing with certainty about St Ninian beyond the scanty account of him given by Bede, for
which see below under (3). Bede tells us that he was a Briton—de natione Britonum—and it has been
generally concluded that he was a Briton of Strathclyde. This seems a very
probable inference, though Bede does not say so. If then he was a Cumbrian and
not a Welsh or any other Briton, Strathclyde must have been already at least a
partially Christian county to have produced this eminent Christian teacher; and
the church at Candida Casa was only the first stone church built amongst an
already Christian people. But the earlier history of Strathclyde is in any case
obscure and, so far as Christianity is concerned, is quite unknown to us. Ailred tells us that Ninian’s father was a Christian king, but whether he was inventing facts, or whether he
was perpetuating a tradition, or how he obtained his information we know not.
At all events it must be remembered that Ailred was
separated from Ninian by a gap of over seven
centuries. This is not the place to discuss the traces of Ninian’s influence and work, or supposed work, in Ireland and the Isle of Man. Ninian’s time is usually given as c. 353-432, but there is
no good evidence for the year of either his birth or death.
For about a century afterwards the history of
Strathclyde is a blank till we come to St Kentigern or Mungo the great
Strathclyde saint, whose life extended from 527 to 612. The latter date is
given in the Annales Cambriae; the former date rests
on the supposition that he was eighty-five years old at his death. For the
facts of Kentigern’s life we are even worse off than we are for those of the
life of Ninian. Unfortunately there is no mention of Kentigern in Bede, and our earliest biographies of him
date from the twelfth century, namely, as stated above, an anonymous Life
written in the time of Bishop Herbert of Glasgow, who died in 1164, existing
only in one early fifteenth century MS. in the British Museum, and a Life by Joceline, a monk of the abbey of Furness in Lancashire,
written c. 1190 in the lifetime of another Joceline,
bishop of Glasgow (1174-99). If we may trust Joceline,
Kentigern having been consecrated bishop by a single bishop summoned from
Ireland for that purpose, and having fixed his see at Glasgow, practically reconverted
Strathclyde to Christianity, the vast majority of its
inhabitants having apostatised from the faith since
the days of Ninian. This reconversion included that
of the Pictish inhabitants of Galwiethia or Galloway, who had likewise apostatized. He is also credited by Joceline with missionary work in Albania or Alban, which
means the eastern districts of Scotland north of the Firth of Forth, and
dedications to Kentigern north of the Firth of Forth seem to corroborate Joceline’s statement, which however is otherwise
unsupported, and cannot be accepted as certainly established: his other
statements that Kentigern sent missionaries to the Orkneys, Norway, and Ireland
are improbable in the extreme; and it is only the general and inherent
difficulty of proving a negative which makes it impossible to refute them.
It may be of interest to add that traces of
Strathclyde Christianity coeval with Ninian survive
in the names of two, possibly three, bishops engraved on fifth century stones
at Kirkmadrine on the bay of Luce, Co. Wigtown, and in the remains of a stone chapel of St Medan,
an Irish virgin and a disciple of Ninian,
at Kirkmaiden on the same bay.
(3) The Picts. Bede tells us that Ninian converted the southern Picts, Australes Picti. It has been thought that these Picts were the Picts
of Galloway, the Galwegian or Niduarian Picts, but as Bede describes them as occupying territory within, that is, to
the south of, the Mounth, he must refer to the
southern portion of the northern Pictish kingdom,
which would correspond to the six modern counties of Kincardine, Forfar, Perth, Fife, Kinross, and Clackmannan.
(4) The Scottish kingdom of Dalriada was founded by a
colony from Dalriada in the extreme north of Ireland at the end of the fifth or
early in the sixth century: and there can be no reason to doubt that the Dalriadic Irish or Scoti, as they
were then called, were a Christian people, and brought their Christianity with
them into Scotland c. A.D 490.
(B)
THE CONVERSION OF THE TEUTONS
By the Rev. J. P. WHITNEY
(1)
THE ENGLISH
WHEN Teutonic tribes of mixed descent invaded Britain
they came as heathen unaffected by Roman Christianity against Keltic tribes
partly heathen and partly Christian; the old inhabitants had been Romanized and
Christianized in different degrees, varying coastwards and inland, in cities
and country, to the south-east and to the west: the invaders moreover covered
and at first devastated more land than they could hold, and their own
settlement was a long process, varying in length in different districts. The separation
of the Britons from the government and influence of Rome had been also slow and
reluctant. Hence for many reasons it is hard to generalize about the
Christianity with which the Teutonic invaders came into touch. Where this
Christianity was not strong or long implanted it tended towards weakness and
decay: here and there revivals of heathenism took place: here and there in the
long years of Teutonic settlement revivals of Keltic Christianity began. Hence,
as time passes on, new vigour of a Keltic and not a Romanised type is found as in Wales among the British:
elsewhere the influence of Christianity lessens, and the Britons of some parts,
so far from being able to convert the newcomers, keep their own religion more
as a custom than as a living force. In either case the result is the same: the
invaders are for long years wholly unaffected by the Christianity of the land
they are conquering.
Little need be said here of the religion the invaders
brought with them: in some points of morals they may
have been above some other races and hence the moral code of Christianity might
appeal to them, but it is idle to speculate as to elements in their religion
which possibly made them readier later on to accept Christian doctrines. Their
whole outlook, however, upon the unseen world brought it into close touch with
their lives and the fortunes of their race: their religion so far as it was
effective was a source of joy in life, and of strength in action, not of fear or
weakness. Hence, when they received Christianity, it was with the freedom of
sons, not the timidity of slaves, with a ready understanding that its
discipline was to strengthen their characters for action. English Christianity
was thus marked off from Teutonic Christianity elsewhere by moral differences,
slight and not to be overestimated: moreover, because it started afresh, free
from the political and social traditions of the Empire, and because its
conditions, in spite of much intercourse with the Continent,
were locally more uniform and more insular than elsewhere, its growth took a
somewhat peculiar turn. Christianity came to the English from the Papacy, and
not from the Empire: it came at one great epoch, and when the Conquest was well
under way, rather than by the gradual influence of daily life, as it did with
the Teutonic races elsewhere. “The wonderful vitality of imperialist traditions
... took no hold here. Escaping this, the English Church was saved from the
infection of court-life and corruption ... it escaped the position forced upon
the bishops of France as secular officers, defensors and civil magistrates”. And this original impulse as described by Stubbs kept
on its way in spite of later Frankish influence and
intercourse. But at the same time the mission brought with it a larger life and
a broader outlook: it is significant that Aethelberht of Kent, the first to accept the new faith, is also the first in the list of
kings who put forth laws. Later kings who did the same were also noted for their
interest in the Church.
The part taken by Gregory the Great, and the impulse
he gave to the mission, have been spoken of elsewhere. But it should be noted
here as a sign of the responsibility for the whole West felt by the Papal See
in face of the barbarian inroads; furthermore the
letters of commendation given to the missionaries by the Pope to bishops and
rulers amongst the Franks opened up more fully lines of connection already laid
down for the future English Church. Two of Gregory’s letters would, indeed,
suggest that the English had already expressed some wish for missionaries to be
sent to them: “it has come to us that the race of the English desires with
yearning to be turned to the faith of Christ ... but that the bishops in their neighbourhood”—and this apparently applied to the Franks,
not solely at any rate to the Welsh—“are negligent”.
And the Pope (at an uncertain date) had formed a plan for buying English youths
“to be given to God in the monasteries”. This may be taken along with the
beautiful tradition current in Northumbria of Gregory’s
pity for the English boys in the Roman slave-market. But at any rate the time
was favourable for a mission owing to the marriage of Aethelberht of Kent, the most powerful English ruler
of the time, with Berhta, daughter of Chariberht of Paris; and this Christian queen had taken
across to her new home the Frankish bishop Liudhard as her chaplain. But from other indications little seems to have been known in
the Rome of that day about the heathen invaders, and the English invasion had
cut off the British Christians from intercourse with the Continent.
Augustine’s Mission [596-597
The mission left Rome early in 596: during the journey its members wished to return from the perils in
front of them, but, encouraged by Gregory’s fatherly firmness and knit together
by his giving their leader Augustine the authority of an abbot over them, they
went on and landed, most probably at Richborough,
597. Aethelberht received them kindly,
and gave them an interview—in the open air for fear of magic. Augustine—taller
than his comrades—led the procession of 40 men (possibly including Frankish
interpreters), chanting a Litany as they went, carrying a silver cross and a
wooden picture of the crucifixion; Aethelberht heard
them with sympathy, and yet with an open mind. He gave them a home in
Canterbury in the later parish of St Alphege: here
they could worship in St Martin's church, and they were also allowed to preach
freely to the king’s subjects. By Whitsuntide the king
himself was so far won over as to be baptised— n
Whitsunday or its eve, probably at St Martin’s church (1 or 2 June 597). The
king used no force to lead his subjects after him, but he naturally favoured those who followed him, and soon many were won by
the faithful lives of the missionaries, shown so easily by the common life of a
brotherhood. Throughout the story of the Conversion it
is indeed to the lives rather than to the preaching of the missionaries that
Bede assigns their success, and the tolerance of the English kings in Kent and
elsewhere gave them a ready opening. If here and there the missionaries met
persecution, it never rose to martyrdom.
According to the Pope’s directions, Augustine ought
now to be consecrated, and for this purpose he went to Arles, where Vergilius (the usually accurate Bede mistakes the name)
consecrated him (16 Nov. 597).
Soon after his return to Kent the new bishop sent off
to the Pope by the hands of his presbyter Laurentius and the monk Peter news of
his success, along with a number of questions as to
the difficulties he foresaw. We find Boniface in his day doing the same, and we
may see in it a common and indeed natural custom rather than a sign of
weakness.
597-601] Augustine’s Questions and Gregory’s Answers
The questions and the answers to them only concern us
here so far as they show the special difficulties of the mission and the
character of St Augustine. Their importance for the character of the Pope has
been shown elsewhere. But their authenticity has been doubted: some of them are
not what might have been expected, e.g. those on
liturgic selection, and on recognizing marriages contracted in heathenism but
against Church law. The preface printed in the Epistles but omitted by Bede is
more doubtful than the reply itself; and seems intended to explain the
chronology of Bede. But the documentary history of the reply and its absence
from the registry in Rome—where Boniface in 736 failed to have it found—have
also caused suspicion. Yet, considering the ways in which the Epistles as a whole have reached us, this is not in itself sufficient
to cause rejection. The arguments that Gregory’s answers are not what we should
expect, and that the questions concern points all raised afterwards, really cut
both ways. The correction (by a later letter sent after the messengers) of a
first command (in a letter to Aethelberht) for the
destruction of heathen temples would hardly have occurred to a forger, and it
therefore carries weight. But the dates and the long interval between the questions
(597) and the reply (601) are a little difficult. To heighten the success of
Augustine, and to make the mission appear instantaneously successful would come
natural to later writers. The later tradition which makes Aethelberht as a second Constantine give up his palace to Augustine as another Sylvester is
one indication of such a tendency. If the baptism really took place in 598 the
difficulties are less.
The first question relates to the division of the offerings
of the faithful between the bishop and his clergy: to this the answer was that
the Roman custom was a fourfold division between the bishop, the clergy, the
poor and the repair of the churches. But, since Augustine and his companions
were monks, they would live in common, so that they would share the offerings
in common also. As to the clergy in minor orders they should receive their
stipends separately, might live apart and might take wives: but they were bound
to obey church rule.
The purely monastic type of mission thus brought
incidentally with it a difference between the systems of division first of
offerings, then of systematized tithes, in England, where a fourfold division
found no place, and on the Continent, if indeed we can generalise as to the custom observed abroad. Later ecclesiastical regulations and orders
attempted to bring the Frankish system into England, but the English division
remained different from the continental.
The second question was why one custom of saying mass
should be observed in the Roman Church, and another in the Church of Gaul. The
Pope replied that things were not to be loved for the sake of places, but
places for the sake of good things: hence what was good in any local custom
might be brought into the Church of the English—advice which has been sometimes
held to sanction a liturgic freedom not likely to commend itself to the
somewhat correct mind of Augustine, and certainly not used by him. Questions as
to punishment for thefts from churches and as to the degrees for marriage were
perhaps needful in a rough society, and one case mentioned—that of a marriage
of a man with his step-mother — presented itself in the case of Aethelberht’s successor Eadbald,
who took to himself his father's second wife. But as the background to some of
these questions there is clearly something of the same social condition which
produced the Penitentials of later dates, although it
is going too far to ascribe the whole to a later day and to Archbishop Theodore
as writer.
The sixth and seventh questions dealt with the
Episcopate: when asked whether one bishop might consecrate by himself in cases
of need, Gregory replied that Augustine, as the only bishop of the Church of
England, could do nothing but consecrate alone unless bishops from Gaul chanced
to be present. Provision for new sees should, however, be made so that this
difficulty should disappear, and then three or four bishops should be present.
The seventh question asked how Augustine was to deal with the bishops of Gaul and
Britain. Here it may be noted that when elsewhere he spoke of bishops in the neighbourhood of the English Gregory seems to have meant
the bishops in Gaul: the British bishops he seems to have ignored. But here he
commits them (Brittanniarum omnes episcopos) to the care of Augustine (who is, of
course, to exercise no authority in Gaul, although he is to be on terms of
fellowship with the bishops there), so that “the unlearned may be taught, the
weak made stronger by persuasion, and the perverse corrected by authority”.
These answers were brought to Augustine by a band of
new missionaries, Mellitus, Justus, Paulinus and others, who carried with them
sacred vessels, vestments and books, as well as a pall
for Augustine. He was to consecrate twelve bishops to be under his jurisdiction
as bishop of London. For the city of York a bishop was
also to be consecrated, who was, as the districts beyond York gradually
received the word of God, also to consecrate twelve bishops under himself as
metropolitan. During Augustine's lifetime the Bishop of York was to be subject
to him, but afterwards the northern metropolitan was to be independent, and the
metropolitan first ordained of the two ruling together was to have precedence.
All these bishops were to act together in councils and so on. To Augustine,
likewise, Gregory committed all the priests of Britain.
To Mellitus, after he had started, the Pope also sent
a later letter (22 June), in which he gave directions about the use of heathen
temples; the buildings themselves were not to be destroyed, as he had said
before to Aethelberht, but the idols were to be
broken and the places purified, altars were to be built, and then the temples
were to become churches. Thus the people would keep
their old holy places; and rejoicings, like those on the old heathen festivals,
were to be allowed them on days of dedication or the nativities of holy
martyrs. The church of St Martin at Canterbury had already been given to the
mission: on another site, that of an old church once used by Roman Christians,
Augustine had built Christ Church, which was to become the mother church of
England and the centre of a great monastery: another
ruined building—which had been used as a temple—was purified and dedicated as
St Pancras, a Roman martyr: outside the city walls the king built a church, St
Peter and St Paul, also to be the centre of a
monastery, afterwards known, when Laurentius had consecrated it, as St
Augustine's, of which Peter was the first abbot. Here the kings and the
archbishops were to be buried, and between this monastery and Christ Church a
long-lived jealousy arose, which had sometimes great effects upon
ecclesiastical politics. In this way Augustine made Canterbury a great Christian centre. If the progress outside Kent was for a long
time slow, the tenacity of the Christian hold upon Canterbury itself is also to
be noted.
The growth of the mission in new fields and its
relations with the British are henceforth the main threads of the history. A
meeting with the British bishops and teachers was brought about at Augustine’s
oak on “the borders of the West Saxons and Hwicce”
(either Aust on the Severn, or, less probably, a place near Malmesbury)—a
local definition which changed between the days of Augustine and those of Bede.
The bishops must have been those of South Wales, and those of Devon and North
Wales may have been with them, but the Britons of the West country were now
separated from those of Wales by the advance of the West Saxons after Dyrham (577). Augustine urged these bishops to keep
catholic unity and join in preaching the Gospel to the English. This task they
had not attempted of their own accord: they were still less likely to do it
under the new leadership.
There were points of difference between the Roman and
British Christians, breaches of uniformity due to a long separation, rather
than to original differences, but tending towards difference of spirit, at the
very time, moreover, when unity of feeling and of action was most necessary:
standing as their observance of Easter showed outside the general trend of
European custom, the British held an attitude towards Rome which had marked an
earlier day. But these differences, almost accidental to begin with, were exaggerated
into matters of Christian liberty on the one side, into matters of heresy upon
the other. The difference in the date of Easter had been caused by the
separation of Britain from the Empire; the British had kept the old cycle of
eighty-four years used generally in the West before the English conquest: since
the separation Rome —followed gradually by the West—had twice changed to a
better cycle, and the last change, moreover, had brought the West into accord
with the East. Furthermore Romans and Britons started
from a different vernal equinox: 21 March and 25 March respectively; the
Britons also kept Easter on the fourteenth of Nisan if that were a Sunday: but
the Romans in that case kept it on the Sunday following. There were thus ample
differences which would lead to practical discord: but there was no excuse for
the charge of Quartodecimanism against the British,
for they did not keep the fourteenth of Nisan if it fell on a week-day. There were other differences also; in the tonsure
where the Britons (and the Kelts generally) merely
shaved the front of the head, whereas the Romans shaved the crown in a circle,
and in baptism where the precise difference is unknown. No decision was
reached: even the demonstration by Augustine of his gift of miracles—an account
of which had reached Rome and caused the Pope to write to him advising humility
and self-examination in face of success—was not decisive. The British
representatives went back to consult their fellows, and a second meeting—probably
in the same place—followed. It is here that Bede places the British story of
the way in which upon the advice of a hermit the British discovered the pride
of Augustine. But if there was on his side some pride in the older civilization
cherished in the Western capital, there was on the other side the obstinacy of
a race long left to itself, and over-jealous of its independence.
At the second conference Augustine — ready to overlook
some particulars of British use which were contrary to Western customs laid down
three conditions of union: the same date for Easter; the observance of Roman
custom in baptism; and fellowship in missions to the English. But to these
conditions the British would not agree, nor would they receive him as their
archbishop. It is perhaps well to observe that the difference on these three
conditions would have interfered with the attraction of converts. In the eyes
of Augustine the mission would appear to have ranked
above questions of precedence: the British had not yet overcome their national
repugnance to the English, and they saw, what became plainer in later years,
that the leadership of the Roman missionaries would of necessity result from
fellowship in work. The growth of bitterness between the races was quickened by
the failure of these negotiations.
604-617] Controversies
A step forward in organisation was taken when (604) Augustine consecrated Justus to be bishop of Durobrivae, or Rochester in West Kent, and Mellitus to be
bishop of London for the East Saxons—whose king Saeberht had become a Christian and was now subject to Kent. Shortly afterwards
Augustine died (605), and was followed in his see by Laurentius, who had been
already consecrated in his leader's lifetime.
The character of the founder of the line of papae alterius orbis has been often sketched in very
different colours, and sometimes perhaps with
outlines too firm for the material we have at hand. It was long before the
enmity between the Britons and English died down, and until it did so the two
sides distorted his words and deeds: Britons exaggerated his haughtiness and
pride: English exaggerated his firmness in correcting an upstart race. The
ordinary view bears marks of both these exaggerations. Disputes between English
independence and Papal rule have had a like effect, and incidents in his career
have been twisted overmuch to suit a given framework. Our earlier records may
not have drawn him exactly as he was: modern writers
have certainly taken even greater liberty. He did not rise to the dignity of a
Boniface or a Columbanus, but the limits both upwards and downwards of his
personality are shown us by what he did. Unsympathetic
yet patient, constructive and systematic he had the genius of his race, he had
learnt and could teach the discipline which had trained him, and his
personality has been overshadowed by his work.
The rule of Laurentius is known principally for an
unsuccessful attempt to reconcile the Irish. An Irish (Scots) bishop Dagan
coming among the English would not even eat in the same house with Laurentius
and his followers: accordingly Laurentius wrote to “his
dearest brothers, the bishops and abbots through all Scotia”, pressing unity
upon them. But nothing came either of this attempt, or from a like letter to
the British, although they may have led to the Canterbury tradition of
Laurentius' friendly relations with the British.
Even before the death of Aethelberht—after
a long reign of 56 years (616)—the power of Kent had been waning. Raedwald of East Anglia, once a vassal of Kent, who had
been baptized at Canterbury, had renounced his allegiance and had tried to combine in some strange way the worship of Christ and of the
old gods. In 617 this Raedwald was strong enough to
beat even the victorious Aethelfrith king of Northumbria, who had himself beaten the Dalriadic Scots in the North and the Britons at Chester (616). This latter victory had
separated the Britons of Wales from their northern kinsmen, just as the victory
of Dyrham (577) had separated them from the south.
The warfare between Raedwald and Aethelfrith had important consequences, both for religion and politics. Edwin, son of Aelle of Deira, was in exile, as his kingdom had been
seized on his father's death (588) by Aethelric of
Bernicia. Aethelric’s son, Aethelfrith,
a great warrior against the British, now ruled over both Northern kingdoms,
and, to make his dynasty sure, sought the death of his brother-in-law, Edwin,
who as babe and youth found shelter first in Wales and then with Raedwald of East Anglia. The East Anglian king refused to
give up the fugitive, and in the war which followed he
seized Lindsey and then defeated the Bernicians on
the ford of the Idle in North Mercia. Aethelfrith was
slain, and Edwin gained not only his father's kingdom but also Bernicia.
Aethelberht in Kent had been succeeded by his son Eadbald, who took to himself his father's second wife, thus
separating himself from the Christians. In Essex, too, the Christian Saeberht was succeeded by his two sons Saexred and Saeward, who being pagans at heart in the end
drove Mellitus away from London. Laurentius was now left alone, for Mellitus
and Justus fled to the Franks, and even he was preparing for flight, when a
dream delayed him. But before long Eadbald professed
Christianity. Justus returned to Rochester, and, in the end, the deaths of
Laurentius (619) and his successor Mellitus (624) placed him on the throne of
Canterbury (624-627). Mellitus however was not readmitted to London: Kent alone
kept its Christianity, but soon the conversion of Northumbria,
when Honorius (627-653) was archbishop, brought about a great change.
On Raedwald’s death his
supremacy passed gradually into the hands of Edwin of Northumbria.
625-627] Edwin
This prince married as his second wife Aethelburga (or Tata), daughter of Aethelberht of Kent, and sister to Eadbald, who was now a
Christian. On his marriage he promised his wife liberty for her religion, and
even hinted that he might consider the faith for himself. Paulinus, one of the
second band of Roman missionaries, went with her to the North, and before he
left Canterbury was consecrated bishop by Justus (21 July 625). A year after
the marriage Cuichelm king of Wessex sent one Eomer to Edwin to assassinate him, but the devotion of a
thegn Lilla, whose name was long remembered, saved Edwin's life; that same
night the queen bore him a daughter, Eanfled, the
first Northumbrian to be baptized. In double gratitude the king vowed to become
a Christian if he defeated his West Saxon foe. When later on he returned home victorious he therefore submitted himself to instruction by
Paulinus, and slowly pondered over the new faith. A mysterious vision, which he
had seen long before at the East Anglian court, when a stranger promised him
safety and future power, giving him a secret sign for remembrance, was now
recalled to him by Paulinus along with the secret sign which the messenger in
the vision had given him. Edwin was convinced for himself and called his Witan
together in eastern Deira to debate with Paulinus over the new faith. Hitherto
there had been no sign of life or strength in the English heathenism, and now Coifi, the chief of the king’s priests, showed its weakness
by his speech: he is the first of his class we meet with, for too much stress
must not be laid on Bede's mention (II chap. 6) of the “idolatrous high priests”
(idolatris pontificibus)
who hardened the hearts of the Londoners against receiving back Mellitus. Bede
gives us an account of the debate, probably from some old tradition, embodying
truth but not to be pressed in detail: Coifi gave his
view that the religion they professed had absolutely no virtue, and no
usefulness: he had been its diligent servant, and had
gained no reward. A chieftain spoke next of more spiritual things: the future
life of man seemed dark and mysterious as the night outside might seem to a
bird flying through the fire-lit space where they sat: perchance this new faith
could penetrate the darkness. Coifi thereupon took
the lead in profaning and destroying a neighbouring temple at Goodmanham, by Market Weighton.
Afterwards Edwin (12 April 627, Easter day) was baptized at York in the little
wooden church he had built during his preparation for baptism. But after his
baptism he built there—in the middle of the old Roman city, where Severus and Chlorus had died, and whence Constantine had started on his
great career—a nobler church of stone, a material which marked the beginnings
of a new civilization. This, however, was still left unfinished when he died,
but its site is now covered by the present crypt.
Paulinus [627-647
For six years Paulinus preached and taught both in
Bernicia and Deira, though he left most mark in the latter: from Catterick
southwards as far as Campodunum (possibly Slack, near
Huddersfield) he journeyed and sojourned, catechizing and baptizing, and a
church afterwards destroyed here by the pagan Mercians marked his work at the
latter place. In Lindsey also—the north of Lincolnshire, a district at that
time tributary to Northumbria—he taught, and at
Lincoln he built a stone church of beautiful workmanship, in which on the death
of Justus of Canterbury (10 Nov., probably 627) he consecrated as successor
Honorius. In these labours Paulinus was helped by
others, especially by James his deacon, who was not only a man of zeal, but
very skilful in song. When in later days Paulinus
fled southwards, James stayed behind, and around his home near Catterick he
taught many to sing in “the Roman or the Canterbury way”.This knowledge of music in Yorkshire, which long
afterwards caught the notice of Giraldus Cambrensis, was kept alive and furthered by Eddius under Wilfrid and by John (formerly arch-chanter at
St Peter's in Rome) under Benedict Biscop. Outside Northumbria, too, the influence of Paulinus worked change.
In East Anglia Eorpwald, son of Raedwald (627), was now king, and, by the persuasion of Edwin, was brought, with his
territory, to Christianity.
Before long Eorpwald was,
however, assassinated by a pagan, and for three years the kingdom fell into
idolatry until the accession of his brother Sigebert (630 or 631), who in a time of exile among the Franks had been baptized and
more fully taught religion. In the conversion of his kingdom he was greatly helped by Felix, a Burgundian, who had come to Honorius for missionary
work in England, and had been sent by him to Sigebert,
and placed in Dunwich as bishop for his kingdom
(631-647): here there was not only a church built, but a school “after the
manner of Kent”, in which youths were taught. From quite another part came a
fellow-labourer: Fursey from Ireland, the founder of a monastery at Cnobheresburg,
often but doubtfully taken to be Burgh Castle near Great Yarmouth, renowned not
only for his saintliness but for his mystic experiences and visions; he
wandered, as so many of his race did, from a wish to lead the pilgrim life, and
like Aidan (with whom Bede instinctively joins him) he was torn in two by the
love of mankind, driving him to active work, and by the love of solitude,
driving him to the hermit’s life.
When his East Anglian monastery was well founded, he
handed it over to his brother, Fullan (Faelan), who was
a bishop, and the priests Gobban and Dicul. Later, when Penda of Mercia was restoring
heathenism, he passed to the land of the Franks and there under Clovis II
(638-656) he founded the monastery of Lagny on the
Marne. When he was on the point of leaving this new home for a visit to his
brethren he died (c. 647). His life is significant not only of Keltic
restlessness and devotion, but also of the many influences now working on
missions: in East Anglia as in the larger field beyond impulses from Rome, Burgundy,
Gaul, and Ireland all worked together : national and
racial antagonisms were overcome by the solvent of Christianity. A new unity
was growing up in the West as formerly in the East. What happened in East
Anglia, and has been recorded, almost by accident, must have also happened
elsewhere.
The energy of Paulinus, backed by the power of Edwin,
had wrought so much that the Pope (now Honorius I) carried out the plan of
Gregory the Great by sending to Paulinus a pall with the title of archbishop.
But the bearers of the gift reached England only to find that Paulinus had fled
from the North. Edwin’s rule had been effective beyond anything known so far among
the English: peace for travelers was enforced, and the king’s dignity was shown
in a growing pomp: banners were borne before him not only in war but during
peace, and the tufa carried before him on his progresses seemed a claim to a
power that was either very old or very new. Suddenly
this prosperous rule was interrupted by a league between Penda of Mercia, who
had gradually grown in power since his accession (626), and Cadwallon of North Wales. In the woodlands of Heathfield, near Doncaster, Edwin was defeated
(12 October 633) and slain. York was taken, Deira laid waste: Aethelburga fled with Paulinus, and a time of disorder and
paganism “hateful to all good men” began. In Deira Edwin's cousin Osric, in Bernicia Eanfrid, son
of Aethelfrith, ruled, and both of
them fell from the faith. Within a year Osric was slain in battle against the Welsh who seemed to have been holding the land: Eanfrid too was slain when he came to sue for peace
from Cadwallon. Eanfrid's brother, Oswald, succeeded, able in war, glorious in peace, and on the Heavenfield, near Chollerford,
just north of Hexham, he defeated Cadwallon as he advanced against him from York and slew him on the Deniseburn (635). For a time the northern lands had peace, and
Oswald’s influence soon reached beyond his own borders. His nearest neighbour, Penda of Mercia, however, more than held his
own, and even harried Ecgric, who had succeeded Sigebert in East Anglia: but over the West Saxons Oswald
held some kind of influence, which he used to further
Christianity. Birinus, according to later tradition a
Roman, had gone to Pope Honorius offering himself for missionary service, and
after consecration by Asterius, archbishop of Milan,
he was sent to Wessex (634): he had meant to work in the inland districts, but in
the end stayed near the coast, and so became the apostle of Wessex: the king Cynegils became a Christian; Birinus was consecrated as bishop of Dorchester on Thames (Dorcic),
but we know little in detail of his work beyond its results.
When Ecgric was attacked by
Penda, Sigebert, recalled from a monastery to lead
his former subjects, went to battle armed only with a wand: both he and Ecgric were slain, and Anna, nephew of Raedwald,
succeeded. This new king’s house was noted for its monastic zeal, and in the
number of its saints rivalled the line of Penda. His step-daughter Saethryd and his daughter Aethelburga crossed over to the Franks to the monastery of Brie (Faremoutier-en-Brie): here in a double monastery for both sexes like
Whitby (Streoneshalh), favoured by the same dynasty afterwards—both became abbesses. Hither also Erconberht of Kent—the first English king to follow
Frankish rulers in destroying idols—sent a daughter. An impulse was thus given
by the foreign connection to the growth of monasticism in England: by the
middle of the century there were about a dozen houses founded, and through Aethelthryth (Aethelreda, Audrey)
the foundress of Ely, and others, the East Anglian line was foremost in the
movement.
Paulinus, traces of whose work long remained, had fled
southwards in 633 and there he became, through one of the translations so common
in that day, the bishop of Rochester. After his departure the Christianity of Northumbria passed into another
phase. In his long exile Oswald had been sheltered among the Scots,
and had come to know something of the enthusiasm and learning which made
them the best teachers of the day. He had been baptized at Iona, and thither he
now sent for a bishop. One was sent, whose name the fine reticence of Bede concealed
for a Scots writer some centuries later to supply, but he despaired of the task
and went home again. Then Aidan (Aedan), the gentle and devoted, was
consecrated bishop and sent (635). After the Scots custom he took his seat on
an island, Lindisfarne, or Holy Island, near to the Bernician capital Bamborough. Here there grew up a monastery on
the Keltic plan like that of Iona: ruled, however, by Aidan himself, as abbot
and bishop, it was also a new and effective missionary centre for Bernicia. Through it Irish (or Scots) influence reached north-eastern England, and changed the land much as it had changed western
Scotland. It spread far southwards, but its original home was Iona.
Monastic Houses [633-635
Keltic monasticism, and the work of Columba around
Iona, have been described in previous chapters of this work. The eremitic
tendency of Keltic monasticism never disappeared, and just as the original
monasteries in Ireland itself were mission stations for the tribes among which
they were placed, so Iona (originally Hii or Ioua, from which by a mistaken reading Iona has arisen)
became a mission station not only for the Dalriadic Scots but for the Picts. Irish monasteries, however, underwent some changes
outside Ireland: the love of wandering, the restlessness which Columba
"the soldier of the island" showed by his inability to be idle even
for an hour, drove the monks to travel (pro Christo peregrinari):
on the Continent they aimed at living as strangers: but at Iona Columba and his
successors strove to learn the Pictish tongue, and
mission work seems to have been esteemed even more highly there than the life
of quiet devotion. Learning, however, was never forgotten: not only Columba but his successor Baithene (597-600)
copied manuscripts. And where Iona led Lindisfarne followed. But more than all
other characteristics the enthusiasm and simplicity of the Irish monks appealed
to their hearers and neighbours. Above all it was in
Aidan, the apostle of the north, that these spiritual gifts were seen, and on
his long preaching tours he won the hearts of all. Oswald himself often went
with him as interpreter (from which we may infer that Aidan did not gain the
same mastery of language that Columba did), and as a king Oswald answered to
Aidan's ideal: frequent in prayer, fruitful in alms, the first English king to
have, or indeed to need, an almoner.
But once again Penda of Mercia broke in: leagued with Cadwalader, successor to Cadwallon,
he defeated Oswald at Maserfield (642). Oswald's
severed head was rescued and carried off first to Lindisfarne; thence
afterwards in St Cuthbert's coffin to Durham, where it was seen in the present
generation.
In Bernicia Oswald was succeeded by his brother Oswy (Oswiu), but in Deira the
old dynastic jealousy revived, and Edwin’s kinsman Oswin was chosen king. But Oswy joined the rival houses,
for he fetched from Kent Edwin's daughter Eanfled,
and made her his queen. Soon afterwards Oswin, who
was like Oswald in his goodness and his friendship for Aidan, was betrayed to Oswy at Gilling, and slain (651). Eleven days later Aidan
himself died, but his spirit and his work lived on in the school he had made
and the disciples he had trained.
642-651] Bede
In the mere record of events, mainly wars and
revolutions, it is easy to overlook the gradual work, the change of character,
the growth of civilization, which had been slowly taking place. The missions
from the Continent had brought with them a larger outlook, a wider knowledge of
a varied world, and a vision of a vaster unity with an ancient background: the
Irish missions had brought deep devotion, spiritual intensity, and the
traditions of the great Irish schools. In the north of England these two
streams of life were joined, and a rich civilization was the outcome. Jarrow and Monkwearmouth reached
to Iona on the west and to Canterbury on the south, and both Canterbury and
Iona stood for a great past. Historic feeling had led Columba to defend the
bards for their services to history: Canterbury, by instinct and tradition as
well as by training, held to the past, and Bede, like Alcuin later, inherited
something from each. Hence come not only his love for religion and order, but
also his love of history and historic truth. It was these which helped him to
see the growing unity and drove him to record the Ecclesiastical History of the
English Nation. What he felt in himself answered to the many-sided history with
its growing life. We owe him so much for his preservation of details otherwise
unknown, for his diligent search after truth, that we are likely to forget his
sense of the unity, the common life, which was now growing up out of many
elements and from many local beginnings. Bede is the first prophet of English
unity, and the first to tell its tale.
The English were now taking their place in
civilization and Christianity. They were soon to be the great missionaries of
Europe: they were now able to care for themselves. In 644 Ithamar,
the first Englishman to be “hallowed” as bishop, took the bishop’s stool at
Rochester: in 647 and 652 Englishmen, first Thomas and then Berctgils (Boniface), became bishops of Dunwich. Honorius at
Canterbury died (30 September 653), and after a long vacancy was succeeded by a
West Saxon, Frithonas, who took the name of Deusdedit. But in spite of local
work and impulses, in spite of gradual change, there was little real unity even
of effort, there was still less of organisation. The
Roman missionaries had a wider background of civilization,
and were accustomed to larger states with wider interests. They worked
for unity, and against the persistence of little states with many narrow
policies: to secure civilization it was necessary to reach larger union. There
was already the rich variety of personal character and life: something more was
needed now. It was the perception of this lack on the part of the English
themselves, and not merely the accident of events, that led to the synod of
Whitby and the work of Theodore.
The success of the Scots mission in the north had
brought up once more the old differences between the Keltic and Roman Churches:
the same difficulty had met Augustine, and the crisis would have come earlier
had it not been for the gentle influence of Aidan. When Oswy’s bride went northwards she took with her a chaplain Romanus, who kept Easter by
the general and Roman rule, whereas the Scots had naturally brought with them
their own use. In southern Ireland the Roman Easter had been already adopted
(before 634), but the weight of Iona had been thrown strongly upon the other
side, so that northern Ireland, Iona and its
offshoots, kept to their older usage. Finan, Aidan’s
successor at Lindisfarne (651-661), had come to Lindisfarne fresh from
discussions between the two parties in the Irish monasteries: he found James
the deacon, and Ronan, a Scot of continental education and sympathies, urging
the Roman use which had now the support of a party at court. Finan was himself a controversialist but he was also more.
It was in his days that Peada, son of Penda, and
under him king of the Middle Angles (Northamptonshire),
married Oswy 's daughter, was baptized, and with his
father's tacit leave brought Christianity into his sub-kingdom, so influencing
Mercia as a whole. The band of missionaries who went to his help from Northumbria was made up of three Northumbrians, including
Chad's brother Cedd, and one Scot, Diuma. Diuma became bishop of the
Middle Angles and the Mercians after the death of Penda, which took away the
last vigorous supporter of heathenism. Under all this turmoil a new generation,
with its own point of view, its own work and
interests, was growing up. Men who differed from each other were being brought
together in peaceful work as well as in controversy. New openings were also
being made for work: there was, as Bede tells us, such a scarcity of priests
that one bishop—like Diuma—had to be set over two
peoples. Diuma was followed by another Scot Ceollach, who left his diocese to return to Iona: then came Trumhere “brought
up in the monastic life, English by nation, but ordained bishop by the Scots”.
Christianity in England was forming a type of its own, moulded by many forces, and the many-sided life, spiritual and intellectual, of Bede's
own monastery enabled him to understand this growth.
655-665] A new generation. The Yellow Pest
In Essex Sigebert II (the
Good), although still heathen, was a friend of Oswy’s and a visitor at his court: in the end he and his attendants were baptized by Finan: the place of baptism was Attewall (?Ad Murum, near Newcastle),
where Peada was also baptised,
and the times of the two baptisms may have been the same.
Cedd recalled from Mercia went as chaplain to this new
royal convert and after some success in work went home to Lindisfarne for a
visit. Here Finan “calling to himself two other
bishops for the ministry of ordination”—a sign that the English Church was now
passing into more settled life—consecrated him bishop for Essex. As bishop he
went back, ordained priests and deacons, built churches at Tilbury and elsewhere,
teaching “also the discipline of a life of rule”. But his love was divided
between the work of his diocese, and the monastic life. Aethelwald of Deira, Oswald's son, who held Deira at some time possibly after the murder
of Oswin, was deeply attached to Cedd and his three brothers, one of whom, Celin, was his chaplain. As a place of
retreat for the bishop and as a burial-place for the king, a site was chosen
"in hills steep and remote, rather hiding places for robbers and homes of
wild beasts than habitations for men," and here grew up the famous house
of Lastingham, where Cedd and after him Chad were abbots. Keltic influence was thus strong. But at the
same time we have many signs of a growing unity. Thus we find Oswy of Northumbria and Ecgbert of Kent
joining, on the death of Deusdedit of Canterbury
(655-664), to choose a successor Wighard, a priest at
Canterbury, and send him to Rome for consecration by Vitalian.
When part of Essex lapsed into idolatry, Wulfhere of
Mercia, who stood over the East Saxon sub-kings Sebbi the Christian and Sighere the heathen, sent his own
bishop Iaruman of Mercia to reconvert it (665). Local
barriers are thus everywhere overstepped.
The Yellow Pest with all its horrors had caused
widespread terror and thrown everything out of gear. The roll of its victims
was long. Erconberht king of Kent as well as the
archbishop Deusdedit, Tuda bishop at Lindisfarne, the saintly Cedd at Lastingham (where Chad succeeded him): at Melrose the prior Boisil, where
also his successor the devoted Cuthbert the missionary of the north all but
died. In Essex to the south, and northwards by the Tweed, men turned again to
witchcraft and heathen charms. In its mortality and its effects upon society
it was somewhat like the later Black Death. Hence the religious and social
reconstruction which follows it is all the more significant.
Wilfrid [663-681
The South Saxons were the last tribe to be brought to
Christianity. Wilfrid, whose character was moulded by
many forces to be typical of the new age, was chosen, probably through the
influence of Alchfrid, Oswy's son, to succeed Tuda. There were few bishops left,
and some of those were of Scots consecration. Wilfrid, the eager supporter of
continental customs, went to Frankish bishops for consecration. This he
received at Compiegne, under ceremonies of unusual pomp, and among the prelates
who shared in it was Agilbert (Albert) of Wessex.
This bishop, coming originally from the Franks, had worked in Wessex under Coenwalch, until the king grew weary of his “barbarous”
speech, and invited Wini (also of apparently Frankish
ordination) to take the see. Then Agilbert went (663)
to Northumbria for a time, after which he went home. Wini’s story was unhappy: not many years afterwards he too
was driven out of his see, whereupon he “bought” from Wulfhere “for a price” the see of London, and there remained. In all this moral disorder
thrown by Bede upon a strange background of miracle and portent can be seen
some result of the Pest.
Wilfrid tarried too long among the Franks, for when he
reached Northumbria he found Chad placed in his seat.
He then retired to his old monastery of Ripon. But in his voyage homewards
(spring 666) he had been thrown upon the Sussex coast, and narrowly escaped
capture by the barbarians: a wizard standing upon a mound sought to help the
wreckers with his charms: he was slain “like Goliath” by a sling, and thus only
after a fight did Wilfrid and his company escape. But later on he was to return to Sussex. Meanwhile from Ripon he acted at times as bishop
both in Mercia, where along with Wulfhere he founded
monasteries such as Oundle, and also in Kent during
the vacancy at Canterbury, where as his biographer Eddius tells us he studied the Benedictine rule. Thus he
gained something for his native north, and to the south he in turn gave gifts
of music, and of crafts, through the singers and the masons who travelled in
his train. Even before he worked in Sussex Wilfrid a Northerner was in himself
a bond of union between North and South. After 681, when Aethelwalch of Sussex had already become a Christian through the persuasion of Wulfhere, and as we may suppose also of his own queen,
Ebba, who came from the Christian district of the Hwicce,
Wilfrid began effective work in the almost untouched Sussex. A Scot Dicul had already founded a small monastery at Bosham (Bosanham), but the monks probably lived as foreigners apart
from the people and at any rate had small success. Wilfrid's foundation of Selsey was to have a wider influence. This work of peace is
a relief to the ecclesiastical quarrels of Wilfrid's later years. His work in
Sussex completed the conversion of the English.
664-673] The Synod of Whitby
With the Synod of Whitby (664) under Finan’s successor Colman and with the coming of Archbishop
Theodore (669-690) a new period begins. The wanderings of bishops from see to see, the mingling of missionary effort with more
strictly local work, had been even more marked in England than on the
Continent. This was not merely a result of Scots or Irish influence; indeed the type of Keltic bishop, non-territorial and with
little power, which we know the best, was probably less an original institution
than the work of time. There is reason to think that territorial bishops were
found in Ireland to begin with, and that the later type was due to the same
social and ecclesiastical causes which later produced like results in Wales,
making the Church preeminently monastic, and raising the power of abbots.
There were not wanting signs that in the early English Church something the
same might have taken place had it not been for the Synod of Whitby and
Theodore. After them the work of a bishop becomes more
fixed, and its area is limited. But the relative importance of the Synod and of
Theodore's rule is sometimes wrongly presented. The Synod with its removal of
the obstacle to unity — the difference in Easter — was a striking witness to
the need of union and the desire for it. It is not, however, until Theodore
comes that the type of bishop is changed: with that the danger from monasticism
which threatened England as it later on affected
Keltic lands was greatly lessened. What might otherwise have been we can see
from the words of Bede in his letter to Ecgbert; from
the pretended monasteries, really secular in life and
under the control of nobles, great danger threatened and even arose. The Synod
of Hertford (673) indeed confirmed those monastic immunities which were now
growing up (Canon 3). But its reorganization of episcopal power prevented this
danger being what it would otherwise have been, and the other canons of
Hertford enforced a vigorous discipline. In its lasting impression upon the
English Church the primacy of Theodore is unique: it summed up the varied past:
it was the birthday of a more vigorous and ordered life.
It has become common to weigh the shares of Roman and
Keltic missions in the great work thus summed up. The tendency has been to
ascribe too much to the charming characters of the northern saints, and to
overlook the quiet persistence of the Roman builders. But in striving after a
balanced judgment it is possible to place the two
parties too distinctly against each other. The generation which came just
before the Synod of Whitby probably made less of the difference than we
ourselves do: community of field and community of life
was forming a community of type; the English missionaries who later on converted
the Teutonic tribes based their work not only upon their own burning zeal but
upon the life of monasteries and the care of bishops. These two things were the
characteristics of English religious life in the seventh century, and they no
less than the new-born religious zeal were due to a
long history in which Kelt and Roman bore their part
and under which they had grown together.
(2)
GERMANY
The conversion of the Franks to Christianity, and that
too in its orthodox form, has been already dealt with. According to the most
probable view of evidence, not quite consistent, and not easy to weigh, Clovis
was baptized on Christmas day 496, probably at Rheims. He had however been
friendly to Christianity even before his conquest of Syagrius (486), and became naturally more so afterwards. After
his conversion, followed by that of many Franks, he was able as an orthodox
king to reckon on the help or at least the sympathy of Catholic bishops
everywhere: the wars that spread his power took somewhat the character of
crusades and for three centuries this remained true of Frankish campaigns
against the heathens. Broadly speaking, with the power of the Frankish kings
went the power of the Church, although the fellowship between the two was
sometimes closer, sometimes looser. As the Frankish powers spread into
districts less thoroughly Romanized new sees had to be founded, and even in the
more settled lands this happened also. But a distinction must be made between
the new missionary bishops and the type of bishops already found in the
Romanized cities. Up to the settlement under Boniface (Winfrid, Bonifatius) or even later we have a time in which
both types appear side by side. As a rule the city
bishop owed his appointment to the State: the missionary bishop to the Church.
It is not a question of differences between Roman and Keltic clergy, but merely
between lands in which Roman traditions survived, and those where missions
started quite afresh. What Theodore did for England Boniface was to do for the
continental Teutons.
Local differences were many and strong: in Austrasia
heathenism was more general to begin with and lived on longer. The Frankish
conquests drove together heathens and Christians, and in some places heathenism gained strength: on the whole, the leading
families and the towns were more thoroughly Christianized than the country,
which remained mainly heathen. In some places—like Mainz, Cologne, and Tongres—Christian communities, sometimes chiefly oriental
or foreign, may have lived on since Roman times and sometimes bishops were left: in others—like Trier—Christianity was just becoming
general when the Frankish conquest brought in new conditions. Everything depended
upon the centres already gained for Christianity, and
across the Rhine these were few and tended to become fewer. Nearer Italy there
were centres to which Christianity had come from the
south, such as Augsburg, which until about the year 600 was
connected with Aquileia. But where such centres of life were few or Christianity had only begun its growth the Teutonic
invaders could be but little affected by it.
The Keltic missions came to give these new centres, and by a monastic framework to guard their power.
There are some indications—in the letters of Boniface and elsewhere—that
Keltic priests, some of whom caused him trouble, were more widely spread than
we might suppose. And as Keltic monasteries became stages in systematic
pilgrimages to Rome a steady stream of Christianity was brought to bear upon
the Teutons. The Keltic missionaries were for the most part led to travel by
the wish to live amid new surroundings: they lived among their new neighbours as strangers, but the evils around them forced
them to become missionaries, and, although Keltic monasticism was ascetic and
rigorous, Keltic monks never feared to plunge into the world and to play a part
there when it seemed good. Frankish Christianity, with its comparative neglect
of penance, seemed to the great missionary Columbanus merely superficial: he
stood outside the ordinary Frankish Church: his altar at Luxeuil was consecrated by an Irish bishop, and he had no episcopal licence for his foundations. Hence the Keltic monasteries besides being centres of learning strengthened the tendency already shown
to exempt monasteries from episcopal control. The difference about Easter did
not of necessity lead to lasting strife, and the monastic foundations of
Columbanus, his comrades and followers, kept alive upon the Continent the Irish
love of learning. As regards the papal power Keltic tradition and habits
belonged to an earlier day when the papal control had been less effective; this
tradition Columbanus kept and showed in his defence of the Keltic Easter. But it is a mistake to take these differences as implying
either hostility to the Papacy or a claim to full independence.
The Keltic monks travelled for the most part in bands
of twelve, but there were other single teachers such as Rupert (Rodbert) a Frank who towards the end of the seventh century
came to Regensburg, the ducal court of Bavaria, and thence passed into the wild Salzkammergut with its Roman memories and remains;
here a monastery, a nunnery, and a church were planted. A like work was also
wrought at Regensburg by Emmeran, although his first
hope had been to preach to the Avars. These isolated endeavours gave new centres of
Christian civilization, but in later years few traces of them were left. Work
on a larger and more considered plan was needed. But the life of St Severinus
(died 482) in Noricum (Bavaria) shows how far the influence of a hermit could
reach and how great it could be.
Frisia [613-647
Frisia, with its unknown coasts and wild heathenism, soon
began to attract missionaries. The growth of Christianity here had been due to
the Franks and varied with the state of their church: simony and careless
appointments of bishops had been somewhat checked: the influence of Columbanus
had reached far, not only in the south but even northwards to the Marne: a new
and differently trained generation had grown up, and when the union of the
kingdoms under Chlotar II (613) gave the land rest,
the church thus strengthened broke fresh ground among its neighbours to east and north. Chlotar II had encouraged Amandus, a hermit of Roman descent from Aquitaine, who felt
himself called by St Peter to distant missions: pilgrimages to Rome deepened
the wish, and after Chlotar had procured his
consecration he worked as a missionary bishop from Ghent as a centre. Hitherto Frisian merchants had come to the Franks,
and Frankish rule had gained ground upon the borders, but even Maestricht and
Noyon, although bishoprics, were yet partly heathen. Quarrels with King
Dagobert, and banishment for a time (629) turned him to other fields. But both
around Ghent and at Maestricht where he was afterwards bishop (647) he was
unhappy in his work: the enforcement of baptism by royal order under Dagobert
may have been due to his suggestion, and at any rate it explains his lack of
success: spells of work on the Danube, in Carinthia, at the mouth of the
Scheldt and among the Basques varied a strange career marked by restless energy
and much wandering. After his death a little more
ground was gained under the direction of Cunibert of
Cologne, a church was built at Utrecht, and under the well-known Eligius
(bishop of Noyon, 641, and renowned as a silversmith) a better foundation was
laid. But the task was left unfinished until the following century. Frisia was affected by the changes of Frankish politics.
Christian missions were both too fitful and too disconnected. A general plan
and organisation was needed.
In England, as the letter of Daniel bishop of
Winchester to Boniface (Ep. 23) shows, the methods of missions had been
carefully thought out, since the local conditions not only aroused enthusiasm
to call forth missionaries but gave them a training ground for their work.
Englishmen were learning at this very time what careful organisation and ordered work could do. They had felt the benefit of fellowship with Rome
and its traditions while they had still the fresh energy of younger tribes and
growing states. This is the reason why in the eighth century English
missionaries take the place of the earlier Felts.
678-695] Willibrord
And the field of labour seemed already fixed for them: they had not forgotten the land from which they
had come. Wilfrid landed in Frisia (678) on his way
to Rome—in order to avoid the enmity of Ebroin, mayor of the palace—and stayed there a winter
because of the friendly welcome by Adelgis the king
(who refused to sell his guest) and his people. This was only an episode. Ecgbert, a Northumbrian who was afterwards to go to Iona,
who had lived long in Ireland and pledged himself to pilgrimage, was hindered
by visions and by storms from a long desired journey
to Frisia: in his place he sent a pupil Wicbert who only stayed two years and then went home again.
This failure only caused Ecgbert to send another
mission of twelve monks. The leader of it, Willibrord,
was a Northumbrian whose father Wilgils in old age
became a hermit at the Humber's mouth. He had been educated up to the age of
twenty at Ripon—Wilfrid’s old monastic home—and afterwards in Ireland (c. 678).
He landed and went to Utrecht, now held by Radbod the
Frisian king, who must have regained territory, for Utrecht had formerly been a
Frankish town. But Frisia beyond it was lost to the
Franks as the result of a war which was just ended and had naturally left
behind it. The defeated Radbod was little likely to favour the faith of his Frankish enemies, and Willibrord saw a chance of securer work under Frankish protection.
He therefore journeyed to Pepin, who promised him help for a work which was of
interest to both of them. Willibrord shared the enthusiasm of Wilfrid and Bonif ace for
Rome —and indeed others, the Irish Adamnan and Ecgbert for instance, were turning towards Rome and unity. Accordingly Willibrord went to
Rome to get consent for his mission, thus beginning the policy which Winfrid afterwards carried out on a larger scale.
Success soon made organisation desirable: the monks elected one Suidbert as their
future bishop and he passed across to England to be consecrated there by
Wilfrid. But after his return difficulties seem to have arisen and the new
bishop left Frisia in order to preach to the Bructeri: a little later we find Pepin,
like the earlier kings, taking the organisation into
his own hands and sending Willibrord to Rome for
consecration (22 Nov. 695) as archbishop of a province to include both Frankish
and independent Frisia. Willibrord,
who at his consecration took the name of Clement, received the pall at Rome,
and from Pepin as his seat Utrecht, where he built a cathedral and a monastery.
A native church began, and soon he felt able to devote himself to the Frisians
in Radbod's territory since Radbod himself was now friendly to the Franks, and his daughter Theutsind had married Pepin’s son Grimoald. But here Willibrord’s success was small: Radbod was indifferent although not hostile and Willibrord went on further to preach to the Danes. Their country too he left and on his
return to Frisia landed on the coast: by venturing to
baptize some converts in a holy well he awoke the anger of the heathen and they
sought to have him put to death by Radbod. The king
however spared his life, but as the hopes of any work among the free Frisians
now seemed hopeless he went back to Utrecht. After
Pepin’s death (16 Dec. 714) the quarrel between his sons enabled Radbod to regain the part of Frisia held by the Franks. The church had gained no real hold among the natives: Willibrord had left, the priests were put to flight, and
the land once more under the sway of a heathen king became heathen too. It was
now that Winfrid came.
Winfrid [714-719
Winfrid was born near Crediton (c. 680) of a noble English
family: after education first in a monastery at Exeter and then at Nutshall (Nutsall, Netley, or Nursling ?) he was
ordained, and employed in important affairs. But above the claims of learning
and the chance of a great career at home he felt the missionary's call to the
wild. From London he sailed to Frisia (716): here he
stayed for part of a year until on the outbreak of a Frankish war he went back
to his West-Saxon monastery. On the death of his old master Winbert the monks wished to make him abbot, but his future work lay plain before him
and he refused. He sought letters of commendation from Daniel, bishop of
Winchester—a man of much learning and experience to whom Bede owed much
information—and with these (718) he went abroad again. But this time passing
through Frankland he went to Rome, to visit the threshold of the Apostles. Here
he saw Gregory II, and from him he received as “Bonifatius the religious priest”—the name by which he was henceforth known—a letter of
commendation (15 May 719). The journey was a common one for an Englishman of
the day, but Boniface with his strong wish for missionary work reached Rome
when the Papacy was turning towards plans of organisation. Furthermore between him and the Pope a friendship and
even a fellowship began.
722] Boniface
Taking this new line of organisation under papal guidance Boniface went to Thuringia, where the natives, in new
seats, and pressed upon by Franks and Saxons, had partly received and then soon
lost Christianity. To win back their leaders was Boniface's new task: the land
was disordered in politics and religion alike: heathenism was found side by
side with Christianity of strange types. From Thuringia Boniface started for
the Frankish court, but on the way he heard of Radbod's death, which might make Frisia a more fruitful field. Already Willibrord, working
like Boniface himself under papal sanction, had been consecrated Archbishop of
Utrecht, and to his help Boniface now went. When after a three years’ stay Willibrord would have had him as coadjutor he pleaded the
papal command: he sought leave to depart and passed to Hesse. This was ground
more unworked than Thuringia, for the people had kept their older seats and
with them their old customs, but it might link Saxony to the Frankish Church.
So great was his success—thousands being baptized—that he could soon think of
organizing a bishopric. He sent a report to Rome and in reply was called
thither himself. On his way he probably met Charles Martel, and at Rome he was
consecrated (St Andrew's day, 722 or less probably 723). At his consecration he
took an oath much like that taken by the suburbicarian bishops, and thus
pledged himself to work as a bishop under papal direction. But by a significant
change the promise of fidelity to the Eastern Emperor was left out and its
place taken by a promise to hold no intercourse with bishops who disobeyed the
canons, to work against them and to denounce them to the Pope. The new bishop
received letters of commendation to all who could help his work in Germany and
especially to Charles Martel. Henceforth Boniface could depend even more than
before upon papal direction, help, and sympathy: we find him, like St Augustine
of Canterbury, sending difficulties to Rome for decision. As he was to build up
a church which was suffering from Keltic disorder and Frankish negligence, a
collection of canons was a natural papal gift to him.
Boniface now begins a new stage of his work, no longer
as a mere missionary pioneer but rather as a missionary statesman in the
service of Rome. For his new plans and his new office state support was needed.
Backed by a letter from Charles Martel, Boniface went to Hesse to weld together
the scattered links of his earlier work. Some twenty years later he wrote to
Daniel of Winchester: “Without the patronage of the Prince of the Franks I am
able neither to rule the people of the church nor to defend the priests or
deacons, the monks or nuns: and I am not powerful enough to hinder the very
rites of the pagans and the sacrileges of idols in Germany without his order
and the dread of him”. The boldness he showed in felling the sacred oak at
Geismar led the heathen to think their gods had lost their power, and from
these successes in Hesse Boniface passed to Thuringia. In each district he
founded schools of learning and of training for his converts: Amanaburg and Fritzlar in Hesse, Ohrdruff in Thuringia: for women, Tauberbischofsheim, Kitzingen, and Ochsenfurt,
three foundations near the Main. These were founded before his organisation of Bavaria, and his favourite house Fulda was specially planned to foster Christian civilization and to be a
monastic model. This side of Boniface's work is sometimes overlooked in
comparison with his ordering of dioceses, but the two were really
complementary: on the monastic side he entered into the heritage of the
Keltic monks to whom, when there was no question of disorder or irregularity,
he was by no means an enemy. At Fulda Sturm, a Bavarian of his own training,
ruled: there and elsewhere helpers from England, some of them bound to Boniface
by ties of blood, and all by kinship in devotion, made new homes for
themselves: Burchard, Lul, Denehard,
Willibald, Wicbert among the men: Lioba and Walpurgis among the women. With England a lively interchange of letters was
kept up: some of his English friends came out to him as they gradually lost
their kinsfolk by death, and others came because of their love for him. But in
either case they helped to strengthen associations which were of political as
well as religious power. Boniface himself was strong enough to award praise and
blame to English kings; he himself, his comrades, and his work gave England
some hold upon continental life.
On the death of Gregory II (11 Feb. 731) Gregory III
succeeded, a true successor in his care for Germany. When Boniface declared to
him that the burden of his growing work was becoming too heavy, the papal
answer was (732) to make him Archbishop, although with no defined province, so
that he could the better call fellow-labourers to his
help. In the few following years we must probably place
much of Boniface’s work in furthering his foundations, and some of his letters
of the time show him turned to reading and study of questions raised by his
pastoral work. But about 735 we find him in Bavaria where once before the duke Theodo and Gregory II had thought of a church organisation in the interests both of church and duchy. Huebert was now duke under stricter Frankish suzerainty:
little had hitherto been done and Passau was the only see. In Bavaria Boniface
now travelled and taught. But his third visit to Rome (probably 738), caused
possibly by his wish to take up once more his old plans for Frisia,
now that the field of Germany was under cultivation, brought a year's break and
rest. This time Boniface was a great figure both with the Romans and the
pilgrims, so greatly had his renown been spread.
741-742] Pope Zacharias
In Bavaria after Hucbert’s death (probably 736) Odilo was placed as duke, a
ruler of a different type, less ready to submit to Frankish direction and a
generous patron of the Church. To Bavaria Boniface went (739), and now he takes
a new position, that of legate of Rome: his appearance as legate was followed
by the meeting of a Synod and a division of the duchy into four dioceses:
Passau (where Vibilo who had been consecrated at Rome
remained), Regensburg, Salzburg, and Freising. A
little later (741) we find Boniface similarly founding another group of three
dioceses for Hesse and Thuringia: Btiraburg, near Fritzlar, for Hesse, Wtirzburg for southern and Erfurt for northern Thuringia. Zacharias who had now (3 Dec.
741) succeeded Gregory III confirmed this division, although like his
predecessor advising caution against erecting too may sees and so lowering the episcopal standard. But Boniface’s personal inspiration
found him able helpers: at Buraburg an Englishman, Witta, was placed, and at Wtirzburg another, Burchard, entered upon the heritage of the Keltic Kilian. The
protection of Charles Martel, even if not too eager, had been of great use: his
death (22 Oct. 741) brought about a change in Boniface's work: henceforth it
was to be for the whole of eastern Frankish territory.
Carloman invited Boniface to come and hold a Synod in
Austrasia: in this way discipline, which had been trampled under
foot for some sixty years, could be restored. Boniface was here faced by
conditions such as he had known in Bavaria. His work in Hesse had already
brought to him opposition from Frankish bishops.
But among the Franks church law was widely disregarded
and Boniface found it hard, as he told Daniel of Winchester, to keep the oath
he had sworn to the Pope. If he was to refrain
altogether from intercourse with offending bishops his work would be
impossible. There was no weakening of his allegiance to the Pope, but a new
element, the Frankish State, was now coming more fully into his life and his
plans. The most striking feature in Boniface's career is the way in which while
never waiting for circumstances he was quick to seize each circumstance and use
it to the utmost good. He never lost sight of any work he had ever planned and
begun: if he turned aside for some pressing need he wove that special work into
his general plan, and with each new field his outlook broadened.
The new pope Zacharias was a Greek from Calabria, a
man of mildness and yet of diplomatic skill: his tone towards Boniface was
somewhat more commanding than that used by previous popes, and the explanation
may be found in his policy towards the Franks, against whom he for a time
played off the Bavarians and Lombards. Odilo of Bavaria had probably encouraged Girfo in his revolt against Carloman and Pepin, and afterwards he began a movement for independence. A papal envoy
is said to have ordered a Frankish army to leave his land, but this did not
hinder the defeat of the Bavarian duke. The Nordgau was separated from his duchy and joined to Austrasia. Neuburg on the Danube became—possibly through some adaptation of Odilo’s plans—a new bishopric and remained so for some two generations. Eichstadt, where a monastery had already been founded, was
made the seat of another bishopric for a population of mixed descent.
Councils [742-747
The projected Council for Austrasia met in a place
unknown (21 April 742),2 and began the work of reorganisation.
Bishops were to be consecrated for cities and over them was to be set the
archbishop Boniface, legate (misses) of St Peter: councils were to meet yearly:
the moral standard of the priesthood was to be raised, and the priests were to
be subject to the bishops: bishops or priests who were not known were not to be
allowed to minister and heathen customs were to be put away. In the place given
to Boniface it is best to see a restoration of the metropolitan system, and
that this was made by royal power is significant. Not only the bishops of the
older and more settled part of the realm, Cologne and Strassburg,
but also those of Würzburg, Eichstadt, Thiraburg, and Erfurt, were invited to the Council. To
carry out the reforms laid down was the work of Boniface. In the next two years
many new bishops were appointed, and (1 March 743) a second Synod met at Estinnes, and here, by the assembly of bishops and leading
laymen, the decrees of 742 were confirmed. In 744 (2 March) a Synod for
Neustria met at Soissons, and a new organisation followed for Pepin’s realm also. The archbishoprics of Rheims, Rouen, and Sens
were to be restored, and Boniface, who had acted in close friendly if not
official touch with Pepin, asked the Pope to send three palls for them. But
before Zacharias replied (22 June 744) some change was made in the plans and Grimo of Rouen alone was to have the pall. This change and
some freedom in Boniface’s criticism of papal fees and Roman customs made the
Pope a little angry, but we find him none the less (1 May 748) commending
Boniface his “brother, archbishop, legate of the Holy See, and personal
representative” to the bishops—expressly named—of both the eastern and western
Franks. And in an earlier letter (5 Nov. 744) Zacharias even extended the right
of free preaching in the province of Bavaria which was granted by his
predecessor. And not only for Bavaria, but for the whole province of the Gauls he was to use the office of preaching laid upon
him by the Pope for reformation and edification.
The original plan was for Boniface to be Archbishop of
Cologne, and in this position wield even greater power. To this the Pope had
agreed. But when Gewilip was rightly deposed from
Mainz, Carloman and Pepin (perhaps led by enemies of
Boniface at court) appointed Boniface his successor, and so the see of Mainz
(which became an archbishopric in 780) as held by a legate and apostle gained a
new renown. Cologne which had probably been an archbishopric in the sixth
century became such again in 785, but the jealousy between the two great cities
lingered on, and echoes even in the letters of Gregory
VII.
In the spring of 747 Boniface held his last Synod: one
wish of his was satisfied when the bishops there met decreed their fidelity to
Rome. In the way of reform much had already been done: some unworthy priests
had been condemned both by the Franks and at Rome (745): this last Synod not
only regulated metropolitan rights, but also the discipline over priests. It is clear that the power of the Frankish princes over the
Church counted for much, probably for more than is often allowed. Boniface had
gained both inspiration and experience not only at Rome but in England before,
and he cannot be regarded as a mere emissary of Roman power extending it over a
church free until his day. The power of the State was but little affected by
the recognition of Rome, yet Boniface had brought about a union between the
two: he did it with fidelity towards both, but he was the slave of neither.
The anointing of Pepin, after Carloman had withdrawn to a Roman monastery, is told elsewhere: it took place, 752,
under Roman sanction and by the hand of Boniface. But there is no reason to
make Boniface the author or inspirer of the deed : he
was merely the agent.
The old man, weary with work and longing to rest in
the grave at his beloved Fulda, was preparing for death: the consecration of Lul as his coadjutor, and then, by papal leave, to be his
successor, was a sign of the coming end. When Fulda, by an act unusual in the
Frankish Church, was placed directly under the Pope, it was a sign of the great
apostle's withdrawal. He was going back to the dream of his earlier years. He
would go to Frisia, which had never been far from his
thoughts. But he knew he was going to his death, for he bade the faithful Lul send along with him his shroud packed in his box of
books. Lul was to carry out to a perfect end the work
in Thuringia, which the Saxons had lately harried, and he was to finish the
partly built church at Fulda. In 753 Boniface left, and for two years he worked
among the water-bound washes of the Zuiderzee: when (5 June 754) he was at Dockum awaiting converts who were to be confirmed a band of
savages attacked him and his followers: they were all slain: the books he had
with him were found and taken to Fulda, and thither also, after some time at
Utrecht, was carried the body of the saint himself: there in the house of his
founding, near the middle of his vast field of toil, the great hero lay at
rest. He had done much to bind together a growing world and to direct its ways.
His letters, with their eager interest in the past, with their requests for
books, the Scriptures, commentaries, parts—even particles — of the many works
of Bede, with their Latin verses, traced the outlines of medieval learning, and opened up channels along which medieval scholarship
was long to flow. The many activities of his busy life must not hide his great
services to learning. Sometimes when “the vineyard he had dug brought forth
only wild grapes”, and disappointments from half-heathen converts and wholly
unworthy priests came thick upon him, he turned to study for rest and peace.
Even when he was “an old man buffeted by the waves of the German sea”, and from
dimness of eye could not read the small running hand of the day, he wrote to
England for clearly written books. His connection with England meant much, and
when he died Archbishop Cuthbert wrote to Lul that an
English synod “lovingly placed him among the splendid and glorious doctors of
the faith”, and along “with blessed Gregory and Augustine had taken him for
their patron saint”.
The greatness of his work was seen even more in its
endurance than in its variety or its extent. He had visions of what he was to
do, and he also saw the lines upon which alone it could be done. The Frankish
Empire, the papal supremacy, monastic foundations, ecclesiastical organisation, were perhaps the four greatest features of
the medieval world. Each of these was built up by Boniface into the work of his
life. He must have seen what each of them would be and would accomplish. But
his far-sightedness, his enthusiasm, and his wisdom cannot fully explain all he
did and all he was. For that we must go to his letters: in them we see his
power of friendship, his command of detail, and his breadth of view. In them we
see how the great man grew with the very greatness of his work, until the young
Englishman with the zeal of his nation's new-found faith upon him became the
shaper of the mighty German West.
CHAPTER XVIIENGLAND (To c. 800) AND ENGLISH INSTITUTIONS
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