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.
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.
Cambridge Medieval History - v2 - Rise of the Saracens and Foundation of the Western Empire
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 settle-
ments 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 connexion 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 popu-
lation 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.
1 Life of St Patrick, pp. 360-1.
2 Ussher, Whole Works, Dublin, 1847, vi. p. 209.
OH. XVI (a).
## p. 506 (#538) ############################################
506 Arrival of St Patrick [432
Pre-Patrician Christianity in Ireland was scanty, sporadic, and
apparently unorganised. 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 Ireland1. 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 con-
verted 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 connexion with him. Then in Co. Meath, Trim and Dun-
shaughlin, both not far from the royal hill of Tara, Uisnech, and
Donagh-patrick 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 Caissel-
ire-all in Co. Sligo. Then turning south he founded the church of
Aghagower on the confines of Mayo and Gal way, 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.
1 This is the conclusion of Professor Bury, Life of St Patrick, p. 55.
## p. 507 (#539) ############################################
444-461] Work of St Patrick 507
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, sub-
sequently 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
baptised 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 commence-
ment 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 organiser 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 Christ1. " 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.
Very little light is thrown on this point by the Irish Annals. They
are a continuous and somewhat barren record of storms, eclipses, pesti-
lences, 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
1 Vita Kierani, quoted in Ussher, Works, ti. p. 332.
ch. xvi (a).
## p. 508 (#540) ############################################
508 Survivals of Heathenism,
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.
Another mysterious entry made a. d. 738 points in a similar direc-
tion: "Fergus Glutt King of Cobha died from the envenomed spittles of
evil men. "
Later, from the last few years of the eighth century onwards, there
are many records of conflicts with the Gentiles; but the reference is in
all these cases to the new wave of heathenism which swept over Ireland
through the Danish invasions.
Evidence is however forthcoming from other sources.
For example, in the form of baptismal exorcism used in Ireland in
the seventh and ninth centuries we find the clause "expelle diabolum
et gentilifatem,"" 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 Almighty1. "
This passage, which has not been found in any other liturgy, tells us
of some place in Ireland, probably in Co. Tipperary, where there was
still in the ninth century a pagan population among whom some pagan
landowner seems to have been at that time sufficiently favourable to
Christianity to build a Christian church, although he himself had not
yet become a convert.
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.
1 The Stowe Missal (ninth century) in The Liturgy and Ritual of the Celtic Church,
Oxford, 1881, p. 236.
## p. 509 (#541) ############################################
Sources of our knowledge 509
(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 Romania 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.
No other Father of the first three centuries refers to Britannia or the
Britanni. We turn then to Scottish authorities.
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. n. 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.
Now there is no authority for this statement earlier than Fordun,
and we can hardly avoid the conclusion that it is a deliberate invention
on his part; possibly from a desire that Scotland should not be so very
CB. XVI (a).
## p. 510 (#542) ############################################
510 Legends
far behind Britain, which claimed to have been converted to Christianity
in the second century by Pope Eleutherus in the time of a king Lucius1.
The statement also stands self-condemned through the anachronisms
and the inaccuracies which it contains. There were no Scoti in Scotland
in 203, Zephyrinus was then Pope, not Victor, and it was the tenth not
the seventh year of the Emperor Severus.
Still there must have been Christians among the soldiers composing
the Roman armies of invasion and occupation during, soon after,
and even before the reign of Severus. May not some knowledge of
Christianity have entered Scotland through them? Unfortunately
the traces of Roman occupation in Scotland are extremely scanty.
No decorations, emblems, or relics of any kind have been found
suggestive of Christianity, and there is not only no proof but there
are not the slightest traces of a Romano-Scotic church in the third
century. No reliance can be placed on certain statements made to
the contrary in the Lives of the Saints. The hagiological literature
of Scotland is for the most part very late, and for historical purposes
more than usually worthless. With the exception of the two seventh
century Lives of St Columba by Cuminius (Cumine) and Adamnan, there
is nothing earlier than the Life of St Ninian by Ailred who died in
1166 and two Lives of St Kentigern belonging to the same century, an
anonymous and now fragmentary Life written while Herbert was bishop
of Glasgow (1147-64), and a Life by Joceline of Furness written during
the episcopate of Joceline, bishop of Glasgow (1174-99). All the
traditions and legends assigning extremely early dates to certain
Scottish saints are without foundation, such as the story in the Aberdeen
Breviary which makes St Serf a Christian of the primitive church of
Scotland before the arrival of Palladius, whose suffragan he becomes;
and the story representing Regulus as bringing relics of St Andrew
to Scotland, c. 360. In addition to its purely fictitious details, this
latter story antedates the connexion with St Andrew, and the importa-
tion of his relics into Scotland, by some four hundred years.
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 to-day, 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
1 For the unhistorical character of this claim, though it has the authority
of Bede, see Harnack, Brief d. brit. KOnigs Lucius.
## p. 511 (#543) ############################################
Conversion of Straihclyde 511
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.
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 natiane 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 Man1.
1 See p. 505.
CH. XVI (A).
## p. 512 (#544) ############################################
512 Conversion of the Picts
NiniarTs 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
Annates 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 sum-
moned from Ireland for that purpose, and having fixed his see at
Glasgow, practically re-converted Strathclyde to Christianity, the vast
majority of its inhabitants having apostatised from the faith since
the days of Ninian. This re-conversion included that of the Pictish
inhabitants of Galwiethia or Galloway, who had likewise apostatised.
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.
Bede also records the conversion of the northern Picts by St Columba.
He gives the date of Columba's arrival in Scotland as 565, but he
appears to have landed on and occupied Iona in 563, and in 565 to have
## p. 513 (#545) ############################################
Columba 513
crossed the mountain range of Drumalban on his missionary enterprise
to the northern Picts. His first arrival in Scotland is dated by other
authorities and in the Annals of Ulster, the Annates Cambriae, and the
Annals of Tighernac as 562 or 563. Iona1 was probably assigned to him
in the first instance by Conall Mac Comgaill, king of Dalriada, and
afterwards confirmed to him by Brude Mac Maelchon, king of the Picts,
whom Columba visited at his palace near Inverness, converting both him
and his nation to Christianity. Iona was situated between the Pictish
and the Dalriadic kingdoms.
We know very few details about this mission work among the
northern Picts, which extended over nine years. Neither Bede, nor
Adamnan in his Life of Columba, which is rather a panegyric than
a biography, give us any history of it, but the many churches dedicated
to him are a witness to his success, and details of two foundations of
Columban churches have been preserved in the Book of Deer, viz.
Aberdour in Banffshire, and Deer in the district of Buchan.
Columba's activity extended also to many of the small islands
adjacent to Scotland, of which next to Iona itself the most important
settlements were at Hinba and Tiree; but other islands, including Skye,
bear witness to his presence and work by the dedications of their
churches.
(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.
Therefore when Columba arrived in Scotland in 563, or 565, he
found a Christian people and king in Dalriada, ready to welcome him
and to assign Iona to him as his home: and this was the beginning of a
new movement which was destined to influence not Scotland only, but
England also.
1 More properly Ioua. See Fowler's note in his edition of Adamnan, p. lxv.
C. MED. H. VOL. II. CH. XVI (a). 33
## p. 514 (#546) ############################################
514
CHAPTER XVI (b).
THE CONVERSION OF THE TEUTONS.
(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
Romanised and Christianised 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 generalise about the Christianity
with which the Teutonic invaders came into touch. Where this Chris-
tianity 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 Chris-
tianity 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
## p. 515 (#547) ############################################
Gregory the Great 515
for action. English Christianity was thus marked off from Teutonic
Christianity elsewhere by moral differences, slight and not to be over-
estimated: 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 inter-
course. 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 Church1.
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 commen-
dation given to the missionaries by the Pope to bishops and rulers
amongst the Franks opened up more fully lines of connexion 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'1—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 mon-
asteries. " 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 inter-
course with the Continent.
1 See (Imp. xvii. pp. 548-9.
ch. xvi (b). 33—2
## p. 516 (#548) ############################################
516 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 probablv at Richborough1, 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—on 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, shewn 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 Aries, 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
1 See arguments of Professor T. McKenny Hughes (Dissertation in. in Mason's
Mission of St Augustine) in favour of Richborough: the Canterbury tradition also
speaks of Richborough. But other sites, Stonor, or Ebbsfleet, find support. See
e. g. Pref. to 3rd edn. of Bright's Early Eng. Ch. Hist.
2 The dates usually given for Aethelberht's baptism, and the consecration of
Augustine, are connected by Bede. Dates more precise, if less trustworthy, are
given by Thorn (late fourteenth century) and by Thomas of Elmham (R. S. pp. 78
and 137) following the Canterbury tradition that the baptism took place at Whit-
suntide 597: the consecration is placed 16 Nov. 597. This is apparently founded
upon Bede. But Elmham saw the difficulties of these dates. Gregory, Ep. vir. 30—
to Eulogius of Alexandria (? June 598), speaks of the baptism of many English in
the Swale the previous Christmas by Augustine fratre et coepiscopo. In 597,16 Nov.
was not on a Sunday, but in 598 it was. I should therefore prefer to place the
consecration in 598, disregarding the date of this letter. The Canterbury tradition
would hardly be mistaken as to the day, but might be as to the year. Further
there would be a natural inclination to shorten the interval between the arrival of
Augustine and the king's baptism. It might be, therefore, that the baptism should
be placed along with the consecration in 598.
## p. 517 (#549) ############################################
597-601] Augustine's Questions and Gregory s Answers 617
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.
The questions and the answers to them only concern us here so far
as they shew the special difficulties of the mission and the character
of St Augustine. Their importance for the character of the Pope has
been shewn 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 recognising 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 temples1 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 faith-
ful 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 systematised 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
1 Idolorum cultus insequere, fanorum aedificia everte. Bede, H. E. I. c. 32
(adding date 22 June 601). But is this intended to be more than rhetoric? For
cases among Franks see Hauck, K. G. D. i. pp. 121-2.
ch. xvi (it).
## p. 518 (#550) ############################################
518 Augustine's Questions and Gregory's Answers
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 suc-
cessor 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
{Brittanniamm 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 cor-
rected by authority. "
These answers were brought to Augustine by a band of new mission-
aries, 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
## p. 519 (#551) ############################################
577-601] Gregorys Scheme of Division 619
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 Nortb 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 shewed outside the
general trend of European custom, the British held an attitude towards
Rome which had marked an earlier day. But these differences, almost
CH. xvi (b).
## p. 520 (#552) ############################################
520 Kelts and Romans
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 con-
quest: since the separation Rome—followed gradually by the West—
had twice changed to a better cycle, anfl the last change, moreover, had
brought the West into accord with the East1. 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 four-
teenth 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 un-
known. 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-exami-
nation 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 civilisation 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 par-
ticulars 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 inter-
fered 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.
1 On all these points see the Excursus in Plummer's Bede, II. pp. 348 f.
## p. 521 (#553) ############################################
604-617] Controversies 521
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 Saeberht1 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 alteriw 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 shewn 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 person-
ality 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 Laurentius1 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. Haedwald of
East Anglia, once a vassal of Kent, who had been baptised at Canter-
bury, 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)2. 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
1 Mr W. J. Corbett suggests that Saeberht's name is handed down in Sawbridge-
worth (Herts. ), a corruption of the Domesday Sabrictesweorthig (cf. Domesday, I.
139 b).
2 For the date see Plummer's Bede, n. p. 77. But it is only approximate.
ch. xvi (b).
## p. 522 (#554) ############################################
522 Northumbria [588-625
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. Aethel-
frith 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).
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 settle-
ments 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 connexion 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 popu-
lation 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.
1 Life of St Patrick, pp. 360-1.
2 Ussher, Whole Works, Dublin, 1847, vi. p. 209.
OH. XVI (a).
## p. 506 (#538) ############################################
506 Arrival of St Patrick [432
Pre-Patrician Christianity in Ireland was scanty, sporadic, and
apparently unorganised. 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 Ireland1. 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 con-
verted 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 connexion with him. Then in Co. Meath, Trim and Dun-
shaughlin, both not far from the royal hill of Tara, Uisnech, and
Donagh-patrick 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 Caissel-
ire-all in Co. Sligo. Then turning south he founded the church of
Aghagower on the confines of Mayo and Gal way, 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.
1 This is the conclusion of Professor Bury, Life of St Patrick, p. 55.
## p. 507 (#539) ############################################
444-461] Work of St Patrick 507
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, sub-
sequently 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
baptised 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 commence-
ment 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 organiser 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 Christ1. " 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.
Very little light is thrown on this point by the Irish Annals. They
are a continuous and somewhat barren record of storms, eclipses, pesti-
lences, 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
1 Vita Kierani, quoted in Ussher, Works, ti. p. 332.
ch. xvi (a).
## p. 508 (#540) ############################################
508 Survivals of Heathenism,
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.
Another mysterious entry made a. d. 738 points in a similar direc-
tion: "Fergus Glutt King of Cobha died from the envenomed spittles of
evil men. "
Later, from the last few years of the eighth century onwards, there
are many records of conflicts with the Gentiles; but the reference is in
all these cases to the new wave of heathenism which swept over Ireland
through the Danish invasions.
Evidence is however forthcoming from other sources.
For example, in the form of baptismal exorcism used in Ireland in
the seventh and ninth centuries we find the clause "expelle diabolum
et gentilifatem,"" 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 Almighty1. "
This passage, which has not been found in any other liturgy, tells us
of some place in Ireland, probably in Co. Tipperary, where there was
still in the ninth century a pagan population among whom some pagan
landowner seems to have been at that time sufficiently favourable to
Christianity to build a Christian church, although he himself had not
yet become a convert.
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.
1 The Stowe Missal (ninth century) in The Liturgy and Ritual of the Celtic Church,
Oxford, 1881, p. 236.
## p. 509 (#541) ############################################
Sources of our knowledge 509
(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 Romania 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.
No other Father of the first three centuries refers to Britannia or the
Britanni. We turn then to Scottish authorities.
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. n. 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.
Now there is no authority for this statement earlier than Fordun,
and we can hardly avoid the conclusion that it is a deliberate invention
on his part; possibly from a desire that Scotland should not be so very
CB. XVI (a).
## p. 510 (#542) ############################################
510 Legends
far behind Britain, which claimed to have been converted to Christianity
in the second century by Pope Eleutherus in the time of a king Lucius1.
The statement also stands self-condemned through the anachronisms
and the inaccuracies which it contains. There were no Scoti in Scotland
in 203, Zephyrinus was then Pope, not Victor, and it was the tenth not
the seventh year of the Emperor Severus.
Still there must have been Christians among the soldiers composing
the Roman armies of invasion and occupation during, soon after,
and even before the reign of Severus. May not some knowledge of
Christianity have entered Scotland through them? Unfortunately
the traces of Roman occupation in Scotland are extremely scanty.
No decorations, emblems, or relics of any kind have been found
suggestive of Christianity, and there is not only no proof but there
are not the slightest traces of a Romano-Scotic church in the third
century. No reliance can be placed on certain statements made to
the contrary in the Lives of the Saints. The hagiological literature
of Scotland is for the most part very late, and for historical purposes
more than usually worthless. With the exception of the two seventh
century Lives of St Columba by Cuminius (Cumine) and Adamnan, there
is nothing earlier than the Life of St Ninian by Ailred who died in
1166 and two Lives of St Kentigern belonging to the same century, an
anonymous and now fragmentary Life written while Herbert was bishop
of Glasgow (1147-64), and a Life by Joceline of Furness written during
the episcopate of Joceline, bishop of Glasgow (1174-99). All the
traditions and legends assigning extremely early dates to certain
Scottish saints are without foundation, such as the story in the Aberdeen
Breviary which makes St Serf a Christian of the primitive church of
Scotland before the arrival of Palladius, whose suffragan he becomes;
and the story representing Regulus as bringing relics of St Andrew
to Scotland, c. 360. In addition to its purely fictitious details, this
latter story antedates the connexion with St Andrew, and the importa-
tion of his relics into Scotland, by some four hundred years.
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 to-day, 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
1 For the unhistorical character of this claim, though it has the authority
of Bede, see Harnack, Brief d. brit. KOnigs Lucius.
## p. 511 (#543) ############################################
Conversion of Straihclyde 511
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.
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 natiane 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 Man1.
1 See p. 505.
CH. XVI (A).
## p. 512 (#544) ############################################
512 Conversion of the Picts
NiniarTs 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
Annates 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 sum-
moned from Ireland for that purpose, and having fixed his see at
Glasgow, practically re-converted Strathclyde to Christianity, the vast
majority of its inhabitants having apostatised from the faith since
the days of Ninian. This re-conversion included that of the Pictish
inhabitants of Galwiethia or Galloway, who had likewise apostatised.
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.
Bede also records the conversion of the northern Picts by St Columba.
He gives the date of Columba's arrival in Scotland as 565, but he
appears to have landed on and occupied Iona in 563, and in 565 to have
## p. 513 (#545) ############################################
Columba 513
crossed the mountain range of Drumalban on his missionary enterprise
to the northern Picts. His first arrival in Scotland is dated by other
authorities and in the Annals of Ulster, the Annates Cambriae, and the
Annals of Tighernac as 562 or 563. Iona1 was probably assigned to him
in the first instance by Conall Mac Comgaill, king of Dalriada, and
afterwards confirmed to him by Brude Mac Maelchon, king of the Picts,
whom Columba visited at his palace near Inverness, converting both him
and his nation to Christianity. Iona was situated between the Pictish
and the Dalriadic kingdoms.
We know very few details about this mission work among the
northern Picts, which extended over nine years. Neither Bede, nor
Adamnan in his Life of Columba, which is rather a panegyric than
a biography, give us any history of it, but the many churches dedicated
to him are a witness to his success, and details of two foundations of
Columban churches have been preserved in the Book of Deer, viz.
Aberdour in Banffshire, and Deer in the district of Buchan.
Columba's activity extended also to many of the small islands
adjacent to Scotland, of which next to Iona itself the most important
settlements were at Hinba and Tiree; but other islands, including Skye,
bear witness to his presence and work by the dedications of their
churches.
(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.
Therefore when Columba arrived in Scotland in 563, or 565, he
found a Christian people and king in Dalriada, ready to welcome him
and to assign Iona to him as his home: and this was the beginning of a
new movement which was destined to influence not Scotland only, but
England also.
1 More properly Ioua. See Fowler's note in his edition of Adamnan, p. lxv.
C. MED. H. VOL. II. CH. XVI (a). 33
## p. 514 (#546) ############################################
514
CHAPTER XVI (b).
THE CONVERSION OF THE TEUTONS.
(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
Romanised and Christianised 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 generalise about the Christianity
with which the Teutonic invaders came into touch. Where this Chris-
tianity 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 Chris-
tianity 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
## p. 515 (#547) ############################################
Gregory the Great 515
for action. English Christianity was thus marked off from Teutonic
Christianity elsewhere by moral differences, slight and not to be over-
estimated: 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 inter-
course. 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 Church1.
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 commen-
dation given to the missionaries by the Pope to bishops and rulers
amongst the Franks opened up more fully lines of connexion 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'1—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 mon-
asteries. " 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 inter-
course with the Continent.
1 See (Imp. xvii. pp. 548-9.
ch. xvi (b). 33—2
## p. 516 (#548) ############################################
516 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 probablv at Richborough1, 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—on 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, shewn 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 Aries, 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
1 See arguments of Professor T. McKenny Hughes (Dissertation in. in Mason's
Mission of St Augustine) in favour of Richborough: the Canterbury tradition also
speaks of Richborough. But other sites, Stonor, or Ebbsfleet, find support. See
e. g. Pref. to 3rd edn. of Bright's Early Eng. Ch. Hist.
2 The dates usually given for Aethelberht's baptism, and the consecration of
Augustine, are connected by Bede. Dates more precise, if less trustworthy, are
given by Thorn (late fourteenth century) and by Thomas of Elmham (R. S. pp. 78
and 137) following the Canterbury tradition that the baptism took place at Whit-
suntide 597: the consecration is placed 16 Nov. 597. This is apparently founded
upon Bede. But Elmham saw the difficulties of these dates. Gregory, Ep. vir. 30—
to Eulogius of Alexandria (? June 598), speaks of the baptism of many English in
the Swale the previous Christmas by Augustine fratre et coepiscopo. In 597,16 Nov.
was not on a Sunday, but in 598 it was. I should therefore prefer to place the
consecration in 598, disregarding the date of this letter. The Canterbury tradition
would hardly be mistaken as to the day, but might be as to the year. Further
there would be a natural inclination to shorten the interval between the arrival of
Augustine and the king's baptism. It might be, therefore, that the baptism should
be placed along with the consecration in 598.
## p. 517 (#549) ############################################
597-601] Augustine's Questions and Gregory s Answers 617
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.
The questions and the answers to them only concern us here so far
as they shew the special difficulties of the mission and the character
of St Augustine. Their importance for the character of the Pope has
been shewn 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 recognising 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 temples1 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 faith-
ful 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 systematised 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
1 Idolorum cultus insequere, fanorum aedificia everte. Bede, H. E. I. c. 32
(adding date 22 June 601). But is this intended to be more than rhetoric? For
cases among Franks see Hauck, K. G. D. i. pp. 121-2.
ch. xvi (it).
## p. 518 (#550) ############################################
518 Augustine's Questions and Gregory's Answers
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 suc-
cessor 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
{Brittanniamm 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 cor-
rected by authority. "
These answers were brought to Augustine by a band of new mission-
aries, 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
## p. 519 (#551) ############################################
577-601] Gregorys Scheme of Division 619
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 Nortb 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 shewed outside the
general trend of European custom, the British held an attitude towards
Rome which had marked an earlier day. But these differences, almost
CH. xvi (b).
## p. 520 (#552) ############################################
520 Kelts and Romans
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 con-
quest: since the separation Rome—followed gradually by the West—
had twice changed to a better cycle, anfl the last change, moreover, had
brought the West into accord with the East1. 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 four-
teenth 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 un-
known. 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-exami-
nation 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 civilisation 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 par-
ticulars 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 inter-
fered 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.
1 On all these points see the Excursus in Plummer's Bede, II. pp. 348 f.
## p. 521 (#553) ############################################
604-617] Controversies 521
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 Saeberht1 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 alteriw 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 shewn 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 person-
ality 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 Laurentius1 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. Haedwald of
East Anglia, once a vassal of Kent, who had been baptised at Canter-
bury, 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)2. 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
1 Mr W. J. Corbett suggests that Saeberht's name is handed down in Sawbridge-
worth (Herts. ), a corruption of the Domesday Sabrictesweorthig (cf. Domesday, I.
139 b).
2 For the date see Plummer's Bede, n. p. 77. But it is only approximate.
ch. xvi (b).
## p. 522 (#554) ############################################
522 Northumbria [588-625
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. Aethel-
frith 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).
