§ 77. Victory of the Romish over the Old British Church.206According to an ancient but more than doubtful tradition a British king Lucius about the middle of the 2nd century is said to have asked Christian missionaries of the Roman bishop Eleutherus and by them to have been converted along with his people.This, however, is certain, that at the end of the 3rd century (§22, 6) Christianity had taken root in Roman Britain, probably through intercourse with the Romans. Down to the Anglo-Saxon invasion inA.D.449, the British church certainly kept up regular communication with that of the continent, especially with Gaul. From that time, being driven back into North and South Wales, it was completely isolated from the continental church; but all the more successfully it spread itself out among its neighbours in the allied tribes of Ireland and Scotland, among the former through Patrick, the Apostle of the Irish, among the latter by Columba, the Apostle of the Scots, and followed a thoroughly independent course of development. When one hundred and fifty years later, inA.D.596 the long interrupted intercourse with Rome was again renewed by a Romish mission to the Anglo-Saxons, several divergences from Roman practice were discovered among the Britons in respect of worship, constitution and discipline. Rome insisted that these should be corrected, but the Britons insisted on retaining them and repudiated the pretensions of the Romish hierarchy. The keen struggle which therefore arose, beginning amid circumstances that promised a brilliant success to the British church, ended with complete submission to Rome. The battle-field was then transferred to Germany, and there too in spite of the resolute resistance of their apostles the contest concluded with the same result (§78). The struggle was not merely one of highly tragic interest but of incomparable importance for the history of Europe. For had the result been, as for a time it seemed likely that it would be, in favour of the old British church, not only England but also all Germany would have taken up a decidedly anti-papal attitude, and not only the ecclesiastical but also the political history of the Middle Ages would have most likely been led into an altogether different course.
According to an ancient but more than doubtful tradition a British king Lucius about the middle of the 2nd century is said to have asked Christian missionaries of the Roman bishop Eleutherus and by them to have been converted along with his people.This, however, is certain, that at the end of the 3rd century (§22, 6) Christianity had taken root in Roman Britain, probably through intercourse with the Romans. Down to the Anglo-Saxon invasion inA.D.449, the British church certainly kept up regular communication with that of the continent, especially with Gaul. From that time, being driven back into North and South Wales, it was completely isolated from the continental church; but all the more successfully it spread itself out among its neighbours in the allied tribes of Ireland and Scotland, among the former through Patrick, the Apostle of the Irish, among the latter by Columba, the Apostle of the Scots, and followed a thoroughly independent course of development. When one hundred and fifty years later, inA.D.596 the long interrupted intercourse with Rome was again renewed by a Romish mission to the Anglo-Saxons, several divergences from Roman practice were discovered among the Britons in respect of worship, constitution and discipline. Rome insisted that these should be corrected, but the Britons insisted on retaining them and repudiated the pretensions of the Romish hierarchy. The keen struggle which therefore arose, beginning amid circumstances that promised a brilliant success to the British church, ended with complete submission to Rome. The battle-field was then transferred to Germany, and there too in spite of the resolute resistance of their apostles the contest concluded with the same result (§78). The struggle was not merely one of highly tragic interest but of incomparable importance for the history of Europe. For had the result been, as for a time it seemed likely that it would be, in favour of the old British church, not only England but also all Germany would have taken up a decidedly anti-papal attitude, and not only the ecclesiastical but also the political history of the Middle Ages would have most likely been led into an altogether different course.
§ 77.1.The Conversion of the Irish.—Among the Celtic inhabitants of the island of Ireland there were some individual Christians from the beginning of the 5th century. The mission of a Roman deacon Palladius inA.D.431 was without result. But in the following year,A.D.432, the true apostle of the Irish,Patrick, with twenty-four companions, stept upon the shore of the island. The only reliable source of information about his life and work is an autobiography which he left behind him,Confessiones. According to it he was grandson of a presbyter and son of a deacon residing at Banava, probably in Britain, not likely in Gaul. In his sixteenth year he was taken to Ireland by Irish pirates and sold to an Irish chief whose flocks he tended for six years. After his escape by flight the love of Christ which glowed within his heart gave him no rest and his dreams urged him to bring the glorious liberty of the children of God to those who so long kept him bound under hard slavery. Familiar with the language and the customs of the country, he gathered the people by beat of drum into an open field and told them of the sufferings of Christ for man’s salvation. The Druids, priests of the Celts, withstood him vigorously, but his attractive and awe-inspiring personality gained the victory over them. Without a drop of martyr’s blood Ireland was converted in a few years, and was thickly strewn with churches and monasteries. Patrick himself had his residence at Macha, round which the town of Armagh, afterwards the ecclesiastical metropolis, sprang up. He died aboutA.D.465, and left the island church in a flourishing condition. The numerous monasteries, in which calm piety flourished along with diligent study of Scripture and from which many teachers and missionaries went forth, won for the land the name ofInsula Sanctorum.Only after the robber raids of the Danes in the 9th century did the glory of the Irish monasteries begin to fade.207§ 77.2.The Mission to Scotland.—A Briton, Ninian, educated at Rome, wrought, aboutA.D.430, among the CelticPictsandScotsin Scotland or Caledonia. But those converted by him fell back into paganism after his death. The true Apostle of Scotland was the IrishmanColumba. InA.D.563 he settled with twelve disciples on the small Hebridean island Hy. Its common name, Iona, seems to have originated by a clerical error from Ioua, and was then regarded as the Hebrew equivalent of Columba, a dove. Icolmkill means Columba’s cell. Here he founded a monastery and a church, and converted from this centre all Caledonia. Although to the last only a presbyter and abbot of this monastery, he had all the authority of an apostle over the Scottish church and its bishops, a position that was maintained by successive abbots of Iona. He died inA.D.597. The numerous monasteries founded by him vied with the Irish in learning, piety and missionary zeal.The original monastery of Iona flourished in a superlative degree.208§ 77.3.The Peculiarities of the Celtic Church.—In the Anglo-Saxon struggle the following were the main points at issue.On the part of Rome it was demanded that they should submit to the archiepiscopal jurisdiction instituted by the pope, which the British refused as an unrighteous assumption.The British had anEaster Canondifferent from that of the Romish church. They were indeed nothing else than Quartodecimans, although they like these in ignorance referred to the Johannine tradition (§34, 2), but celebrated their Easter always on a Sunday, the settling of which they decided according to an 84 years’ cycle of the moon, after Rome had adopted a cycle of 19 years (§56, 3).The Celtic clergy had also a differentTonsurefrom the RomanTonsura Petriwhich seems to have been the GreekTonsura Pauli(§45, 1), although the zealous advocate of the Roman customs, Ceolfrid, abbot of Jarrow, in a letter to Naitan, king of the Picts, derives it from Simon Magus.Besides this there was also the question of the Marriage of Priests, which indeed the popish Anglo-Saxon Archbishop Augustine declared himself at first willing to allow to the British, which, however, was subsequently so passionately denounced by Boniface asfornicatioandadulterium.If, further, according to Bede’s statement, besides their divergent views about Easter, the Britishet alia plurima imitati ecclesiasticæ contraria faciebant, this certainly cannot be understood of doctrinal divergences, but only of different forms of constitution and worship, or ecclesiastical habits and customs, as might be well expected in churches that had been completely separated sinceA.D.449. We need only think,e.g., of the progress made by the idea of the papal primacy (§46, 7-10), the consolidation and reconstruction of monasticism under Benedict (§85), the codification of Roman canon law by Dionysius Exiguus (§43, 3), the modification of the idea of penance since Leo the Great (§61, 1) and the development of the doctrine of the mass down to Gregory the Great (§58, 3;59, 6). The most considerable peculiarity of constitution in the Celtic church seems to have been that above referred to in placing the abbots of the principal monasteries at the head of the hierarchy. Only in one passage (Bede, III. 19) is there mention of ecclesiastical doctrine: InA.D.640 Pope John IV. addressed a conciliatory letter to the Scots in which he warns them against the Pelagian heresy, “quam apud eos revivescere didicerat.”When then we turn our attention to the Celtic church planted on the continent at a later period, it is specially Columbanus’ view of Easter that is regarded in France as heretical. Often and loud as Boniface lifted up his voice against the horrible heresies of British, Irish and Scotch intruders, it is found at last that these consist in the same or similar divergences as those of the Anglo-Saxons. Not insisting upon the law of celibacy, opposition to the Roman primacy, the Romish tradition and the Romish canon law, especially the ever-increasing strictness of the Roman marriage laws (§61, 2), more simple modes of administering the sacraments and conducting public worship, even in unconsecrated places in forests and fields,—these and such like were the heresies complained of.—As concerns theproandcon.of the evangelical purity of the ancient British Christianity, so highly praised by Ebrard, one occupying an impartial historical standpoint is justified in expecting that as all the good development so also all the bad development which had taken firm root in the common thought and feeling of the church down to the middle of the 5th century, would not have been uprooted from the church of Patrick and Columba, so also in the 7th century it would be still prevalent there. And this expectation is in general confirmed, so far as our information goes about all which was not expressly imported from Rome into the British church. If we deduct the by no means insignificant amount of unevangelical corruption which was first introduced into the Romish church during the period between Leo the Great and Gregory the Great,A.D.440-604, partly by exaggerating and adorning elements previously there, partly by bringing in wholly new elements of ecclesiastical credulity, superstition and mistaken faith, there still remains for the Celtic church standing outside of this process of deterioration a relatively purer doctrine. Yet the Christianity that remains is by no means free of mixture from unevangelical elements as Jonas of Bobbio himself shows in his biography of his teacher Columbanus. But the more embittered the conflict between the British and the Romish churches became over matters of constitution and worship, the more did differences in faith and life, which had been overlooked at first, assume serious proportions, and supported by a careful study of Scripture, led to greater evangelical freedom and purity on the side of the British.This is thoroughly confirmed by Ebrard’s numerous quotations from the literature of that period.209§ 77.4.The Romish Mission to the Anglo-Saxons.—To protect himself against the robber raids of the Picts and Scots, the British king Vortigern sought the aid of the Germans inhabiting the opposite shores.Two princes of the Jutes, Hengist and Horsa, driven from their home, led a horde of Angles and Saxons over to Britain inA.D.449. New hordes kept following those that had gone before and after a hundred years the British were driven back into the western parts of the island. The incomers founded seven kingdoms; at the head of all stood the prince of one of the divisions who was called principal king, the Bretwalda. The Anglo-Saxons were heathens and the bitter feelings that prevailed between them and the ancient Britons prevented the latter from carrying on missionary operations among the former. The opportunity which the British missed was seized upon by Rome. The sight of Anglo-Saxon youths exposed as slaves in the Roman market inspired a pious monk, afterwards Pope Gregory I., with a desire to evangelize a people of such noble bodily appearance. He wished himself to take the work in hand, but was hindered by the call to the chair of Peter. He now bought Anglo-Saxon youths in order to train them as missionaries to their fellow-countrymen. But when soon thereafter the Bretwalda Ethelbert of Kent married the Frankish princess Bertha, Gregory sent the Roman abbotAugustineto England with forty monks inA.D.596. Ethelbert gave them a residence and support in his own capital Dorovernum, now Canterbury. At Pentecost the following year he received baptism and 10,000 of his subjects followed his example. Augustine asked from Gregory further instructions about relics, books, etc. The pope sent him what he sought and besides the pallium with archiepiscopal rights over the whole Saxon and British church. Augustine now demanded of the Britons submission to his archiepiscopal authority and that they should work together with him for the conversion of the Saxons. But the British would do nothing of the sort. A personal interview with their chiefs under Augustine’s oak inA.D.603 was without result. At a second conference everything was spoilt by Augustine’s prelatic pride in refusing to stand up on the arrival of the Britons. Inclined to compliance the Britons had just proposed this at the suggestion of a member as a sign. Augustine died inA.D.605. The pope nominated as his successor his previous assistant Laurentius. Ethelbert’s heathen son and successor, Eadbald, oppressed the missionaries so much that they decided to withdraw from the field, inA.D.616. Only Laurentius delayed his retreat in order to make a final attempt at the conversion of Eadbald. He was successful. Eadbald was baptized; the fugitives returned to their former posts. In the kingdom of Essex Augustine had already established Christianity, but a change of government had again restored paganism. The gospel, however, soon afterwards got entrance into Northumbria, the most powerful of the seven kingdoms. King Edwin, the founder of Edinburgh, won the hand of the Kentish princess Ethelberga, daughter of Bertha. With her, as spiritual adviser of the young queen, went the monk Paulinus,A.D.625. These two persuaded the king and he again persuaded his nobles and the priests to embrace Christianity. At a popular assembly Paulinus proved the truth of Christianity, and the chief priest Coisi, setting at defiance the gods of his fathers, flung with his own hand a spear into the nearest idol temple. The people thought him mad and looked for Woden’s vengeance. When it came not, they obeyed the command of Coisi and burnt down the temple,A.D.627. Paulinus was made bishop of Eboracum, now York, which pope Honorius on sending a pallium raised to a second metropolitanate.Edwin, however, fell in battle inA.D.633 fighting against Penda, the pagan king of Mercia; Paulinus had to flee and the church of Northumbria was almost entirely rooted up.210§ 77.5.Celtic Missions among the Anglo-Saxons.—The saviour of Northumbria was Oswald,A.D.635-642, the son of a former king who had been driven out by Edwin. He had found refuge as a fugitive in the monastery of Hy and was there converted to Christianity. To restore the church in Northumbria the monks sent him one of their number, the amiable Aidan. Oswald acted as his interpreter until he acquired the Saxon language. His success was unexampled. Oswald founded a religious establishment for him on the island of Lindisfarne, and supported by new missionaries from Hy, Aidan converted the whole of the northern lands to Christianity. Oswald fell in battle against Penda. He was succeeded as king and also as Bretwalda by his brother Oswy.Irish missionaries joined the missionary monks of Hy, rivalling them in their exertions, and byA.D.660 all the kingdoms of the Heptarchy had been converted to Christianity, and down to this date all, with the exception of Kent, which alone still adhered to the Romish church, belonged to the ancient British communion.211§ 77.6.The Celtic Element Driven out of the Anglo-Saxon Church.—Oswy perceived the political danger attending the continuance of such ecclesiastical disputes. He succeeded in convincing also his neighbour kings of the need of ecclesiastical uniformity. The only question was as to which of the two should be recognised. The choice fell upon the Romish. Oswy himself most decidedly preferred it.His wife Eanfled, Edwin’s daughter, was a zealous partisan of the Romish church, and on her side stood a man of extraordinary power, prudence and persistence, the abbot Wilfrid, a native Northumbrian, trained in the monastery of Lindisfarne. He had, however, visited Rome, and since then used all his eloquence and skill in intrigue in order to lay all England at the feet of the pope. The queen and the abbot wrought together upon the Bretwalda, and he in his turn upon the other princes. To these personal influences were added others of a more general kind: the preference for things foreign over those of home growth, the brilliancy and preponderating weight of the Romish church, and above all, the gulf, not yet by any means bridged over, between the Saxons and the British. When secret negociations toward the desired end had been carried out, Oswy called a general Synod at the nunnery of Streoneshalch, now Whitby,Synodus Pharensis,A.D.664. Here all the civil and ecclesiastical notabilities of the Heptarchy were assembled. The chief speaker on the Roman side was Wilfrid, on the Celtic side bishop Colman of Lindisfarne. The observance of Easter was the first subject of discussion. Wilfrid referred to the Apostle Peter, to whom the Lord said: Thou art Peter, etc. Then Oswy asked Colman whether it was true that the Lord had said so to Peter. Colman could not deny it, and Oswy declared that he would follow him who had the power to open for them the gates of heaven. And so the question was settled.Oswy as Bretwalda carried out with energy the decisions of the Council, and within a few weeks the scissors had completed the conversion of the whole Heptarchy to the Roman tonsure and the Roman faith.212§ 77.7.Spread and Overthrow of the British Church on the Continent.—The first Celtic missionary who crossed the channel was the IrishmanFridolin, aboutA.D.500. With several companions he settled near Poitiers in Aquitaine which was then under the Visigoths, converted the Arian bishop of that place together with his congregation to trinitarian orthodoxy, and, under the protection of Clovis, who had meanwhile,A.D.507, overthrown the Visigoth power in Gaul, founded churches and monasteries. Afterwards he wrought among the heathen Alemanni in Switzerland (§78, 1). We have fuller and more reliable accounts of Columba the younger, usually calledColumbanus, an Irishman by birth, who, inA.D.590, with twelve zealous companions, went forth from the British monastery of Bangor in Co. Down, Ireland, and settled among the Vosges mountains. Here they founded the monastery of Luxovium, now Luxeuil, as centre with many others affiliated to it. They cultivated the wilderness and wrought laboriously in restoring church discipline and order in a region that had been long spiritually neglected. But their strict adherence to the British mode of observing Easter caused offence. The severe moral discipline which they enjoined was galling to the careless Burgundian clergy, and the aged Brunehilda swore to compass their death and destruction, because of the influence adverse to her authority which they exercised upon her grandson, the young king Theodoric II. Thus it happened that inA.D.610, after twenty years’ labours, they were driven away. They turned then to Switzerland (§78, 1). But when persecuted here also, Columbanus with his followers migrated to Italy, aboutA.D.612, where, under Agilulf’s protection (§76, 8), he founded the celebrated monastery of Bobbio and contended against Arianism. TheRegula Columbaniextant in several MSS. constitutes a written guide to Christian piety and breathes a free evangelical spirit, while the annexedRegula cœnobialis fratrum de Hibernia, also ascribed to him, bears a rigoristic ascetic character, enjoining frequent flagellations. Columbanus died inA.D.615. The monks of his order joined the Benedictines in the 9th century. On his personal relation to the Romish chair during his residence in Gaul and Italy we get some information from three of his epistles still extant. In the first he asks Gregory the Great for an explanation of the Gallic observance of Easter, and in the second he asks Boniface IV. to confirm his old British mode of reckoning Easter. In both he recognises the pope as occupier of the chair of Peter, and in the second greets him as head of all the churches of Europe and describes the Roman church as the chief seat of the orthodox faith. In the third, on the other hand, he demands of the pope in firm terms an account of his own faith and that of the Roman church. He did so in consequence of a report having reached him, probably through the mention by the 5th œcum. Council (§52, 6) of a schism between Rome and Northern Italy, that the Roman chair had fallen into the heresies of Eutyches and Nestorius.—The ablest of Columbanus’ followers was Gallus or St. Gall. He remained in Switzerland and had his faithfulness rewarded by rich success. After Columbanus had been expelled from France traces of Celtic ecclesiastical institutions may indeed for a considerable time have lingered on among his Frankish scholars and friends animated by the missionary zeal of their master. For from their midst as it would seem proceeded most of those Frankish missionaries who carried the gospel in the 7th century to the German lands (§78). But from the time of the overthrow of the old Celtic ecclesiastical system at the Synod of Streoneshalch inA.D.664, whole troops of its adherents, British, Irish, Scotch and Anglo-Saxons, crossed the channel to convert Germany. With very few exceptions, only the names of these men, and for the most part not even these, have come down to us. But their zeal and success are witnessed to by the fact that even in the beginning of the 8th century throughout all the district of the Rhine, as well as Hesse, Thuringia, Bavaria and Alemannia we find a network of flourishing churches bearing the impress of Celtic institutions.And the overthrow of this great and promising ecclesiastical system, partly by peaceful, partly by violent transportation into the Romish church, was the work of the Anglo-Saxon Winfrid, whom the Romanists, quite rightly from their point of view, honour, under the name of Boniface, as the Apostle of Germany (§78, 4-8).213§ 77.8.Overthrow of the Old British System in the Iro-Scottish Church.—After the British Church had lost, inA.D.664, all support in the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy, it could not long maintain itself in its own original Celtic home. The Scottish kings on political grounds, in order to avoid giving their Saxon neighbours an opportunity of gratifying the love of conquest under the pretext of zeal for the faith, were obliged to assimilate their church organization with that of the Southerns. The learned Abbot Adamnan of Hy, when, inA.D.684, by order of his king, he visited the Northumbrian court, professed to be there convinced of the correctness of the Romish observance of Easter. But when his monks stoutly resisted, he left the monastery and went on a missionary tour to Ireland where he urged his views so successfully that inA.D.701 the most of the Irish adopted the Roman reckoning. Some years later, inA.D.710, Naitan II., the powerful king of the Picts, asked instructions from Abbot Ceolfrid about the superiority of the Romish practice regarding Easter and the tonsure, forced his whole people to adopt the Romish doctrine and banished the obstinate priests. Finally, the Anglo-Saxon Egbert, educated in Ireland, but subsequently won over to the Romish church, induced by visions and tempests to abandon his projected mission to the heathen Frisians (§78, 3), and to devote himself to what was regarded as the more arduous task of the conversion of the schismatical monks of Hy, succeeded inA.D.716 in so far overcoming their obstinacy that they at least gave up their divergent tonsure and Easter reckoning. Thereafter the Romanists were satisfied with the gradual Romanizing of the whole Celtic regions in the west and north. In worship, constitution and discipline all remained for a long time as it had been of old. The Roman law of celibacy could not win its way. Public worship was conducted and the sacraments dispensed in the language of the people and in the simple forms of primitive times. Canon law was almost everywhere made subordinate to the customs of the national church. Indeed, when inA.D.843, the kingdom of the Picts, where the papacy had made most progress, went by inheritance to the Scottish king Kenneth, he restored even there the old ecclesiastical institutions of their fathers. Malcolm III., who died inA.D.1093, was the first of the Scottish kings to begin the complete, thorough and lasting Romanizing of the whole country. His marriage with the English princess Margaret, a zealous supporter of the papacy, marks the beginning of that policy which was carried out and completed by their son David, who died inA.D.1152. In Ireland the English conquest ofA.D.1171 under Henry III. prepared the way for the complete Romanizing of the island. Still in both Scotland and Ireland down to the 14th century many of the old Celtic priests survived. To them was given the Celtic name Kele-de,servusorvir Dei, Latinized as Colidei, and in modern form, Culdees. They were secular priests who, bound by a strict rule, in companies generally of twelve with a prior over them, like a Catholic canon (§84, 1), devoted themselves to a common spiritual life and activity, maintaining an existence in many places down to the end of the 8th century. The origin of the rule under which they lived is still very obscure. It allowed them to marry but enforced abstinence from marital intercourse during the period of their service, and required of them, besides the charge of the public services, special attention to the poor. In Scotland particularly their societies soon became so numerous that almost the whole secular clergy went over to them. By the forcible introduction of regular canons they were crushed more and more down to the 11th century, or where they still existed, they were deprived of the right of pastoral supervision and administration of the sacraments and reduced to subordinate positions, such as that of choirsingers.—The usual application of the name of Culdees to all, even earlier representatives of the Celtic church, is quite unjustifiable.214
§ 77.1.The Conversion of the Irish.—Among the Celtic inhabitants of the island of Ireland there were some individual Christians from the beginning of the 5th century. The mission of a Roman deacon Palladius inA.D.431 was without result. But in the following year,A.D.432, the true apostle of the Irish,Patrick, with twenty-four companions, stept upon the shore of the island. The only reliable source of information about his life and work is an autobiography which he left behind him,Confessiones. According to it he was grandson of a presbyter and son of a deacon residing at Banava, probably in Britain, not likely in Gaul. In his sixteenth year he was taken to Ireland by Irish pirates and sold to an Irish chief whose flocks he tended for six years. After his escape by flight the love of Christ which glowed within his heart gave him no rest and his dreams urged him to bring the glorious liberty of the children of God to those who so long kept him bound under hard slavery. Familiar with the language and the customs of the country, he gathered the people by beat of drum into an open field and told them of the sufferings of Christ for man’s salvation. The Druids, priests of the Celts, withstood him vigorously, but his attractive and awe-inspiring personality gained the victory over them. Without a drop of martyr’s blood Ireland was converted in a few years, and was thickly strewn with churches and monasteries. Patrick himself had his residence at Macha, round which the town of Armagh, afterwards the ecclesiastical metropolis, sprang up. He died aboutA.D.465, and left the island church in a flourishing condition. The numerous monasteries, in which calm piety flourished along with diligent study of Scripture and from which many teachers and missionaries went forth, won for the land the name ofInsula Sanctorum.Only after the robber raids of the Danes in the 9th century did the glory of the Irish monasteries begin to fade.207
§ 77.2.The Mission to Scotland.—A Briton, Ninian, educated at Rome, wrought, aboutA.D.430, among the CelticPictsandScotsin Scotland or Caledonia. But those converted by him fell back into paganism after his death. The true Apostle of Scotland was the IrishmanColumba. InA.D.563 he settled with twelve disciples on the small Hebridean island Hy. Its common name, Iona, seems to have originated by a clerical error from Ioua, and was then regarded as the Hebrew equivalent of Columba, a dove. Icolmkill means Columba’s cell. Here he founded a monastery and a church, and converted from this centre all Caledonia. Although to the last only a presbyter and abbot of this monastery, he had all the authority of an apostle over the Scottish church and its bishops, a position that was maintained by successive abbots of Iona. He died inA.D.597. The numerous monasteries founded by him vied with the Irish in learning, piety and missionary zeal.The original monastery of Iona flourished in a superlative degree.208
§ 77.3.The Peculiarities of the Celtic Church.—In the Anglo-Saxon struggle the following were the main points at issue.
When then we turn our attention to the Celtic church planted on the continent at a later period, it is specially Columbanus’ view of Easter that is regarded in France as heretical. Often and loud as Boniface lifted up his voice against the horrible heresies of British, Irish and Scotch intruders, it is found at last that these consist in the same or similar divergences as those of the Anglo-Saxons. Not insisting upon the law of celibacy, opposition to the Roman primacy, the Romish tradition and the Romish canon law, especially the ever-increasing strictness of the Roman marriage laws (§61, 2), more simple modes of administering the sacraments and conducting public worship, even in unconsecrated places in forests and fields,—these and such like were the heresies complained of.—As concerns theproandcon.of the evangelical purity of the ancient British Christianity, so highly praised by Ebrard, one occupying an impartial historical standpoint is justified in expecting that as all the good development so also all the bad development which had taken firm root in the common thought and feeling of the church down to the middle of the 5th century, would not have been uprooted from the church of Patrick and Columba, so also in the 7th century it would be still prevalent there. And this expectation is in general confirmed, so far as our information goes about all which was not expressly imported from Rome into the British church. If we deduct the by no means insignificant amount of unevangelical corruption which was first introduced into the Romish church during the period between Leo the Great and Gregory the Great,A.D.440-604, partly by exaggerating and adorning elements previously there, partly by bringing in wholly new elements of ecclesiastical credulity, superstition and mistaken faith, there still remains for the Celtic church standing outside of this process of deterioration a relatively purer doctrine. Yet the Christianity that remains is by no means free of mixture from unevangelical elements as Jonas of Bobbio himself shows in his biography of his teacher Columbanus. But the more embittered the conflict between the British and the Romish churches became over matters of constitution and worship, the more did differences in faith and life, which had been overlooked at first, assume serious proportions, and supported by a careful study of Scripture, led to greater evangelical freedom and purity on the side of the British.This is thoroughly confirmed by Ebrard’s numerous quotations from the literature of that period.209
§ 77.4.The Romish Mission to the Anglo-Saxons.—To protect himself against the robber raids of the Picts and Scots, the British king Vortigern sought the aid of the Germans inhabiting the opposite shores.Two princes of the Jutes, Hengist and Horsa, driven from their home, led a horde of Angles and Saxons over to Britain inA.D.449. New hordes kept following those that had gone before and after a hundred years the British were driven back into the western parts of the island. The incomers founded seven kingdoms; at the head of all stood the prince of one of the divisions who was called principal king, the Bretwalda. The Anglo-Saxons were heathens and the bitter feelings that prevailed between them and the ancient Britons prevented the latter from carrying on missionary operations among the former. The opportunity which the British missed was seized upon by Rome. The sight of Anglo-Saxon youths exposed as slaves in the Roman market inspired a pious monk, afterwards Pope Gregory I., with a desire to evangelize a people of such noble bodily appearance. He wished himself to take the work in hand, but was hindered by the call to the chair of Peter. He now bought Anglo-Saxon youths in order to train them as missionaries to their fellow-countrymen. But when soon thereafter the Bretwalda Ethelbert of Kent married the Frankish princess Bertha, Gregory sent the Roman abbotAugustineto England with forty monks inA.D.596. Ethelbert gave them a residence and support in his own capital Dorovernum, now Canterbury. At Pentecost the following year he received baptism and 10,000 of his subjects followed his example. Augustine asked from Gregory further instructions about relics, books, etc. The pope sent him what he sought and besides the pallium with archiepiscopal rights over the whole Saxon and British church. Augustine now demanded of the Britons submission to his archiepiscopal authority and that they should work together with him for the conversion of the Saxons. But the British would do nothing of the sort. A personal interview with their chiefs under Augustine’s oak inA.D.603 was without result. At a second conference everything was spoilt by Augustine’s prelatic pride in refusing to stand up on the arrival of the Britons. Inclined to compliance the Britons had just proposed this at the suggestion of a member as a sign. Augustine died inA.D.605. The pope nominated as his successor his previous assistant Laurentius. Ethelbert’s heathen son and successor, Eadbald, oppressed the missionaries so much that they decided to withdraw from the field, inA.D.616. Only Laurentius delayed his retreat in order to make a final attempt at the conversion of Eadbald. He was successful. Eadbald was baptized; the fugitives returned to their former posts. In the kingdom of Essex Augustine had already established Christianity, but a change of government had again restored paganism. The gospel, however, soon afterwards got entrance into Northumbria, the most powerful of the seven kingdoms. King Edwin, the founder of Edinburgh, won the hand of the Kentish princess Ethelberga, daughter of Bertha. With her, as spiritual adviser of the young queen, went the monk Paulinus,A.D.625. These two persuaded the king and he again persuaded his nobles and the priests to embrace Christianity. At a popular assembly Paulinus proved the truth of Christianity, and the chief priest Coisi, setting at defiance the gods of his fathers, flung with his own hand a spear into the nearest idol temple. The people thought him mad and looked for Woden’s vengeance. When it came not, they obeyed the command of Coisi and burnt down the temple,A.D.627. Paulinus was made bishop of Eboracum, now York, which pope Honorius on sending a pallium raised to a second metropolitanate.Edwin, however, fell in battle inA.D.633 fighting against Penda, the pagan king of Mercia; Paulinus had to flee and the church of Northumbria was almost entirely rooted up.210
§ 77.5.Celtic Missions among the Anglo-Saxons.—The saviour of Northumbria was Oswald,A.D.635-642, the son of a former king who had been driven out by Edwin. He had found refuge as a fugitive in the monastery of Hy and was there converted to Christianity. To restore the church in Northumbria the monks sent him one of their number, the amiable Aidan. Oswald acted as his interpreter until he acquired the Saxon language. His success was unexampled. Oswald founded a religious establishment for him on the island of Lindisfarne, and supported by new missionaries from Hy, Aidan converted the whole of the northern lands to Christianity. Oswald fell in battle against Penda. He was succeeded as king and also as Bretwalda by his brother Oswy.Irish missionaries joined the missionary monks of Hy, rivalling them in their exertions, and byA.D.660 all the kingdoms of the Heptarchy had been converted to Christianity, and down to this date all, with the exception of Kent, which alone still adhered to the Romish church, belonged to the ancient British communion.211
§ 77.6.The Celtic Element Driven out of the Anglo-Saxon Church.—Oswy perceived the political danger attending the continuance of such ecclesiastical disputes. He succeeded in convincing also his neighbour kings of the need of ecclesiastical uniformity. The only question was as to which of the two should be recognised. The choice fell upon the Romish. Oswy himself most decidedly preferred it.His wife Eanfled, Edwin’s daughter, was a zealous partisan of the Romish church, and on her side stood a man of extraordinary power, prudence and persistence, the abbot Wilfrid, a native Northumbrian, trained in the monastery of Lindisfarne. He had, however, visited Rome, and since then used all his eloquence and skill in intrigue in order to lay all England at the feet of the pope. The queen and the abbot wrought together upon the Bretwalda, and he in his turn upon the other princes. To these personal influences were added others of a more general kind: the preference for things foreign over those of home growth, the brilliancy and preponderating weight of the Romish church, and above all, the gulf, not yet by any means bridged over, between the Saxons and the British. When secret negociations toward the desired end had been carried out, Oswy called a general Synod at the nunnery of Streoneshalch, now Whitby,Synodus Pharensis,A.D.664. Here all the civil and ecclesiastical notabilities of the Heptarchy were assembled. The chief speaker on the Roman side was Wilfrid, on the Celtic side bishop Colman of Lindisfarne. The observance of Easter was the first subject of discussion. Wilfrid referred to the Apostle Peter, to whom the Lord said: Thou art Peter, etc. Then Oswy asked Colman whether it was true that the Lord had said so to Peter. Colman could not deny it, and Oswy declared that he would follow him who had the power to open for them the gates of heaven. And so the question was settled.Oswy as Bretwalda carried out with energy the decisions of the Council, and within a few weeks the scissors had completed the conversion of the whole Heptarchy to the Roman tonsure and the Roman faith.212
§ 77.7.Spread and Overthrow of the British Church on the Continent.—The first Celtic missionary who crossed the channel was the IrishmanFridolin, aboutA.D.500. With several companions he settled near Poitiers in Aquitaine which was then under the Visigoths, converted the Arian bishop of that place together with his congregation to trinitarian orthodoxy, and, under the protection of Clovis, who had meanwhile,A.D.507, overthrown the Visigoth power in Gaul, founded churches and monasteries. Afterwards he wrought among the heathen Alemanni in Switzerland (§78, 1). We have fuller and more reliable accounts of Columba the younger, usually calledColumbanus, an Irishman by birth, who, inA.D.590, with twelve zealous companions, went forth from the British monastery of Bangor in Co. Down, Ireland, and settled among the Vosges mountains. Here they founded the monastery of Luxovium, now Luxeuil, as centre with many others affiliated to it. They cultivated the wilderness and wrought laboriously in restoring church discipline and order in a region that had been long spiritually neglected. But their strict adherence to the British mode of observing Easter caused offence. The severe moral discipline which they enjoined was galling to the careless Burgundian clergy, and the aged Brunehilda swore to compass their death and destruction, because of the influence adverse to her authority which they exercised upon her grandson, the young king Theodoric II. Thus it happened that inA.D.610, after twenty years’ labours, they were driven away. They turned then to Switzerland (§78, 1). But when persecuted here also, Columbanus with his followers migrated to Italy, aboutA.D.612, where, under Agilulf’s protection (§76, 8), he founded the celebrated monastery of Bobbio and contended against Arianism. TheRegula Columbaniextant in several MSS. constitutes a written guide to Christian piety and breathes a free evangelical spirit, while the annexedRegula cœnobialis fratrum de Hibernia, also ascribed to him, bears a rigoristic ascetic character, enjoining frequent flagellations. Columbanus died inA.D.615. The monks of his order joined the Benedictines in the 9th century. On his personal relation to the Romish chair during his residence in Gaul and Italy we get some information from three of his epistles still extant. In the first he asks Gregory the Great for an explanation of the Gallic observance of Easter, and in the second he asks Boniface IV. to confirm his old British mode of reckoning Easter. In both he recognises the pope as occupier of the chair of Peter, and in the second greets him as head of all the churches of Europe and describes the Roman church as the chief seat of the orthodox faith. In the third, on the other hand, he demands of the pope in firm terms an account of his own faith and that of the Roman church. He did so in consequence of a report having reached him, probably through the mention by the 5th œcum. Council (§52, 6) of a schism between Rome and Northern Italy, that the Roman chair had fallen into the heresies of Eutyches and Nestorius.—The ablest of Columbanus’ followers was Gallus or St. Gall. He remained in Switzerland and had his faithfulness rewarded by rich success. After Columbanus had been expelled from France traces of Celtic ecclesiastical institutions may indeed for a considerable time have lingered on among his Frankish scholars and friends animated by the missionary zeal of their master. For from their midst as it would seem proceeded most of those Frankish missionaries who carried the gospel in the 7th century to the German lands (§78). But from the time of the overthrow of the old Celtic ecclesiastical system at the Synod of Streoneshalch inA.D.664, whole troops of its adherents, British, Irish, Scotch and Anglo-Saxons, crossed the channel to convert Germany. With very few exceptions, only the names of these men, and for the most part not even these, have come down to us. But their zeal and success are witnessed to by the fact that even in the beginning of the 8th century throughout all the district of the Rhine, as well as Hesse, Thuringia, Bavaria and Alemannia we find a network of flourishing churches bearing the impress of Celtic institutions.And the overthrow of this great and promising ecclesiastical system, partly by peaceful, partly by violent transportation into the Romish church, was the work of the Anglo-Saxon Winfrid, whom the Romanists, quite rightly from their point of view, honour, under the name of Boniface, as the Apostle of Germany (§78, 4-8).213
§ 77.8.Overthrow of the Old British System in the Iro-Scottish Church.—After the British Church had lost, inA.D.664, all support in the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy, it could not long maintain itself in its own original Celtic home. The Scottish kings on political grounds, in order to avoid giving their Saxon neighbours an opportunity of gratifying the love of conquest under the pretext of zeal for the faith, were obliged to assimilate their church organization with that of the Southerns. The learned Abbot Adamnan of Hy, when, inA.D.684, by order of his king, he visited the Northumbrian court, professed to be there convinced of the correctness of the Romish observance of Easter. But when his monks stoutly resisted, he left the monastery and went on a missionary tour to Ireland where he urged his views so successfully that inA.D.701 the most of the Irish adopted the Roman reckoning. Some years later, inA.D.710, Naitan II., the powerful king of the Picts, asked instructions from Abbot Ceolfrid about the superiority of the Romish practice regarding Easter and the tonsure, forced his whole people to adopt the Romish doctrine and banished the obstinate priests. Finally, the Anglo-Saxon Egbert, educated in Ireland, but subsequently won over to the Romish church, induced by visions and tempests to abandon his projected mission to the heathen Frisians (§78, 3), and to devote himself to what was regarded as the more arduous task of the conversion of the schismatical monks of Hy, succeeded inA.D.716 in so far overcoming their obstinacy that they at least gave up their divergent tonsure and Easter reckoning. Thereafter the Romanists were satisfied with the gradual Romanizing of the whole Celtic regions in the west and north. In worship, constitution and discipline all remained for a long time as it had been of old. The Roman law of celibacy could not win its way. Public worship was conducted and the sacraments dispensed in the language of the people and in the simple forms of primitive times. Canon law was almost everywhere made subordinate to the customs of the national church. Indeed, when inA.D.843, the kingdom of the Picts, where the papacy had made most progress, went by inheritance to the Scottish king Kenneth, he restored even there the old ecclesiastical institutions of their fathers. Malcolm III., who died inA.D.1093, was the first of the Scottish kings to begin the complete, thorough and lasting Romanizing of the whole country. His marriage with the English princess Margaret, a zealous supporter of the papacy, marks the beginning of that policy which was carried out and completed by their son David, who died inA.D.1152. In Ireland the English conquest ofA.D.1171 under Henry III. prepared the way for the complete Romanizing of the island. Still in both Scotland and Ireland down to the 14th century many of the old Celtic priests survived. To them was given the Celtic name Kele-de,servusorvir Dei, Latinized as Colidei, and in modern form, Culdees. They were secular priests who, bound by a strict rule, in companies generally of twelve with a prior over them, like a Catholic canon (§84, 1), devoted themselves to a common spiritual life and activity, maintaining an existence in many places down to the end of the 8th century. The origin of the rule under which they lived is still very obscure. It allowed them to marry but enforced abstinence from marital intercourse during the period of their service, and required of them, besides the charge of the public services, special attention to the poor. In Scotland particularly their societies soon became so numerous that almost the whole secular clergy went over to them. By the forcible introduction of regular canons they were crushed more and more down to the 11th century, or where they still existed, they were deprived of the right of pastoral supervision and administration of the sacraments and reduced to subordinate positions, such as that of choirsingers.—The usual application of the name of Culdees to all, even earlier representatives of the Celtic church, is quite unjustifiable.214