YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

THE LIBRARY OF THE
DIVINITY SCHOOL

XtbratE of Ibistottc TEbeolop^
EDITED BY THE REV. WM. C. PIERCY, M.A.
DEAN AND CHAPLAIN OF WHITEEANDS COLLEGB.

THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
BEFORE A.D. iooo

LIBRARY OF HISTORIC THEOLOGY
EDITED BY THE
REV. WM, C. PIERCY. M.A.
Each Volume Demy 8vo, Cloth, $s. net.
THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN BEFORE A.D. 1000.
Vol. II.. Feb., 1912.
By the Rev. Alfred Pltjmmer, D.D. ((formerly Master
of University College, Durham).
THE CREEDS : THEIR HISTORY, NATURE, AND USE. [Ready.
By the Rev. Harold Smith, M.A. (Lecturer at the London
College of Divinity).
THE CHRISTOLOGY OF ST. PAUL (Hulsean Prize Essay) . [Ready.
By the Rev. S. N. Rostron, M.A. (Principal of St. John's Hall,
Durham).
The following works are in Preparation : —
THE PRESENT RELATIONS OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION.
By the Rev. Professor T. G. Bonney,. D.Sc. (President of the
British Association, 1910).
THE CHURCH AND THE INDIVIDUAL.
By the Rev. W. J. Sparrow Simpson, D.D. (Editor of the
English Church Review).
THE BOOKS OF THE APOCRYPHA: THEIR CONTENTS.
CHARACTER AND TEACHING.
By the Rev. W. O. E. Oesterley, D.D. (London Warden of the
International Society of the Apocrypha, and Examining
Chaplain to the Bishop of London).
THE ETHICS OF TEMPTATION.
By the Ven. E. E. Holmes (Archdeacon of London).
THE HISTORY AND METHODS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION.
By the Rev. Prebendary B. Reynolds (Archbishops' Inspector
of Training Colleges).
BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY.
By Professor Edouard Naville, D.C.L., LL.D.
THE BUILDING UP OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.
By the Rev. Canon R.; B. Girdlestone, M.A. ' (formerly
Principal of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford).
EARLY CHRISTIAN LITERATURE.
' By the Rev. Wm. C. Piercy, M.A. (General Editor).
Other Volumes in this Library will be announced from time to
time, full particulars may be obtained from the Publisher.
LONDON: ROBERT SCOTT.

THE
CHURCHES IN BRITAIIn
BEFORE A.D. IOOO

BY THE REV.
ALFRED PLUMMER, M.A., D.D
LATE MASTER OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, DURHAM
FORMERLY FELLOW AND SENIOR TUTOR
OF TRINITY COLLEGE, OXFORD

Vol. I

LONDON: ROBERT SCOTT
62, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C.
MCMXI

TO
MY BROTHER CHARLES,
WHOSE WOBK
IS A STJBE HELP
WO ALL WHO LABOTTB
IN THE SAME ITELDS,

EDITOR'S GENERAL PREFACE
IN no branch of human knowledge has there been a more
lively increase of the spirit of research during the past few
years than in the study of Theology.
(. Many points of doctrine have been passing afresh through
the crucible ; " re-statement " is a popular cry and, in some
directions, a real requirement of the age ; the additions to
our actual materials, both as regards ancient manuscripts and
archaeological discoveries, have never before been so great as
in recent years ; linguistic knowledge has advanced with the
fuller possibilities provided by the constant addition of more
data for comparative study, cuneiform inscriptions have been
deciphered and forgotten peoples, records, and even tongues,
revealed anew as the outcome of diligent, skilful and devoted
study. Scholars have specialized to so great an extent that many con
clusions are less speculative than they were, while many more
aids are thus available for arriving at a general judgment ; and,
in some directions, at least, the time for drawing such general
conclusions, and so making practical use of such specialized
research, seems to have come, or to be close at hand.
Many people, therefore, including the large ^mass of the parochial
clergy and students, desire to have in an accessible form a review
of the results of this flood of new light on many topics that are of
living and vital interest to the Faith ; and, at the same time,
" practical " questions — by which is really denoted merely the
application of faith to life and to the needs of the day — have
certainly lost none of their interest, but rather loom larger than
ever if the Church is adequately to fulfil her Mission.
It thus seems an appropriate time for the issue of a new series
of theological works, which shall aim at presenting a general
survey of the present position of thought and knowledge in
various branches of the wide field which is included in the study
of divinity.

vi EDITOR'S GENERAL PREFACE
The Library of Historic Theology is designed to supply such
a series, written by men of known reputation as thinkers and
scholars, teachers and divines, who are, one and all, firm upholders
of the Faith.
It will not deal merely with doctrinal subjects, though pro
minence will be given to these ; but great importance will be
attached also to history — the sure foundation of all progressive
knowledge — and even the more strictly doctrinal subjects will
be largely dealt with from this point of view, a point of view the
value of which in regard to the " practical " subjects is too
obvious to need emphasis.
It would be clearly outside the scope of this series to deal with
individual books of the Bible or of later Christian writings, with
the lives of individuals, or with merely minor (and often highly
controversial) points of Church governance, except in so far as
these come into the general review of the situation. This de
tailed study, invaluable as it is, is already abundant in many
series of commentaries, texts, biographies, dictionaries and mono
graphs, and would overload far too heavily such a series as the
present. The Editor desires it to be distinctly understood that the
various contributors to the series have no responsibility whatso
ever for the conclusions or particular views expressed in any
volumes other than their own, and that he himself has not felt
that it comes within the scope of an editor's work, in a series of
this kind, to interfere with the personal views of the writers. He
must, therefore, leave to them their full responsibility for their
own conclusions. t>
Shades of opinion and differences of judgment must exist, if
thought is not to be at a standstill — petrified into an unpro
ductive fossil ; but while neither the Editor nor all their readers
can be expected to agree with every point of view in the details
of the discussions in all these volumes, he is convinced that the
great principles which lie behind every volume are such as must
conduce to the strengthening of the Faith and to the glory of
God. That this may be so is the one desire of Editor and contributors
alike.
W. C. P.
London, Autumn; 1911.

PREFACE
A VERY considerable portion of the contents
-*•*- of these volumes has already appeared in the
pages of The Churchman (April, 1910, to August,
1911) under the title of " Some Chapters in the
History of the Early English Church " ; and the
writer was asked to put these chapters together,
with or without alteration, as might seem best,
and expand them into a book. The present volumes
are the result. For the most part, the articles in
The Churchman will be found in it with little or no
alteration ; but in some portions there is differ
ence of form. The expansions are more consider
able. Not only have the papers which have al
ready appeared been made much more full, but
one important topic, which, to the writer, at any
rate, is one of the most interesting, did not appear in
the published articles at all. The series ended with
" The Revival under Alfred," which makes a fairly
good terminus, but not the best. The revival of
the English Church under King Alfred was a very
real thing, and our gratitude to him for it cannot
vii

viii PREFACE
easily be excessive ; but it was very incomplete.
His most beautiful and fruitful life came to end
before he was able to do anything approaching to
what he desired to do. The revival under Dun
stan in the next century was far more complete.
In some things Dunstan succeeded where Alfred had
failed, not because he was a better or more capable
man than Alfred was, but because the conditions
in which he laboured were more favourable to the
attainment of those aims which both he and Alfred
had in common. Dunstan not only carried on what
Alfred had so well begun to a higher stage of de
velopment ; he added to that work some elements
which Alfred would have added if he had had Dun-
stan's opportunities. From this point of view
the end of Dunstan's life is a better stopping-place
than the end of Alfred's. It has also the advan
tage of bringing us close to the end of the tenth
century. The publication of a book is not sufficiently
justified by the fact that it was produced in
answer to a request. It must have some definite
aim, and it must give evidence of being an in
telligent attempt to reach what is aimed at.
The writer can determine for himself whether he
has a definite end in view, and whether he has
tried to attain to it : his readers must decide
whether the attempt has been in any degree
successful.

PREFACE ix
The aim of the present volume is to give those
who have only a very general knowledge of the his
tory of Christianity in Britain down to the year
a.d. 1000 more exact ideas on two or three points
which are still very imperfectly grasped by a large
number of English people. They are not all of equal
importance, but they are all of sufficient import
ance to make it worth while to take a little trouble
to have a clear conception of what is historically
true. There are still educated people who think that
"the British Church" and "the English Church"
are different names for the same thing, and that it
does not much matter which expression one uses ;
who think that what is true of the one is true of the
other, and that therefore what they read respect
ing the British Church may be asserted respecting
the English Church or (if one prefers the expres
sion) the Church of England. In some cases this
confusion is merely the result of insufficient know
ledge, and is therefore innocent, although unfor
tunate. But in other cases the wish is father to
the thought. The British Church is several cen
turies older than the English Church ; and when
evidence of antiquity is desired, it is convenient to
treat the British Church as identical with the English
Church. Moreover, no one knows the origin of
the British Church, and it is probable that it did
not owe its origin to the Church of Rome ; there-

x PREFACE
fore, when there is a desire to show that the Church
of England is, and ought to be, independent of the
Church of Rome, it is again convenient to treat
the British Church as identical with the English.
Beyond all question, the English nation was con
verted by missionaries from Rome ; and the organi
zation of the first English Christians into a Church
with ministers of its own was the work of persons
sent by Rome for that purpose. The fact, if it be
a fact, that the British Church was for centuries
independent of Rome proves nothing as to the
independence of the Church of England. That must
be established on other grounds. But it cannot
be established by contending that the greater part
of the work of converting the English to Chris
tianity was done by missionaries from the Scottish
Church of Iona. It is doubtful whether this con
tention is true ; and, even if it were true, the in
disputable fact would remain, that the form of
Christianity which quickly and permanently pre
vailed in England was not that of Iona, but that
of Rome.
Still more common than the error of confusing
the English Church with the British Church is that
of supposing that the English Church was at some
time founded by the English State, and that there
fore the State has the rights of a founder over that
which it once created. This is a strange inversion
of historical truth. The English Church existed

PREFACE xi
long before the English State. English Christians
were organized as Churchmen under one archbishop
long before they were organized as subjects under
one king. Our ecclesiastical Constitution under
archbishops, bishops, and parochial clergy, is cen
turies older than our civil Constitution under king,
lords, and commons ; and the Church unity was the
direct parent of the civil unity.
If this work helps any readers to have more
accurate ideas respecting these matters, it will have
attained its object : and it is hoped that it may lead
some to study these subjects in more substantial
works, and in at least some of the original sources.
An Index to the complete work will be given in the
second volume. Among the works of which large use
has been made by the writer are the following : —
W. Bright, Chapters of Early English Church History,
Oxford, 1878.
E. A. Freeman, The Norman Conquest, Oxford, 1867.
Old English History for Children, 1869.
J. Lingard, History of England, Vol. I., London,
1855. The History and Antiquities of the
Anglo-Saxon Church, London, 1845.
A. W. Haddan, Remains, edited by A. P. Forbes,
Oxford, 1876.
Haddan & Stubbs, Councils and Ecclesiastical
Documents, Vol. III., Oxford, 1873.
C. Plummer, Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel,
Oxford, 1892. Baedae Opera Historica,

xii PREFACE
Oxford, 1896. The Ford Lectures for 1901,
Oxford, 1902. Vitae Sanctorum Hiber-
niae, Oxford, 1910.
J. Stevenson, The Church Historians of England,
London, 1853.
W. Stubbs, The Constitutional History of England,
Vol. I., Oxford, 1874. Historical Intro
ductions to the Rolls Series, edited by A.
Hassall, Oxford, 1902. Lectures on Early
English History, edited by A. Hassall
Oxford, 1906.
Numerous articles in the
Dictionary of Christian Biography;
Dictionary of National Biography;
Encyclopaedia Britannica.

CONTENTS VOL. I.

PAGE
Preface ........ vii
CHAPTER I
The British Church ...... l
CHAPTER II
The Conquest of Britain by the English and the
Conquest of the English by the Gospel . 38
CHAPTER III
The Keltic Church of Iona ; St. Columba and St.
Aidan  73
CHAPTER IV
The English Church ; St. Wilfrid and the Vener
able Bede ..... . . 112
CHAPTER V
Monasticism . . . . . . . .147
CHAPTER VI
The English Dioceses ...... 170
Chronological Table ...... 201

XUl

CHAPTER I
THE BRITISH CHURCH
OUR knowledge of the history of Christianity
in the British Isles during the first centuries
of its existence is very meagre. We know some
thing of it before the year a.d. 400 ; and we know
a great deal of it after a.d. 600. But about its
origin we know nothing, and about the two cen
turies which followed the departure of the Roman
legions in 409 we know very little. Let us look
at the twilight which precedes their departure
before attempting to penetrate the darkness which
followed it.
The subject lies outside the scope of this chapter ;
but one who lives in the county which contains
the famous Kent's Cavern at Torquay and the
similar cavern at Brixham, may perhaps be par
doned for reminding his readers that there is
abundant evidence of the existence of man in these
islands thousands of years before the dawn of
history. Implements which must have been

2 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
fashioned by human hands have been found under
neath a stalagmite floor which, geologists tell us,
must have taken 12,000 years to have reached such
a thickness, and may easily have taken 100,000
years.1 Whence came these artificers, who could
make implements of flint and bone, and these
artists who could draw vivid pictures of reindeer
and other animals ? And when the great Ice Age
had extinguished this race, whence came the more
clever artificers, but utterly inartistic people, who
have left their traces above the stalagmite floor
and in other places away from caves and rocks ?
Then came, in two separate waves, immigrations
of Kelts from the Continent, the first knowing the
use of bronze, and the second knowing the use of
iron, and therefore able to drive the first immi
grants before them. And then, with a far better
knowledge of the use of iron, came the Romans.
Julius Caesar landed in the summer or the autumn
of 55 B.C., and in less than two centuries the fron
tier of the Roman Empire had been pushed north
wards to the river Tyne, and secured by the great
wall extending right across from the Tyne to the Sol-
way. This brings us well within the Christian era,
and perhaps within the scope of this chapter : for
the question at once arises, When did Christianity
reach the British Isles ? And that involves the
1 A Memoir of William Pengelly of Torquay, Murray,
1897, pp. 303-14 and passim.

THE BRITISH CHURCH 3
further questions, Who brought the Gospel hither?
and, Who were the first to receive it ?
These are questions which the student of the
history of the British Church cannot avoid asking :
but, like so many questions of great interest and
importance, it is impossible to find an answer to
them. Not because no answers exist. Hundreds
of years ago these same questions were raised ;
and, because no answers were known, interesting
guesses were made. The guesses were thought
satisfactory, for they gratified curiosity and vanity,
and they were accepted as historical fact. We can
see now that these guesses are not supported by any
trustworthy evidence, and that [they are intrinsi
cally improbable. They are therefore abandoned,
and we humbly confess our ignorance of the date
and the manner of the first preaching of the Gospel
in Britain.
That the British Church can claim Apostolic
origin, whether through St. Paul or any one of the
Twelve, is a magnificent conjecture without any
thing but its audacity to recommend it. The
earliest authority for the utterly^improbable statement
that St. Paul visited Britain is the voluminous writer,
Sophronius, who was Patriarch of Jerusalem a.d.
633-7. That is much the same as if the earliest
authority for Augustine's visit to Britain were
William of Malmesbury. When Eusebius, follow-

4 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
ing Origen, traces in his Ecclesiastical History (III i)
the fields in which the Apostles laboured, he says
nothing about any of them having preached in
Britain. The attractive story of Joseph of Arimathaea
being sent by St. Philip to Britain and founding
Glastonbury first appears in the twelfth century,
and William of Malmesbury relates it merely as
what people say (ut ferunt). Neither Gildas nor
Bede know anything of it.
Something a little more substantial, but less
fascinating, may be got from Tertullian's treatise
Against the Jews (vii), where he speaks with enthu
siasm about the spread of the Gospel, and talks of
places in Britain, which the Romans could not
reach, but which had yielded to Christ. There
is nothing incredible in the statement that Chris
tianity was well established in Britain before a.d.
200 ; but Tertullian is so fond of oratorical flour
ishes, that we cannot be sure that he had evidence
for the statement. It may be only a picturesque
way of saying that the Gospel had spread far and
wide. Irenaeus (I x 2), who wrote a little earlier
than Tertullian, mentions Germany, Iberia, and the
Kelts ; but says nothing about Christians in Britain.
If the indefinite boast of Tertullian does not prove
that there were Christians in Britain in a.d. 195,
still less does the silence of Irenaeus prove that
there were no Christians in Britain in a.d. 185.

THE BRITISH CHURCH 5
But it is not improbable that it was between these
two dates that the Christian faith reached these
shores. Nothing positive, however, can be asserted.
Thus far we have the worthless statement about
St. Paul, which cannot be traced earlier than the
seventh century ; the equally worthless statement
about Joseph of Arimathaea, which was an idle tale
in the twelfth century ; and the possibly correct,
but possibly baseless, statement of Tertullian near
the end of the second century. There remains a
highly interesting and very circumstantial narrative,
which comes to us on no less authority than that
of the Venerable Bede (H.E. i 4). He says —
" In the 156th year from the Incarnation of the
Lord, Marcus Antoninus Verus, the 14th from
Augustus, succeeded to the Empire with his brother,
Aurelius Commodus. In whose time, whilst Eleu-
therus, a holy man, was Bishop of the Roman Church,
Lucius, King of Britain, sent a letter to him, en
treating that by his command he might be made a
Christian ; and the fulfilment of his pious request
soon followed. And the Britons embraced the
faith, and preserved it inviolate and entire in
peaceful tranquillity, till the time of the Emperor
Diocletian." Thus Bede writes about a.d. 725. Nennius, writ
ing about 850, gives the story a Welsh turn, and
states that in " a.d. 164 Lucius, the British king,
with all the chieftains of the whole of Britain, re-

6 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
ceived baptism, in consequence of a mission sent
by the Emperors of the Romans and by the Roman
Pope Eucharistus." Three centuries later the imagin
ative Geoffrey of Monmouth (who has done so much
for the embellishment of the dry bones of history,
and for the supply of fiction where facts were not
to be had) gives us the pedigree of King Lucius, the
names of the missionaries, and other wonderful
details. He can tell us that it was the fame of
miracles which induced Lucius to send emissaries
to Rome ; and that when the holy doctors, Faganus
and Durandus arrived in Britain in answer to his
request, he and multitudes from all countries were
baptized. Temples were turned into churches, and
flamens into bishops, archflamens into archbishops,
and so forth.
It is quite evident that Nennius, Geoffrey and Mon
mouth, and others merely reproduce Bede, with varia
tions and additions of their own. Then, what was
Bede's source of information ? His chief authorities
in the early part of his History are Orosius (c. 416)
and Gildas (c. 550). But neither Orosius nor Gildas
say anything about any such incident. The earliest
authority for the story is the Catalogus Felicianus,
which is an interpolated edition of the Liberian
Catalogue. The original Catalogue was made about
a.d. 354, and it has merely the name of Eleutherus
and the length of his episcopate. The interpolated
Catalogue was made nearly 200 years later (c. 530),

THE BRITISH CHURCH 7
and it says of Eleutherus, that he received a letter
from Lucius, King of Britain, asking him to give
directions for making Lucius a Christian ; and this,
in all probability, is Bede's authority. Now we
can trace the growth of the story. In the latter
part of the second century there was a Bishop of
Rome called Eleutherus : that is the one grain of
fact in the whole narrative. In the sixth century
there is a vague tradition of a British king seeking
Christianity, and it is connected with Eleutherus.
In the eighth century Bede reproduces this story,
tries to give dates, and gets them wrong ; for Marcus
Aurelius succeeded in a.d. 161 ; his brother (Lucius
Verus) died in 169 ; and Eleutherus certainly did not
become Bishop of Rome until 172, and perhaps later.
Then Geoffrey of Monmouth and other writers in
vent various details. Evidently, we are dealing with
fable, and with a fable which would be very likely
to be forged in Rome in the fifth or sixth century, in
order to show that the British Church owed its origin
to the Roman See. Similar fabrications, with simi
lar objects, are common enough. Of course a king
of Britain in the second century is impossible ; and
Lucius is not a very likely name for a British chief.
But the story may be taken as evidence of a tradi
tion that there were Christians in Britain about the
time when Tertullian vouches for them, viz. before
the year 200. All that we know for certain is, that
there was a British Church with bishops of its own

8 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
soon after a.d. 300, and probably for some time before
that ; for there were three British bishops at the
Council of Aries in 314. No doubt other bishops,
and probably more than three, were left behind in
Britain while these went to Aries ; and a Church
with more than six bishops is likely to have been
established for some time.
But it is too much to say that Christianity " must
have become the dominant religion " in Britain be
fore a.d. 300. The fact that during the fourth
century the British Church produced the notable
heretic Pelagius (born c. 370) does not prove as much
as that ; and the spread of Christianity on the Con
tinent in the third century is but weak evidence as
to what was going on in so remote and isolated a
province as Britain. Respecting Christianity on
the Continent at that period we have plenty of
evidence ; and respecting paganism in Britain at that
period we have plenty of evidence ; but, respecting
Christianity in Britain during the time of the
Roman occupation, that is, down to the beginning
of the fifth century, the evidence is strangely
meagre. In the multitude of altars, statues,
inscriptions and coins which have been found,
and are still being found, in England, we have
abundant proof of heathen worship at this period,
and not merely the worship of the ordinary deities
of Rome, such as Jupiter, Neptune, Mars and Bel-
lona, but also of various strange gods, who may

THE BRITISH CHURCH 9
represent Keltic divinities, such as Belatucader and
Anociticus. Mithra worship also, which had flowed
from the Orontes into the Tiber, had evidently
flowed also from the Tiber into the Tyne : and the
custom of making gods of the Roman Emperors,
whether dead or alive, is amply illustrated. Sepul
chral inscriptions begin with the customary dedica
tion to the Dii Manes, the deified spirits of the
departed ; and so forth. All this is familiar to
those who are moderately acquainted with the con
tents of our numerous local museums. But we can
make no such list of the archaeological vestiges of
Christian belief and worship during the period of
Roman occupation. All that has been discovered
in the whole of Britain would make but a poor show
in a large museum. It would be rash to infer from
the paucity of Christian remains which date from the
Roman occupation that during the whole of that
period there were but few Christians in Britain ; but
perhaps we may infer with safety that not very
many of those who had wealth and power had
embraced Christianity.
The scanty evidence which we possess respecting
this early British Church tends to establish three
points as probable.
1. This British Church derived its origin from the
Christians of Gaul, and remained to a large extent
dependent upon them.
2. It was confined almost exclusively to the Roman

10 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
settlements and did not spread much in those parts
of the island where the legions did not penetrate.
Tertullian's boast, that places which the Romans
could not reach had yielded to Christ, is not likely
to have had much foundation in fact even much
later than the time of Tertullian.
3. Even if its numbers were not small, its mem
bers were not very distinguished.
Let us look a little more closely at each of these
three points.
1. That Britain should derive its Christianity from
Gaul, rather than from Rome or from Palestine, is
in itself highly probable, owing to the frequent
intercourse between the countries, although it is
nothing more than a conjecture. But the conjecture
is confirmed by the relation between the Churches.
The British Church is found to be frequently draw
ing on the Gallic, and it rarely shows independence
in any matter of importance. When St. Ninian
undertook his mission to the Picts beyond the Forth
about a.d 400, he did so in connexion with St.
Martin of Tours, with whom he stayed on his way
back from Rome, and who is said to have let him
have some masons to help him to build churches
after the Roman method. St. Patrick stayed in
Gaul for thirty or more years under St. Germanus
of Auxerre before undertaking his mission to Ireland
about a.d. 440. Pelagius the heretic, one of the
few famous persons whom the Keltic Church pro-

THE BRITISH CHURCH 11
duced, apparently could not find scope for his energy
in Britain, but lived and studied and argued on the
Continent and in the East. And when Pelagianism
began to spread in Britain in the fifth century, the
British Church had no teachers competent to deal
with the difficulty and sent to Gaul for help. A
Gallic synod sent two bishops, Germanus of Auxerre
and Lupus of Troyes ; and Germanus is said to
have received a commission not only from the Gallic
synod but also from the Roman see. These two
Gallic divines, both of them disciples of the school
of Lerins, confuted the British Pelagians in open
debate, a debate in which, as Bede (i 17) says with
characteristic sympathy, " on the one side was
piety, on the other pride." Soon after this theolo
gical victory, these two Gallic prelates contributed
to what is known as the Alleluia Victory. They
encouraged the British to withstand an attack of
Picts and Saxons, and joined the British in their
march. It is worth noting, in connexion with what
was said just now about the number of Christians
in Britain, that we are told that at this crisis, Lent
430, the majority of the British army were pagans.
But Germanus and Lupus converted them ; they
were baptized on Easter Eve, and soon afterwards
put their foes to flight with their shouts of Alleluia.
Germanus and Lupus left Britain, and then Pela
gianism again began to assert itself. Again the
British teachers were helpless, and sent for help

12 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
from Gaul. In 447 Germanus once more returned,
this time with Severus, Bishop of Treves, who was a
disciple of Lupus. This time the Pelagian teachers
were sent to the Continent that they might there be
better instructed than they could be at home.
It is further evidence of the connexion between
the British and the Gallic Churches that sacred
buildings in Britain are so often dedicated to Gallic
saints — St. Martin, St. Hilary, and St. Germain.
And the intellectual superiority of the Gallic Church
is shown by its literary productiveness. We know
of only one Christian writer in Britain, the semi-
Pelagian Bishop Fastidius, and he wrote only one
book. He is not mentioned as the bishop of any
see ; but in the Keltic Church it was not uncommon
to have bishops unattached, ready for any episcopal
duties. Under this head a word must be said about the
peculiar British custom respecting the keeping of
Easter. It is sometimes supposed that the Keltic
custom was a continuation of the old Quarto-deci-
man practice of the Church of Ephesus, and that this
is evidence that the British Church derived its
Christianity from Asia Minor. Whether or no
Christianity came to Britain from the East, the
Keltic custom about keeping Easter is probably
quite independent of the fact. It seems to have
been a mere blunder. The Keltic cycles for calcu
lating the time of Easter were old and faulty, and

THE BRITISH CHURCH 13
they produced incorrect dates different from those
observed by Rome and the rest of the Church. The
Paschal customs of the British Church in no way
weaken the reasonable conjecture that it derived
its origin from Gaul.
2. We pass on to the second point — that Chris
tianity in Britain does not seem to have taken much
root except where there were Roman settlements.
The sees of the three bishops from Britain who
attended the Council of Aries in 314 were Roman
headquarters. This is quite certain with regard to
two of them, York and London, and|highly probable
with regard to the third ; but about the name of
the third there is uncertainty.1 The names of the
British martyrs, Albanus and Julius (if we may
regard them as historical), are Roman. Among the
very rare Christian remains of this period we have
sepulchral inscriptions which are obviously Roman,
such as Vivas in Deo or Spes in Deo ; and these rare
traces of early Christianity have been found in places
which are known to have been Roman stations,
such as Canterbury, Dover, Richborough, and
Porchester.2 1 De civitate Coloniae Londinensium {? Lindensium =
Lincoln ; Legionensium = Caerleon, " the camp of the
Legion"). 2 Altars dedicated " to the old gods " (Dibus Veteribics
or Deo Veteri) are not uncommon in the north of England,
almost always at military stations. They imply that Chris
tianity had become dominant at the time when they were
erected.

14 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
%
This brings us to the third point. (3) The rarity
of antiquarian remains of British Christianity seems
to indicate that British Christians, during the time
of the Roman occupation, were certainly not wealthy
and perhaps not very numerous. Otherwise how
can we account for the abundant remains of Roman
paganism side by side with the extreme paucity of ,
remains of Roman or British Christianity ? We
infer that Christian buildings were neither numerous
nor substantial. At Silchester a small building,
which is believed to be the remains of a Christian
Church of the basilica type, has been discovered ;
and perhaps we may get something more of the kind
in the excavations at Manchester. But the earliest
British churches were of a very unsubstantial char
acter, wattle-work plastered over with earth. Later
they were built of timber, and finally of stone. But
by the time that stone was used for Christian build
ings the British Church had been driven into the
Western half of the island ; and the English Church
— newly born among the heathen invaders from the
Continent — was rapidly taking its place. One con
jectures that a Church which had such poor buildings
must have consisted of members who themselves
were poor. And with regard to that conjecture we
have another piece of evidence. At the Council of
Rimini in 359 Constantius offered to pay out of the
treasury the expenses of all the bishops who attended.
Out of more than 400 bishops, only three availed

THE BRITISH CHURCH 15
themselves of this offer, and they were the three
bishops from Britain. They were so poor that they
asked for their travelling expenses. And they seem
to have been persons of little influence. Neither at
Aries nor at Rimini do the British bishops seem to
have made any show. The Keltic Church no doubt
did good missionary work, but it seems to have had
little influence in Western Europe. Its peculiar
customs with regard to the Paschal cycle and the
form of tonsure, about which Bede thinks so much,
and its peculiar Latin version of the Bible, were
probably mere results of its isolation. It did not
deliberately adopt them in opposition to other
Churches. Nowhere do we find much evidence of
either originality or power ; and we know that,
after the isolation of Britain became more complete
owing to the departure of the Roman legions, a
grievous demoralization in the British Church took
place. This demoralization is painted in very strong
colours by Gildas and Bede, and is perhaps some
what exaggerated ; but in the fifth century the
clergy are said to have taken the lead in vice, and
in the sixth century the state of Christian society
is worse rather than better. " Britain has priests,"
he says, " but they are foolish." Simony was
rife, and bad men tried to whitewash their char
acters by buying some ecclesiastical office. There
were a few good pastors, whose value was above
price. But even those who lived respectably them-

16 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
selves, were cowardly in regard to rebuking sin.
As for the chieftains in the purely British districts,
they did what they pleased, and seemed to think
that the guilt of any sin could be cancelled by liberal
almsgiving. It was stated above that by the time that the
British Christians had begun to erect substantial
stone churches, the newborn English Church was
beginning to take its place. This refers, of course,
to the conversion of the Saxons and the Angles
(who may be conveniently spoken of as English),
largely through the instrumentality of the Roman
missionary, Augustine. It seems right to add here
a word of caution against the common confusion
between the British Church and the English Church.
This mistake is still made, even by persons who
undertake to instruct others, and therefore are speci
ally bound to endeavour to be accurate ; and this
particular inaccuracy is not a mere slip, which any
one might pardonably make, but a rather serious
error, which it is quite easy to avoid. In the period
with which we are dealing — viz., Britain in the
first ten centuries of the Christian era — the British
Church and the English Church were quite dis
tinct, and had very little to do with one another,
although at a much later date they became united.
As we have already seen, it is impossible to say when
the British Church began : but it was in existence,
and possessed bishops, a.d. 300. But to cite the

THE BRITISH CHURCH 17
fact of British bishops attending the Councils of
Aries and of Rimini as evidence of the antiquity
of the English Church is preposterous. At that time
there was Britain, but there was no England, for
the English had not yet reached these shores. The
ancestors of English Churchmen were then heathen
tribes on the Continent. The history of the Eng
lish 'Church begins with the episcopate of Archbishop
Theodore, a.d. 668, " the first Archbishop," as
Bede (iv 2) says, " whom all the English Church
obeyed." Or, if we like, we may date its beginning
from the landing of Augustine, a.d. 597 : but that
is the very earliest date that is possible. By that
time the British Church had been almost destroyed
by the heathen English, and the remnant of it re
fused to assist Augustine in the work of converting
these heathen destroyers. In that great work the
Scottish Church of Ireland and of West Scotland
rendered a great deal of help ; but the British Church
stood aloof. Bede tells us that down to his own
day (673-735) British Christians still treated Eng
lish Christians as pagans. We must carefully avoid
using the expression " English Church " of anything
that existed earlier than 597. By that means we
shall keep our own ideas more clear, and shall per
haps avoid confusing the ideas of other people. It
is, no doubt, a great matter to be able to see clearly
that the English Church was not brought into exist
ence by Henry VIII. and Cranmer, and that it is
c

18 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
not only as old as the kingdom of England, but still
older than it. Yet we must not mar a good and
glorious claim by exaggerating it, and by attempt
ing to give to the Church of England an antiquity
which is unreal and can be easily disproved. The
error may be said to be a venerable one in point of
antiquity. It is remarkable how many of the Lives
of St. Alban speak of him as the " proto-martyr of
the English," " proto-martyr Anglorum." The mar
tyrdom, if it took place at all, must be dated near
the year given in the Saxon Chronicle, a.d. 283,
at which time there were no Angles or English in
Britain. In the course of this chapter various authorities
have been mentioned as sources of the information
upon which the history of this period is built.
Before continuing our examination of the period, it
will be useful to have some idea of these authorities
and of the kind of information which they give us.
Those already mentioned are Orosius, Gildas, Bede,
Nennius, Geoffrey of Monmouth, and William of
Malmesbury ; and to these we shall have to add a
few more.
Paulus Orosius was born at Tarragona in Spain
before a.d. 390, and he died later than 417. He
was a pupil of St. Augustine of Hippo, and he visited
Jerome at Bethlehem about 415. He returned to
Africa in 416, and there, at the request of Augustine,
wrote the historical work which afterwards received

THE BRITISH CHURCH 19
the curious title of Ormista.1 It is a sort of sketch
of the history of the world, derived from the Old and
New Testaments, and from a variety of profane
writers, chiefly Latin. It was written in about a
year, and therefore we are not surprised to be told
that it abounds in mistakes. But it comes down to
the year 416, and therefore the concluding portion
is contemporary evidence. As it was written under
the sanction of Augustine, and was the one history
of the world which was written by a Christian, and
a Christian of orthodox belief, it became very popu
lar, and was quoted largely by later writers, including
Bede. King Alfred made a free translation of it
for the use of his people. In the sixteenth century
it was translated into German and Italian.
Our earliest native historian is the perplexing
British ecclesiastic named Gildas, who is a person
even more puzzling than the Presbyter John. In
the latter case we have only to make up our minds,
if we can, whether there were two Johns, the Apostle
and the Elder, or only one. In the other case we
have the offer of two, three, four, or even six per
sons, all bearing the name of Gildas, and capable
of being confused with one another. There is good
authority for the convenient view that we need be
lieve in only one Gildas, and therefore that we need
1 Various conjectures have been made as to the origin of
the title. Perhaps the least improbable is that it is Orosii
mundi historia contracted into one word.

20 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
not discuss which of them wrote the historical work
with which we are concerned. He was a monk of
Bangor, who wrote about a.d. 550. His work is
commonly spoken of as one treatise, " A Book of
Lamentation on the Ruin of Britain " x ; but it is
perhaps better regarded as two — " The History of
Gildas," and " The Epistle of Gildas." The former
is a record of the events of British History from the
arrival of the Romans down to Gildas's own time.
The latter is a querulous book of lamentation in the
form of a letter addressed to the Britons, reproach
ing kings, priests and people with grievous and numer
ous crimes. The writer wrings his hands over the
tyranny of the rulers, the avarice, ignorance, and idle
ness of the clergy, and the general immorality of
the population. It is the irreligion of the Britons
that has brought upon them the terrible visitation of
the English invaders, whose barbarities to the
Britons are described. If instead of weeping over
the wickedness, which he possibly exaggerates,
Gildas had simply told us what he had seen himself,
and what he had heard from older men, his work
would have been invaluable. But he does supply
some useful information ; and his work has received
the recognition of England's first great scholar,
Bede, who adopted the latter part of Gildas with
out hesitation, and incorporated it in his own His-
1 De Exeidio Britanniae Liber Querulus.

THE BRITISH CHURCH 21
tory. In the Homilies attributed to Archbishop
Wulstan of York, written in 1012, a leaf is taken
out of Gildas's work, in order to rebuke the Eng
lish, who in their turn have become wicked and
ought to take warning from the punishments which
their forefathers inflicted on the Britons. Wulstan
says : " There was a prophet of the people in the
time of the Britons called Gildas. He wrote about
their misdeeds, how they so angered God, that at
last He caused the army of the English to conquer
their land and utterly destroy the strength of the
Britons. And that came about through the irregu
larity of the clergy and the lawlessness of the laity.
Come, then, let us take warning by such, and sooth
it is that I say. We know of worse deeds done
among the English than we ever heard of among
the Britons." Is it professional tenderness for his
own order which makes the Archbishop speak of
the " irregularity " of the priests ; they broke their
rules ; but of the " lawlessness " of the people ? 2
The moral which Gildas drew has always been a
favourite one, from the time of Job's friends on
wards. The heathen English had mingled the
blood of the Christian Britons with their sacrifices ;
therefore, the Britons must have been exceptionally
wicked. But turned as Wulstan turned it, it yields
a valuable lesson. Those who persist in wickedness

1 »

Regolbryce " and " Lahbryce."

22 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
have reason to fear the severe judgments of God.
We pass from a not very attractive British writer
to a most attractive English one. The Ecclesias
tical History of the Venerable Bede is our next source
of information. It is the earliest that we possess
of really first-rate importance for our national
history, and it is scarcely possible to over-estimate
its value. It was finished in the year 731, just
four years before his death ; and it was written
when he was in his prime, not yet sixty years of
age. It consists of five Books, of which the first
takes us from the landing of Julius Caesar, 55 B.C.,
to the landing of Augustine, a.d. 597. The opening
portion is mainly a compilation from Orosius, Eutro-
pius, Gildas, and others ; although Bede, accord
ing to the common practice of his time, does not,
as a rule, mention the name of the author whom
he is adopting. The second Book takes us from the
arrival of Augustine in 597 to the arrival of Paulinus
in 633. This brings us within forty years of Bede's
own time ; and it is the three remaining Books,
treating of the century between the arrival of
Paulinus and the completion of Bede's Ecclesiastical
History, which are of such priceless value. These
three Books tell us of what rests on Bede's own
personal knowledge, or on that of the previous
generation with which he conversed.
Let us see what that means ; and a few facts
will help to illustrate the meaning. As a child, the

THE BRITISH CHURCH 23
present writer has talked with Louis Philippe, the
" Citizen " King of the French, who was born
October 6, 1773. If the child had had the wit to ques
tion him, he could of course have told a great deal
about his father, the wretched Philippe Egalit£, who
joined the Revolutionists and took part in the
murder of Louis XVI, but was himself guillotined
November 6, 1793 ; and he could have given
many personal recollections of the leaders in the great
Revolution of 1789.
A friend of the present writer, H. G. Keene, CLE.,
when he was a young man, sat at luncheon in 1846
next to an old lady who told him that he reminded
her of Goldsmith, the author of The Vicar of Wake
field, who died April 4, 1774. This lady was Mrs.
Gwatkin, better known to students of the eighteenth
century as Offy Palmer, the younger niece of Sir
Joshua Reynolds. She kept house for the famous
portrait-painter after he moved to the house in Lei
cester Fields, and has been immortalized in his
picture of " The Strawberry Girl." Sir Joshua's
house was the rendezvous of many of the literary
lights of that time ; and Mrs. Gwatkin could give
personal recollections of a number of them.
Another instance is even more remarkable. A
Mr. Fraser,1 who was alive in January, 1907, and
1 Letter in The Times, January 11, 1907. In The Times
of January 26, 1907, was a letter from H. B. G., who as a
child had known an old lady at Redbourne near St. Albans,

24 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
may be living still, had, as a boy, known a Mrs.
Butler in Edinburgh, who had witnessed the entry
of Prince Charles Edward into Holyrood after the
Battle of Prestonpans on September 21, 1745, and
had afterwards seen him ride up and down the
Canongate. So that well within the twentieth
century we have a person who had heard from an
eye-witness, what took place in the first half of the
eighteenth century.
Now let us apply these illustrations to the case
of Bede. He was born in 672 or 3. As a boy he
may easily have talked to people who were born
before 600. It would have been just possible for
him to have known a person that had known St.
Columba, who died June 9, 597, and very easy for
him to have known one that had known St. Colum
ban, who died in 615. He probably had seen Adam-
nan, Abbot of Iona, who wrote the Life of Columba
(iii 4 ; v 15) ; and he may have talked to per
sons who had seen Pope Gregory the Great, and
still more possibly to persons who had seen some
of Gregory's successors, Boniface IV, V, Honorius I,
who had seen the Duke of Cumberland marching with the
Foot Guards through Redbourne to fight the Pretender.
This would be in November, 1745, for the Duke reached
Stone December 3, and the invaders reached Derby December
4. They began their retreat December 6, before the Duke
could get back to them. He defeated them at Culloden
April 16, 1746. Many more " Links with the Past " were given
in The Times during 1910,

THE BRITISH CHURCH 25
and others. In short, Bede and the generation
which he knew cover the whole of the seventh cen
tury and the first third of the eighth. The three
last Books of his chief work are history at first
hand. We must not suppose from its title of Historia
Ecclesiastica that it is what we should call Church
History nowadays. It contains a great deal of
purely secular history as well as Church matters.
In those days the Church was the centre of history.
It contained very often the ablest men of affairs
as well as the most learned scholars. The chief
statesmen and the chief legislators were frequently
enough ecclesiastics. Hence the history of any
period was of necessity, to a large extent, ecclesi
astical history, not merely because the persons
who had culture enough to write history were monks
or clerics, but because so many of the people who
made history were ecclesiastics. When Bede calls
his History of the English Nation Ecclesiastical
History, he does not so much mean to limit the field
that he is going to traverse as to insist upon its
importance. The epithet " ecclesiastical " is op
posed, not to " secular," but to " trivial " ; it does
not intimate that he intends to avoid secular his
tory, but that what he records is of the highest
interest. He wishes to tell us all that is best worth
remembering about the land that was his birthplace
and his home, down to his own day.

26 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
We cannot, many, of us, study original sources
of history. Most of us must be content to take our
history at second or third hand. This is specially
the case of the later periods, about which the sources
are so abundant as to be bewildering. But every
educated Englishman who aspires to a knowledge
of the early history of England should not only
know something of Bede, but read him for them
selves. Not only is Bede amply worth reading for his
own sake, but he is a valuable check upon the state
ments of other and later writers. A study of Bede
will often show that what later writers give as his
tory is simply copied from Bede, and has no other
source whatever. So that to have mastered Bede
is to have mastered a good deal of later writers
as well. Of the period treated of by Bede in
his last three Books, two-thirds, or more, of what
we know comes from him. If he had never
written, our knowledge would have been meagre
indeed. Next to Bede in importance must be placed
what is sometimes called the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,
but should rather be called the Saxon or the
English Chronicles, for there are several of them.
We probably owe them to the wise patriotism of
Alfred the Great. There had been local chronicles
before his time ; but he seems to have had the
grand idea of a National Chronicle, and to have

THE BRITISH CHURCH 27
caused it to be executed, himself perhaps contribut
ing some of the entries about his own wars. And,
just as he sent copies of his own translation of Pope
Gregory's Pastoral Care to all the bishops, to assist
them in what Gregory himself calls " the art of
arts, the care of souls," so Alfred appears to have
sent copies of his National Chronicle to different
religious houses to be preserved and kept up to date.
The chief home of the Chronicle was Winchester ;
but there were other places, and at each the Chronicle
would be likely to develop in a different way. It
is the early part of the Chronicle, as collected by
Alfred, which chiefly concerns us ; for his work
ended in 892, and our period ends rather more than
a century later. These English Chronicles have
no equal in literature. Great as is their value as
sources of historical information, they are per
haps even more valuable as a unique monument
of language, exhibiting the changes through which
it passed from what is called Anglo-Saxon to what
is known as Early English. Their general truthful
ness is proved by their agreement with evidence
which cannot lie ; the evidence of names, and of
archaeological remains, such as surviving camps,
roads, forts, dykes, and barrows. They repre
sent the historical demands and literary taste of
many generations from the crudest ideas of history
to something which, if still simple, is worthy of the
name of literature.

28 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN !
The Historia Britonum of Nennius seems to have
existed in several editions, the chief one of which
was written about 796. Nothing is known of the
writer ; and indeed we are not certain that his
name was Nennius : but for convenience we con
tinue to call him Nennius. This History of the
Britons is mainly confined to Wales ; and, though
it was written after Bede, it does not reach even to
a.d. 700. It contains some valuable quotations
from a much earlier writer who described the struggles
between the English and the Britons in Wales be
tween 547 and 679.1 It is in this portion that the
name of King Arthur is found. In Nennius's own
work tales about enchanters and dragons are given
as serious history, and the chronology is absurd.2
Is King Arthur to be swept into the region of fable,
along with the dragons and enchanters ? We must
settle that question with Nennius, for there is no
earlier authority for Arthur's existence. The later
writers who tell us so much about King Arthur had
no other source of information than Nennius, and
they enlarged and embellished Nennius just as they
pleased. On the whole, it is probable that there
was such a king as Arthur, and that he was a brave
and able leader in war. " Then did Arthur fight
against the Saxons along with the chiefs of the Bri
tons, but he himself was leader of the wars." This
1 Nennius lvii-lxv, " The Genealogies of the Kings."
2 He makes our Lord to have. been born A.p. 183,

THE BRITISH CHURCH 29
may be a quotation from "The Genealogies of the
Kings," or may be Nennius's own remark.
It is to Geoffrey of Monmouth that the popu
larity of the legends about King Arthur, and of
many other legends, is mainly due. He lived be
tween 1100 and 1154, and was probably a Benedic
tine monk. Hence his love of literature and his
literary skill. He was over fifty years of age when
he was ordained priest on February 16, 1152. Eight
days later he was consecrated Bishop of St. Asaph ;
but he died in 1154, without having visited his
diocese. His influence as a writer has been im
mense. His Historia Britonum is important, not
so much as a source of historical truth as of histori
cal romance. It consists mainly of fiction. It is
based upon Nennius and a book of Breton legends,
which is no longer extant. But we need not doubt
that it existed, or that it came from Brittany. At
that time the Welsh and the Breton languages
were almost identical, as like one another as the York
shire and Devonshire dialects of to-day.
Geoffrey's History of the Britons had two great
results, one literary and the other political. The
literary result was, that, in less than fifty years,
the romances of King Arthur and the Round Table,
the Holy Grail, Sir Perceval, Sir Lancelot, etc.,
partly based upon Geoffrey, became current ; and
Geoffrey's stories of Merlin and King Arthur spread
not only to England and France, but to Germany

30 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
and Italy. His writings had an enormous circu
lation, and the later chroniclers down to Holinshed
treated Geoffrey as an historical authority. From
him the mediaeval_poets drew much of their material,
and there is scarcely a tale of European chivalry
down to the sixteenth century which does not owe
something to Geoffrey of Monmouth.
The political result of his romances was a very
happy one. These fictions did a great deal towards
softening the bitterness of race-hatred between
British, English, and Norman elements in the popu
lation of the island. All of them, according to
Geoffrey's stories, had a common ancestry : they
were descended from Trojan fugitives, who had taken
refuge in Britain after the destruction of Troy by
the Greeks. There was not one word of truth in
this legend ; but, thanks to Geoffrey, the legend
became widely known and was accepted as history:
and political results, as we all know, depend, not
upon what is true, but upon what is believed. Who
would wish to quarrel with a romantic tale which
did much to hasten the unification of the people of
England? William of Malmesbury was contemporary with
Geoffrey of Monmouth (1095-1148), but he was a
very different kind of writer. He is no mere chroni
cler, but, like Bede, he is an historian. He groups
events, and tries to account for them. He was a
learned Benedictine, with wide and intelligent sym-

THE BRITISH CHURCH 31
pathies. His father was a Norman and his mother
an Englishwoman ; and he has affinities with both
races, but his affections are with his father's nation.
His De Gestis Pontificum Anglorum, from the mission
of Augustine to a.d. 1123, is the basis of the early
ecclesiastical history of England on which nearly all
subsequent writers have relied. He also wrote De
Gestis Regum Anglorum, extending from a.d. 449
to 1128. He seems to have read and used almost
everything that he could lay his hands on ; but
many of the writers whose works he uses are known
to us. Chief among these are Bede and the Chroni
clers. To these we may add Alcuin, Ethelwerd,
Eadmer, and William of Poitiers. He is, however,
much more valuable for the period near to his own
time than for that with which we are at present
concerned. Henry of Huntingdon is another contemporary,
for he was still living in 1154. He also relies chiefly
on Bede and the Chronicles, but he has preserved
some early traditions and songs. He is remarkable
as being a secular cleric who wrote history at a time
when nearly all literature was produced by monks.
Oddly enough, he is" found to be less valuable as he
gets near to his own time.
Yet another writer who lived about the same
time is Simeon of Durham, who died in 1130. He
relies much on Bede's Ecclesiastical History and
Life of St. Cuthbert, and he makes use of three

82 THE CHURCHES LN BRITAIN
different recensions of Asser's Life of Alfred. But
he is an important authority for the history of
Northumbria, especially in the tenth century.
Florence of Worcester is one more chronicler whose
work carries us down through our period into the
twelfth century, viz. to a.d. 1116. He uses the
Chronicles and Marianus Scotus, who himself was
a mere compiler from Bede and the Chronicles, and
died 1086. It is not until the eleventh century that
Florence becomes an independent authority ; but
he is generally worthy of being consulted. Marianus
Scotus worked from good MSS., and therefore is
sometimes valuable for deciding what was the true
reading of the sources which he used. Florence also
made use of Asser's Life of Alfred, and he very often
enables us to get the true text of Asser, which has
been grossly corrupted by editors. Florence died in
1118. At this point we may make a rough summary of
the materials that have been mentioned.
Orosius brings us down to 416 ; Gildas to 560 ;
Nennius to 688 ; Bede to 731 ; the Saxon Chronicles
and subsequent writers carry us to the end of our
period and far beyond it.
These sources of information are supplemented by
letters, especially those of Gregory, Boniface, and
Alcuin, and by various biographies, which are chiefly
Lives of Saints. Some of these are of great value.
The Life of St. Germanus, who died in 448, wasVritten

THE BRITISH CHURCH 33
by Constantius, a presbyter of Lyons, some thirty
or forty years later {Life of St. German, in Lives of
the English Saints). There is also a metrical Life by
a monk called Hereric in Acta Sanctorum, July 31,
which claims to give facts that had been omitted
by Constantius.
i More important than this is the Life of St. Colum
ba, who lived between 521 and 597, written by Adam-
nan, who, after an interval of eighty-two years, suc
ceeded Columba as Abbot of Iona, a position which
he filled from 679 to 704. Of this work we shall
have to take more account in a later chapter. Bede
has left us biographies of six abbots of his own
monastery at Jarrow and Wearmouth, and also a
Life of St. Cuthbert, respecting which more will be
said hereafter.
The Life of Aldhelm by Faricius, a monk of the
monastery of Malmesbury, was written early in the
eleventh century, but was rather soon almost super
seded by William of Malmesbury, who in the fifth
book of his Gesta Pontificum Anglorum rewrote the
Life by Faricius, with additions from Aldhelm's
own writings and from local tradition. We have
Letters and also Poems by Aldhelm himself, and they
are of historical importance. He is said to have
been the first Englishman (that is, the first about
whom we have adequate evidence) " who cultivated
classical learning with any success, and the first of
whom any literary remains have been preserved." D

34 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
Leutherius, who was Bishop in Wessex 670 to 676,
made Aldhelm Abbot of Malmesbury ; and when
the vast diocese of Wessex was divided in 705, Ald
helm became Bishop of Sherborne, and Daniel became
Bishop of Winchester. They were both of them
enthusiasts for education, and founded schools in
Wessex which did excellent work ; but Aldhelm
died in 709, whereas Daniel lived till 745. Bede
mentions Daniel (H.E. iv. 16). After stating that
it was not until all the provinces of Britain had
embraced the faith of Christ that the Isle of Wight
did so, he adds that, " no man there received the
degree of the ministry or the see of a bishop, before
Daniel, who is now Bishop of the West Saxons."
The schools founded by Aldhelm and Daniel produced
Boniface and other missionaries. We still have
letters, between Daniel and Boniface (Monumenta
Moguntina, Vol. III. of Jaffa's Bibliotheca rerum
Germanicarum). The Life of Wilfrid by Eddi (Aeddi, Haede, or
Eddius), who knew Wilfrid well, was used by Bede,
who also knew Wilfrid personally. It has been
called by Hardy " the first independent piece of
genuine biography in our literature." It is earlier
than Bede's Life of Cuthbert, although not earlier
than the Lindisfarne Life of Cuthbert which Bede
used. It was written at the request of Wilfrid's
friends, and a biography written by a friend for
friends is not likely to be impartial. But impar-

THE BRITISH CHURCH 35
tiality is one of the first requirements in writing the
Life of such a man as Wilfrid. Somewhat later,
Frithegode of Canterbury wrote Wilfrid's Life in
verse, and Archbishop Odo wrote a preface to it.
Eadmer wrote a third Life, making use of the two
earlier ones.
We mention next that intricate literary puzzle
which is known as Asser's Life of Alfred. It cannot
be placed later than 974. It " is an authority to be
used with criticism and caution ; partly because
we have always to be alive to the possibility of
interpolation, partly because the writer's Celtic
imagination is apt to run away with him. But
that there is a nucleus which is the genuine work
of a South Walian contemporary of Alfred, I feel
tolerably sure, and I know no reason why that
contemporary should not be Asser of Menevia." x
All these authorities, whether histories or chronicles
or biographies, show us by direct quotation and in
other ways that there was a great deal of material
which was known to the producers of these writings,
but has not come down to us. And while we re
joice at having received so much that is of value,
and in one or two cases, so much that is excellent,
it is impossible not to lament that so much has
perished. And it may have been the case that the
popularity of some of the writings which have just
1 Ford Lectures for 1901, p. 52.

36 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
been named have caused other writings, perhaps
more valuable but less popular, to fall into neglect
and then to perish. Popularity does not always
depend upon excellence, but at least in one case it
did, viz. in that of the Ecclesiastical History of
Bede : and it is possible that, just as Grote's brilliant
History of Greece caused Thirlwall's very valuable
History to be set aside soon after it had been pub
lished, so Bede's work, by its conspicuous superi
ority, may have driven other writings of real merit
out of the field. The difference between the two
cases is this, that Bede's rivals were extinguished,
and are lost to us ; whereas Thirlwall's History of
Greece still survives to instruct all who care to read
it. A more complete parallel is the effect produced
by the Canonical Gospels. The many narratives
known to St. Luke have perished, owing to the
relentless law of the survival of the fittest.
It remains to mention our chief authorities for
the long and important career of Dunstan, during
which so much of the ecclesiastical history of Eng
land previous to the Norman Conquest was made.
These are chiefly Lives of Dunstan by various writers.
The most important is Vita auctore B., a nameless
writer who tells us that he was a " Saxon " priest,
which may mean a priest from the old Saxon land.
He knew Dunstan personally. Adelard, a monk
of Ghent, wrote another Life for Archbishop Aelf-
heah or Alphege, who was murdered by the Danes

THE BRITISH CHURCH 37
in 1012. He had contemporaneous information,
and his work, which was intended to supply read
ings for the Canterbury monks, shows how very
quickly legends began to grow up respecting Dun
stan. Osbern, a monk of Canterbury, who was a
friend of Lanfranc, wrote both a Vita Sancti Dunstani
and also a Liber miraculorum Sancti Dunstani, and
it is he who is the first to tell the story of the saint
catching the evil one by the nose. He was followed
by Eadmer and William of Malmesbury, each of
whom wrote a Life of Dunstan because the Life
by Osbern did not seem to be satisfactory ; and
Eadmer, like Osbern, added a Book of Miracles ;
but Eadmer, who was the friend of Anselm, as Os
bern was of Lanfranc, has the credit of being less
fond of miracles than most monkish writers are.
It is, however, as the historian of his own times
that Eadmer is chiefly valuable.
Materials for history now become abundant,
and guidance as to the principal sources may be
found at the end of articles on the leading persons
and writers in the Dictionary of Christian Biography
and the Dictionary of National Biography ; also in
the Introduction to English History by Gardiner and
Mullinger.

CHAPTER II
THE CONQUEST OF BRITAIN BY THE
ENGLISH, AND THE CONQUEST OF
THE ENGLISH BY THE GOSPEL
DURING the fifth and sixth centuries Britain
was invaded and conquered by Teutonic
tribes whom we commonly speak of as Jutes, Saxons,
and Angles. Of these three peoples, Tacitus men
tions only the last. But a good deal of what he
tells us respecting other German tribes is likely to
be true of these three also. Of the history of them
between Tacitus and Bede we know very little.
But two important points may be regarded as
established. (1) The Teutonic invasion of Britain was emigra
tion, and not mere conquest : it was a surplus
population, or a disturbed population, seeking a new
home, not a casual horde of marauders seeking fresh
plunder. Such national migrations were not un
common in the fourth and fifth centuries after
Christ ; e.g. that headed by Alaric. Moreover, rwe
know enough of the condition of central Europe
38

THE CONQUEST OF BRITAIN 39
in the fifth century to understand that it was likely
enough that Teutonic tribes would be set moving.
In the twenty years between 432 and 452, the Huns,
led by the terrible Attila, were a scourge and des
truction to many and a horror to all ; and the
force which had set the Goth and the Burgundian in
motion may easily have shaken German tribes
from their ancestral hills and forests, and have
sent Jutes, Saxons and Angles across the North
Sea to seek a new home in Britain.
(2) These emigrants came from a country which
already had a definite organization of its own ;
they were not mere robbers with no other govern
ment than that to which they were willing to submit
at the hands of a capable leader. Consequently,
when they landed in Britain, they would be likely
to renew on the banks of the Thames and the Hum-
ber the institutions which had been familiar to
them on the banks of the Weser and the Elbe. They
were neither a swarm of barbarians who had the
first elements of civilization yet to learn ; nor yet a
handful of colonists, who gradually multiplied and
developed a polity of their own. They were a tribe
or nation moving en masse, and bringing a ready-
made polity with them. They had merely to shake
themselves out over the new territory, and then
go on with the same religious rites, manners, and
customs, which they had had before they set them
selves in motion. Their organization, such as it

40 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
was, with regard to property and the administra
tion of justice, was transplanted whole. No doubt
it developed, and perhaps quickly developed, in
the new home, in a manner which would have been
very different had they never moved ; and we can
easily believe that the leader who had brought
them safely across the sea, and led them by con
quest into the possession of new territory, would
become a more powerful person than the chief who
presided over them in Germany. He might de
velop into a new kind of king, and might found a
dynasty. (3) These emigrants did not all come at one
time ; and those who came later had reached a
stage of development in customs and language
somewhat different from those who had migrated
earlier. This emigration commenced even before the
Romans had completed the evacuation of Britain,
and perhaps increased after their departure. The
rapidity of the conquest was great at first ; but
it went on much more slowly afterwards, and at
last was checked entirely. By about 550 these
sturdy emigrants from Germany had become pos
sessed of the Eastern half of England ; say, all that
lies East of a line drawn from Berwick-on-Tweed to
Salisbury. Cumberland and Westmorland, or Strath-
clyde, as that part of the island was then called,
was not subdued till late in the seventh century;

THE CONQUEST OF BRITAIN 41
and Devon and Cornwall, or West Wales, as these
counties were then named, did not become Eng
lish till the ninth century. Wales proper, which
lies between the Keltic kingdom of Strathclyde
and West Wales, was never conquered at all. We
need not be surprised at the victorious progress,
whether rapid or slow, of the English. Very few
of the Britons had become Romanized. Instead
of learning arts of war from the Romans, they had
let their own arts of warfare fall into disuse, through
relying upon the Romans to protect them. The
Romans, when they left the island, left behind them
a people which had become unaccustomed to de
fend itself, and which had in other ways become
weakened. Various calamities had reduced the
population, and some Britons had followed their
Roman masters into Gaul, where they gave the
name of Brittany to the Armorican peninsula. The
old jealousies between tribe and tribe, which had
been kept under by the Romans, came again to the
surface. Just those Britons who were best able
to appreciate Roman organization had left the
country, and there was now no check upon the
feuds between the tribes. Thus weakened by mis
fortune and emigration, and disunited among them
selves, the Britons had but a poor chance of success
against their vigorous assailants, It is said that
some British chiefs even invited the English to come
over, hoping to make use of them in vanquishing

42 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
rival chieftains. Other chiefs conceded territory
to the invaders, hoping by this means to buy off
active hostility. But either by invitation, or con
cession, or conquest, the English obtained a firm
foothold on the greater portion of the Eastern half
of the island. The comparative slowness with
which further advance took place may be explained
in various ways. The invaders, for a time, had
got as much territory as they could occupy, and
had to devote themselves to the development of
their settlements. The flat country along the
Eastern coast 'would be more easily conquered than
the more mountainous West. The Britons, when
driven to bay, would fight more vigorously ; and
those who had invited the strangers, or made con
cessions to them, would find out that, after all, they
must fight, if they would avoid extermination.
And It may easily have been the case that the
British tribes in the West were more energetic and
warlike than those which had been so quickly con
quered in the open, alluvial country to the East ;
but this last point is a less certain conjecture than
the others.
The Teutonic conquest of Britain by the Eng
lish was unlike all other Teutonic conquests in
Europe. In Gaul, in Spain, and in Italy, it was
Teutons who were already half Romanized that
overran the countries. And the countries which
they overran were provinces of the Roman Empire,

THE CONQUEST OF BRITAIN 43
in which the language of Rome prevailed. Con
sequently, these Teutonic conquerors gradually gave
up more and more of their own language, adopted
that of Rome, which was not wholly unfamiliar
to them, and in time became lost among the mass
of Roman and Romanized inhabitants. In the
case of Britain not one of these facts is found. The
Teutonic tribes who crossed from Germany to Bri
tain had not come under Roman influence, and
brought no elements of Roman thought or lan
guage with them. They found in Britain a country
which had indeed been an extreme portion of the
Roman Empire, but one from which the legions
had been withdrawn, and in which Roman influ
ences were expiring. Instead of falling under the
spell of such remains of Roman organization as still
survived, they helped to extinguish them ; and,
instead of surrendering their own language for that
of Rome, they imposed their own language upon the
country which they invaded. The Britons had not
acquired very much of the language of Rome, but,
where they were not exterminated, they had to
acquire the language of their new conquerors. The
language which in the end prevailed was neither
British, nor Roman, but English.
There is yet another contrast, and it is a very
melancholy one, and of still greater importance
for our subject. A little later we shall find the
contrast in the matter of language of great import-

44 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
ance for the history of the English Church, when
Augustine had to raise the question whether the
services of the Church were to be conducted in Latin,
as in Italy, Spain, and Gaul, or in English. But
the point of contrast which lies immediately before
us is of greater moment even than that ; and it is
this. Elsewhere in Europe, the Teutonic tribes,
when they invaded, were either Christians already,
or soon became Christians, after they had settled
awhile in Roman territory. They augmented or
accepted the Christianity which already existed in
their new homes. In Britain it was far other
wise. Christianity was dominant in Britain before
the Teutons came, and the Teutons went a long
way towards extinguishing it. This English con
quest of Britain was distinctly a heathen conquest.
It was not merely a conquest by invaders who were
themselves heathen ; the Roman conquest had
been that. It was a conquest by invaders who
manifested a savage animosity against all signs of
the Christian religion. For a century and a half
after their first landing, Christians, their clergy,
and their shrines were the special objects of Eng
lish hostility, and they were ruthlessly attacked
and destroyed. We see exactly the same thing a
century or two later, when the English, now become
Christian, are persecuted in like manner by the
heathen Danes. In both cases, difference of faith
embittered a struggle which in itself was already

THE CONQUEST OF BRITAIN 45
deadly. What we know respecting the violence of
the heathen Danes helps us to see that the state
ments in Gildas respecting the violence of the heathen
English, although perhaps somewhat highly coloured
in order to make his homily more telling, are likely
to be substantially true.
The struggle between the Britons and the English
was bitter and internecine ; and this bitterness
had a very great effect upon the development of
Christianity among the conquerors ; but we need
not think of the conquest as one of absolute exter
mination, wherever the invaders got possession of
the territory. The entry in the Chronicles under
the year 491, so graphic in its terseness, has some
times been seriously misunderstood. " This year,"
says the chronicler, " Aella and Cissa besieged
Andredscester,1 and slew all that dwelt therein,
so that not a single Briton was there left." This
is not given as the normal course of events, but as
something highly exceptional. There is no simi
lar entry elsewhere in the Chronicles. The siege
had been a long one, and the besiegers were excep
tionally severe in their treatment of the captured
town, and the chronicler makes a note of the fact.
We may be sure that, as a rule, British wives and
daughters were spared to be the wives of the con
querors ; British slaves were spared to become
English slaves ; and it is probable that not a few
1 Perhaps Pevensey.

46 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
British land-owners were at times admitted to some
kind of endurable service under the English who
had dispossessed them. Some of the English of
to-day have Keltic blood in them.
Let us gather up some of the main features of
the conquest of Britain by the English.
1. It was a conquest by sea, by tribes moving
en masse and bringing their own polity with them.
2. It was a gradual conquest, spread over several
centuries, and becoming slower as it spread.
3. It was an incomplete conquest, which allowed
the vanquished to remain comparatively undis
turbed in the Western and Northern extremities.
4. It was a radical conquest, where it did prevail ;
displacing laws, customs, and language.
5. It was a heathen conquest, expelling Chris
tianity from territory in which it had been long
established. We may regard the capture of Chester by Ethel-
frid as the last great victory of heathen English
over Christian Britons. Ethelfrid was king of the
Northumbrians, 593-617, and he was a heathen,
so strenuous in war that he won for himself the title
of " the Fierce." Bede, the Northumbrian, who
had no doubt often heard of the doings of this fierce
Northumbrian king, says of him : "In these times
the Kingdom of Northumbria was ruled by Ethel
frid, a most powerful king and very greedy of
glory ; and more than all the chiefs of the English,

THE CONQUEST OF BRITAIN 47
he ravaged the nation of the Britons : so that it
would seem fitting to compare him with Saul, king
of the Israelite nation ; excepting only this, that
he was ignorant of the Divine religion. For no ealdor
man or king made a greater extent of British terri
tory either tributary to the English nation or open
to them for their possession, whether ,by expelling
or subjugating the British inhabitants. So that
what the patriarch said, in blessing his son and anti
cipating the deeds of Saul, could be rightly applied
to him ; Benjamin is a ravening wolf ; in the morn
ing he shall devour the prey, and in the evening he
shall divide the spoils " (H.E. i. 34). In 603 Ethel-
frid repelled an inroad of the Scots with such crush
ing success, that Bede says : " from that time no
king of the Scots durst come into Britain, to make
war to this day " ; that is, for nearly thirty years.
The crushing defeat of the Britons by Ethelfrid took
place about ten or twelve years later. Whether
the Britons provoked this chastisement, or Ethel
frid smote the traditional foe because he felt him
self strong, is unknown to us. But the Northum
brian King collected a great host, and marched
across from York to the city on the Dee which the
Romans had known as Deva two centuries before,
and which was still called, in memory of their occu
pation, " The Camp of the Legions." 1 And the
1 Givitas Legionum = Legeceaster = Caerleon, Bede and
the Chronicles use all three names.

48 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
name still survives in Chester, which means " camp."
And whereas other places that have been Roman
camps have " Chester " as part of their name, as
Lanchester, Manchester, and Chester-le-Street, Ches
ter alone is known still as simply Chester ; not a
camp, but the Camp.
To this Roman camp, now become a British
stronghold, Ethelfrid led his Northumbrians, and
the British chief, Brocmail, came out to oppose him.
Before the battle began, Ethelfrid noticed some hun
dreds of men in strange dress, who were grouped
apart from the British host, and he inquired who
they were, and what they were doing. They were
monks from the immense monastery at Bangor, who
had come to aid their fellow-countrymen with their
prayers. " Well, then," said Ethelfrid, " if it is to
oppose us that they are crying to their God, most
certainly they too, though they carry no arms, are
fighting against us, for they oppose us by assailing
us with curses." And he ordered the first attack
to be on the monks. Twelve hundred of those who
had come to pray are said to have been slaugh
tered, while only fifty escaped. The British army
was routed, and the city was captured and des
troyed. For more than two centuries Chester seems
to have remained a waste.
Bede expresses no sorrow for this destruction
of a Christian army by a heathen host, led by a
heathen king. He has some pity for the slaughtered

THE CONQUEST OF BRITAIN 49
monks ; but for the rest — they are the " impious
forces " of a " perfidious nation." x They deserved
all they got, for they failed to protect the praying
monks. And, moreover, their doom was predicted
by the saintly Augustine, who had long since gone
to his rest. These perfidious men had rejected his
counsels of eternal salvation, and he foretold that
they would have to experience temporal destruction.
If they would not preach the way of life to the Eng
lish, at the hands of the English they would suffer
the vengeance of death.
To such lengths can prejudice carry even so gentle
and loving a Christian as Bede. We can sympa
thize with the very human touch which causes
a Northumbrian to take pride in a Northumbrian
victory, even though it be a victory of pagans over
Christians. Did not some of us feel the same when
our allies, the heathen Japanese, got the better of
the Christian Russians ? But besides this pardon
able sympathy with men of his own race and king
dom, there is the religious prejudice against those
whom Bede regards as Christians indeed, but as
obstinate schismatics, holding to their own cus
toms about Easter and the tonsure, in defiance of
the regulations of Rome and of the rest of the Wes
tern Church. Yet we may believe that the chief
cause of his strong feeling against the Britons was
1 Nefanda militia . . . gentis perfidae. E

50 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
this, that, to quote his own words, " among other
most wicked actions, which their own historian Gil
das mournfully takes notice of, they added this —
that they never preached the faith to the English
who dwelt among them " (i. 22).
This great victory of the English was decisive.
The Britons might still resist, but they would never
recover. Up to 577 they held in one unbroken
line the whole of the Western part of England from
the Clyde to Cornwall. In that fateful year, by the
capture of Bath, Cirencester, and Gloucester,1 the
English broke this line into two. The British were
pushed back past the Bristol Channel, and West
Wales was separated from Wales proper. Wales
still remained united to the Keltic kingdom of Strath-
clyde, but West Wales was cut off. In 613 or a
little later the great victory of Ethelfrid at Chester
pushed back the British line past the estuary of
the Dee, and Strathclyde was separated from Wales
proper. The Britons were now divided geographi
cally into four divisions, not one of which was in
touch with any other. Strathclyde was cut off from
Wales, Wales was cut off from West Wales, and
West Wales was cut off from Brittany. It was
scarcely credible that there could ever be recovery
after such mutilation as that.
It was said above that Ethelfrid's victory at
1 Aquae Solis, Corinium, Olevum.

THE CONQUEST OF BRITAIN 51
Chester was the last great victory of heathen Eng
lish over Christian Britons. But that victory, re
garded as one of paganism over Christianity, was
not at all decisive. On the contrary, the tide had
already begun to turn as regards the religion of
Britain. The time of heathen conquest was draw
ing to a close : a conquest of another kind was
beginning. The Roman legions had long since been
withdrawn ; but Roman missionaries had known
how to find admission. The Christian faith had
made a new entry into the island and was begin
ning to win back its old homes. As yet only a begin
ning had been made, but it had been successful.
Northumbria, Mercia, Wessex, Sussex, and East
Anglia were still in the darkness of Teutonic heathen
ism ; but Kent and Essex had again become Chris
tian. The altars of Woden were honoured at Win
chester and York ; but Christ was once more
worshipped at Canterbury and London. Not that
we need suppose that Christianity had been abso
lutely extinguished throughout all the territory occu
pied by the English. A few islets of Britons were
left unmolested, because scarcely discovered, in the
wild spots of Northumbria and Mercia ; and among
these Christianity would still in some cases survive.
Among the Britons along the West coast of the island
of course it survived. But, wherever the new
comers had settled, heathenism had prevailed, and
the worship of Tiw, of Woden, of Thor, and of Frigga

52 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
had taken the place of the worship of Christ, and
their names still survive in the names for the days
of the week.
As already stated, no attempt had been made
by the British Christians to convert the invaders,
and perhaps race-hatred and dread of their terrible
conquerors were the chief causes of this grievous
abstention. But we may also surmise that, if the
Britons had preached to the English, it would have
been little use, and that the Britons excused them
selves from making the attempt, because they were
convinced that it would be no use. We might as
well expect the downtrodden Armenians to preach
to their oppressors the Turks, or hope that negro
ministers would succeed among godless American
colonists. No missionaries coming from so des
pised and detested a source as the Britons would
have obtained a hearing among the victorious
invaders. It was otherwise when Christianity was offered
to the English by a nation which was not hostile,
and which could not but command respect. When
the acknowledged head of Western Christendom
sent emissaries direct from the great capital of the
West to invite the English to a higher form of
belief, the emissaries obtained a hearing.
The conversion of the English to Christianity
of course forms an epoch in the history of England.
It is the beginning of the history of the Church of

THE CONQUEST OF BRITAIN 53
England. But it also forms an epoch in the his
tory of Christianity. It was the first distinctly
foreign mission of the Western Church. Hitherto
the Gospel in the West had not spread beyond the
limits of the Roman Empire. The Teutonic tribes in
North Germany and Scandinavia, which had never
been part of the Empire, and in Britain, which had
ceased to be so, were heathen. As a matter of fact,
if not of principle, one might almost have said, that
outside the Empire there was no salvation. By
the mission of Augustine, this lamentable, but not
unnatural, condition of things was broken. Prob
ably those who initiated the movement did not see
the significance of what they were doing. To them
the attempt to convert the heathen English seemed
much the same as the attempt to convert the heathen
in Spain or in Gaul. But we can see that the com
ing of Augustine was the first act of a series of mis
sionary enterprises, by means of which the whole
of Europe was at last won over to Christianity ;
the first act of one of the most glorious movements
in history.
And it was not only the first act, it was the most
important one ; the one which led to most of
those which followed. England itself became a
missionary centre, and through it Germany and
Scandinavia became Christian. Nor was this all.
By the conversion of the English an indissoluble
bond was created between this island and Euro-

54 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
pean civilization. A bond had been created before
by the entrance of the legions, and by the admission
of Britain into the Roman Empire. But this bond
had been severed by the departure of the Romans
and by the extinction of Christianity by the English
in just those parts of the island which could most
easily keep in touch with the Continent. Since then,
Britain had been shut off from Europe. Nothing
seemed to penetrate the mists which hung about
the North Sea and the Channel. Continental writers
of the fifth and sixth centuries know little more
of the British Isles than that they exist. Britain
is the land about which any marvellous tale may
be told without fear of contradiction, because no one
has been there.
Writing in the middle of the sixth century, Proco-
pius tells some wonderful things about Britain
" It is divided into two parts by a wall built by the
men of old." That, of course, is true ; we have
all heard of the Roman Wall, and some of us have
made a pilgrimage along it. But Procopius fancies
that the wall runs North and South, down the
middle of the island. On the Eastern side of the
wall, he says, there is a delightful climate, fertile
soil, a flourishing population. On the Western
side of the wall there is a dreadful desert, abound
ing in serpents and other venomous beasts, and
with an air so pestilential that no human being can
live there for half an hour. If any man crosses the

THE CONQUEST OF BRITAIN 55
wall, he never comes back alive. And Procopius
has another strange tale to tell us about Britain.
Thither are taken the spirits of the dead by the
fisherfolk who live on the shore of the Channel
opposite to Britain. They are summoned by a
mysterious voice. They go down to the sea and
find ships ready. They enter them, and push off ;
and at once the ships sink down to the water's edge
with the weight of an unseen cargo. They cross
to the British shore ; and forthwith the ships rise
once more, and they return to their own shore.
For this service they are excused tribute.
With the reintroduction of Christianity into Bri
tain, all this isolation and consequent ignorance
came to an end. Intercourse between England
and the Continent, and not only the Continent, but
the very centre of Western civilization, became
common. English people went on pilgrimage to
Rome, sometimes more than once in a lifetime.
Britain once more became an integral part of Euro
pean life and culture, and it can never again be
separated from it, until Macaulay's New Zealander
sits on the banks of the Thames to sketch the ruins
of London.
The religious prejudices of some English people
may lead them to regret that it was Roman rather
than British or Scottish Christianity which eventu
ally prevailed in England, and that, however we
may divide the work of converting the English

56 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
between St. Augustine and St. Aidan, it was the
Christian religion in the form in which it was intro
duced by St. Augustine which in the end swal
lowed up the work of St. Aidan and other mission
aries of the Keltic Church. As Protestants, some
may regret that this was so. But, as English
men, we ought to rejoice at it. The Christiiiiity of
the Kelts meant the Christianity of an insular and
stunted civilization. The Christianity of Rome
meant the Christianity of culture, and perhaps
the highest culture then known. Literature and
organization, arts and manufactures, all came with
Christianity from Rome. We must not confound
Rome, the enlightener of the nations in the sixth
century, with Rome, the corrupter of the nations
in the sixteenth.
Christianity first landed in England — we are
talking of England now, not of Britain — where
almost everything of which we know the history
made its first landing, on the shores of Kent. Kent
is nearest to the Continent : in fine weather it is
within sight and almost within hearing. That Kent
was somewhat less shut off than the rest of the
island from the Continent is perhaps marked by the
fact that, at the close of the sixth century, we find
the Kentish king married to a Frankish princess.
She was a Christian, and she had at least one Chris
tian priest, Bishop Liudhard, with her. But we
read of no efforts made either by her or her chaplain

THE CONQUEST OF BRITAIN 57
to make the faith known among the heathen Eng
lish. That does not prove that no efforts were
made by them ; the record of them may have per
ished. But they may have been timid or indiffer
ent. Or again, they may have thought that they
ought not to embark upon such an enterprise with
out some authority higher than their own. It
would be very interesting to know how many Chris
tians came over with Bertha, and how long they
had been in Kent when Gregory sent Augustine
and his companions to England.
It was about the year 575 that Gregory, who
had been a layman of high position, became a Bene
dictine, an Order which had been founded not long
before he was born. It is said that soon afterwards
he set out to the North as a missionary, with the
thought of preaching in Britain. But he was recalled
by the Pope for other work. The Roman populace
implored the Pope to recall him. He was sent to
represent Rome at the court of Constantinople. He
returned to Rome, and, on the death of Pelagius II.
in 590, was elected Pope.
There is no need to tell again the beautiful story
about " Angles " and " Angels." Gregory's first
effort for the conversion of England is not so often
told. He ordered the steward of the papal estates
in Gaul to buy up as many English slaves as he could
of the age of seventeen or eighteen, with a view to
having them planted out in monasteries and taught

58 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
the Christian faith. They would then be ready
to return to England as missionaries. This is very
much the plan that is still adopted in some modern
missions, as in that to Melanesia and the Univer
sities' Mission to Central Africa. Perhaps we may
infer from Gregory's plan, that English slaves were
common in Gaul, and this would mean that they
had been captured in war between the two coun
tries. We should be very glad to know how this
excellent plan worked ; how many English lads
were thus brought up and educated ; and what
success they had when they returned to work among
their heathen countrymen. But the record of their
doings has been lost. Their missionary labours,
whatever they may have been, attracted little
attention, compared with the momentous mission of
Augustine. It was mentioned above that the Frankish Bishop
Liudhard, who acted as chaplain to Queen Bertha
in Kent, and may have had other clergy with him,
seems to have done nothing for the conversion of
the English. Gregory evidently was aware that
neither the British clergy in the island nor the Frank
ish clergy on the Continent ever went as mission
aries to the English. Among the many letters which
he wrote to facilitate the journey of Augustine and
his companions is one to the two boyish kings of
the Franks, Theodoric and Theodebert. In this
letter he says : "It has come to our knowledge that

THE CONQUEST OF BRITAIN 59
the nation of the English is desirous, through the
mercy of God, of being converted to the Christian
faith, but that the priests in their neighbourhood
neglect them, and are remiss in kindling their
desires by their own exhortations. On this account
therefore, we have taken thought to send to them
the servant of God, Augustine, the bearer of these
presents, whose zeal and earnestness are well known
to us, with other servants of God. And we have
also charged them to take with them some priests
from the neighbouring parts, with whom they may
be able to learn the disposition of the English."
As Theodoric and Theodebert were only children,
Gregory writes also to their grandmother, Queen
Brunichild or Brunhild, who acted as guardian to
Theodebert. He says to her very much the same.
He has heard that the English wish for Christian
ity, but " the priests who are in their neighbour
hood have no pastoral solicitude with regard to
them." Whom does Gregory mean by the priests
in the neighbourhood of the English ? Jeremy
Collier understands him to mean the Frankish clergy.
But it may also mean the British clergy, and prob
ably includes both. It almost certainly includes
the Franks, otherwise Gregory would hardly tell
both Queen Brunichild and her grandsons that he
has charged Augustine to take with him " priests
from the neighbouring parts." That is evidently
a hint to them to help Augustine in finding such

60 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
priests, and they could not help him to find
British priests.
Augustine and his companions set forth early
in 596, certainly with obedience, and perhaps with
enthusiasm. But before they had gone very far
their hearts began to fail them. They heard of the
fierceness of the English ; and then there was the
difficulty of the English language. They had per
haps got as far as Marseilles, when, as Bede says,
" struck with a sluggish timidity " (timore inerti),
they unanimously decided that it would be safer
to return, and they sent back Augustine to implore
Gregory to release them from their onerous and
perilous commission.1 It was not very heroic,
but it was very natural ; and perhaps the only
strange thing about it is that they should have
supposed that a man like Gregory would listen to
such a request. But at any rate their conduct is
evidence of their confidence in Gregory's sympathy :
they were not afraid to ask for tender consideration.
Gregory sent Augustine back to them with a
letter which is remarkable in more ways than one.
It is a model of Christian tact. He is neither in
dignant nor contemptuous. He rebukes with ten-
1 We have to guess how far they had got, from the persons
to whom Gregory sent letters by Augustine, when he started
the second time ; among these were the Archbishop of Aries,
the Bishops of Lyons, Vienne, Aix in Provence, and others.
They may have got as far as Aries, when Augustine went
back to Rome,

THE CONQUEST OF BRITAIN 61
derness, and encourages them to go forward. With
such a leader as Augustine they will overcome all
difficulties. And the greater the difficulty, the
greater the eternal reward. He wishes he could
share their labours, but he cannot ; yet he does
hope, in the heavenly country, to share in the joy
of their reward ; and they must not rob him of
that. " God keep you in safety, my most beloved
sons." That is the conclusion of the letter, not
counting the date.
And the beginning also is remarkable : " Gre
gory, the servant of the servants of God, to the
servants of our Lord." 1 Gregory was the first
Pope to style himself " the servant of the servants
of God." He adopted the title in reproachful
contrast to that which had been so proudly assumed
by the Patriarch of Constantinople, who had styled
himself Universal Bishop. Gregory was not the first
to make use of the expression, and he only occasion
ally uses it in his correspondence ; but he appears
to have been the first to adopt it as a title of the
Bishop of Rome. How empty of meaning it be
came, the history of the Papacy has shown. As
Edmund Burke says : " Kings and nations were
trampled upon by the foot of one calling himself the
' servant of servants,' and mandates for deposing
sovereigns were sealed with the signet of ' the
Fisherman.' "
1 Servua servorum Dei servis Domini nostri.

62 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
Strengthened by Gregory's letter and the mes
sages brought by Augustine, the missionaries resumed
their journey. They wintered in Gaul, and did not
cross the Channel till after Easter, which in 597
fell on April 14. They landed on what is still called
the Isle of Thanet, and which was then actually
an island,1 and we must each imagine for ourselves
what would be their thoughts when they first saw,
and first set foot upon, the island of which they had
heard so much, the inhabitants of which had so
often been the object of their fears and of their prayers.
Nearly two centuries before this Rome had deserted
Britain and had left it helpless, exposed to the
attacks of pitiless heathen foes. Now Rome was
returning to Britain again, not to deprive those
foes of what they had won, but to rescue them from
their heathenism. By means of the Gospel of peace
conquerors and conquered were at last to be united.
The missionaries probably landed at Ebsfleet, where
Hengist and Horsa are said to have landed.
Augustine at once sent a courteous message to
King Ethelbert. He had brought interpreters with
him from the nation of the Franks, and therefore
was able to communicate his proposals at once.
It is perhaps quite possible that Franks and Eng
lish could at that time converse without much diffi-
1 The island was formed by a bifurcation of the river Stour.
Its ancient name was Ruim, and hence the name Rams-
gate, which is at one of the entrances.

THE CONQUEST OF BRITAIN 63
culty. His message was to this effect. He and
his companions (there were about forty of them)
had come from Rome, and they came peaceably,
bearing a joyful message, which, without doubt,
assured to all who took advantage of it the ever
lasting joys of heaven and a kingdom that would
never end, in the company of the living and true
God. Ethelbert was not unfriendly ; his wife's reli
gion would secure that ; but he was cautious. He
would not commit himself hastily. He ordered
them to remain in the island on which they had
landed, where the necessaries of life would be
supplied to them. He himself would take time to
consider what should be done with them.
A little later Ethelbert came to visit them and
proposed a conference, which he arranged to have
in the open air, fearing trickery or magical arts,
which he thought could be practised more easily
in a house. We know that the English them
selves practised augury and dealt in charms and
incantations, and the Kentish King, no doubt,
feared similar practices on the part of the Chris
tian missionaries. They came to the conference
singing litanies, and iElfric tells us (Horn. ii. 128,
in Haddan and Stubbs, III. 11) that Augustine
preached " how the merciful Saviour by His own
passion redeemed this guilty world, and opened
the Kingdom of Heaven to all believers." The

64 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
king gave them this answer : " Your words and
promises are fair ; but they are new to us and of
uncertain import ; and I cannot approve them so
far as to forsake that which I have followed for so
long, together with the whole English nation. But
because you strangers have come from far into
my kingdom, and are desirous to impart to us things
which you believe to be true and very beneficial,
we will not molest you, but rather give you favour
able entertainment. And we do not forbid you
to preach and make as many converts as you can."
The missionaries then went in procession to Can
terbury, where the king assigned them a residence ;
and as they went they sang a litany which had
been sung in churches in Gaul for a century or
more, especially on Rogation Days, and which
they had perhaps heard in Lyons or elsewhere the
previous year. It is based on the prayers of Daniel
(ix. 16): "We beseech Thee, O Lord, for Thy
great mercy, let Thine anger and wrath be turned
away from this city, and from Thy holy house ;
for we have sinned. Alleluiah." The little church,
dedicated to St. Martin of Tours, which had been
erected for Queen Bertha and her chaplain, be
came their centre of work — the starting-point for
the conversion of the English nation.1 It is this
1 It is difficult to account for the very great popularity of
St. Martin, especially in France and England. In England
we have about 160 churches dedicated to him, without count-

THE CONQUEST OF BRITAIN 65
fact which made Dean Stanley pen the remark,
that the view from the present church of St. Martin
is " one of the most inspiriting that can be found
in all the world." In that little church there are
lines of Roman brick-work, which may have been
part of the original building, or even of something
which was demolished to make room for it. At
any rate, the site is the same, and the country all
round it is the same — the spot where Augustine
turned the private oratory of a queen into a place
of public worship for her and her subjects, in order
to bring, not merely the Kingdom of Kent, but the
whole English Nation, into the Kingdom of God.
Here the missionaries dwelt, fashioning their lives,
says Bede, after the model of the primitive Church ;
giving themselves to prayer and fasting, and preach
ing to as many as they could ; receiving mainten
ance from those whom they instructed, and tak
ing care that what they taught to others they
observed themselves. Bede, who is fond of dwelling
upon the efficacious preaching of a holy life, sums
up thus : " What need to say more ? Some believed
and were baptized, admiring the simplicity of their
blameless fife and the sweetness of their heavenly
doctrine."
ing those which are dedicated to him in conjunction with
some other saint. Few saints, outside the circle of the
Apostles, have had so many miracles attributed to them. He
became the patron saint of Norway after Norway (c. 997)
received the Gospel. F

66 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
Before long, and (according to a Canterbury
tradition) it was before the following Whitsuntide,
the King himself, " influenced by the unspotted
life of these holy men, and by their delightful pro
mises," professed the Christian faith and was bap
tized — of course, at Pentecost, if the tradition is
true. But, however soon it may have taken place,
it was certainly a providential thing that this friendly
ruler of the Kingdom of Kent was Bretwalda at the
time of Augustine's mission. As such, his supre
macy over other English kings and chiefs extended
to the Humber. The precise amount of authority
possessed by the Bretwalda is not known to us now,
and was probably undefined then. Much would
depend upon the character of the king who was
recognized as holding the office. The title per
haps means " Britain-wielder " (Brytenwealda) ; i.e.
wielding the power of English Britain. This is
doubtful. But it gives us some idea of the Bret-
walda's rather vague powers to find that, under
the protection of a safe-conduct granted by Ethel
bert, Augustine was able to travel through heathen
Wessex, in order to confer with the British clergy
on the confines of Wales.
Before undertaking this fateful journey, Augus
tine had to make his own position complete. Gre
gory had made him abbot over the monks of his
company, but he would not consecrate him bishop,
with the possibility that he might be rejected by

THE CONQUEST OF BRITAIN 67
the English, and thus be a bishop without see or
flock.1 If he was accepted by the English, he was
to return to Gaul and seek consecration there. This
was done. He travelled to Aries, where the Arch
bishop, acting under Gregory's instructions, conse
crated him " Archbishop to the English nation "
(Archiepiscopus genti Anglorum). This was prob
ably in November 597.
It is a magnificent title, and we are not surprised
that Augustine quickly found that it involved very
grave responsibility. A number of questions soon
cropped up which he did not like to decide for him
self, but which he sent to Rome for Gregory's con
sideration. They are a curious collection. With
regard to some of them, we wonder how any reason
able Christian, with a moderate knowledge of Scrip
ture, could be in any doubt. With regard to others,
our wonder is given to Gregory's admirable answers.2
Let us take an example of each. Augustine asks
1 Such bishops were common enough in the Keltic Churches
in Ireland and Scotland ; and in the English Church we have
occasional instances in Cedd, possibly in Chad between York
and Lichfield, and in Dunstan, before Worcester fell vacant.
The missionary Boniface had at first no see or fixed flock.
2 It is obvious that missionaries in a strange country
would be confronted at times with questions for dealing with
which no precedent existed. St. Boniface had to consult
Gregory n and Gregory III about various matters, and his
second visit to Rome (723) was paid in order to obtain the
directions of the former. In a similar way, Roman gover
nors consulted the Emperors, and the imperial replies some
times acquired the force of decrees, as did the replies of Popes j

68 THE CHURCHES LN BRITAIN
whether two brothers may marry two sisters ; and
Gregory says, " Of course they may." Augustine
asks whether men may marry their stepmothers ;
and Gregory says, " Of course they may not."
Surely Augustine might have spared the Pope the
trouble of answering such questions as these. But
here is a more reasonable inquiry. " Seeing that
the faith is one, can there be different customs in
different Churches ? Can there be one custom
of masses in the holy Roman Church, and another
in the Gallican ? " That kind of question is with
us still : how does Gregory deal with it ? He was
what we might call an expert in the matter, and
might be expected to have very strong views in
favour of some particular use. He had himself
revised the " Sacramentary " of his predecessor
Gelasius, and had ordered the Eucharistic ceremonial
in the way which he regarded as most edifying and
correct. Many a man in his position, with a natural
predilection for his own careful work, would have
replied, that, of course, the use of the Roman Church
must be followed. But that is not Gregory's way :
he is no ritualistic pedant. He agrees with Fran
cis Bacon : " They be two things, Unity and Uni
formity." He says to Augustine : " You know,
my brother, the custom of the Roman Church, in
which you were brought up. But it is my wish, if
you have found anything, either in the Roman,
or the Gallican, or any other Church, which may be

THE CONQUEST OF BRITAIN 69
more acceptable to Almighty God, that you care
fully select, and sedulously impart to the Church
of the English, whatever you have been able to
collect from various Churches. For things are not
to be loved for the sake of places, but places for the
sake of good things. Select, therefore, from each
Church whatsoever things are excellent, and when
you have arranged them as a whole, give them to
the English to be observed." x
It is tempting to examine other questions and
answers ; but we must draw to a close. It has been
necessary to dwell upon the details of the mission
of Augustine, because of its immense importance
and interest in the history of the English nation
and of the English Church. The details of the work
of conversion in the different kingdoms cannot,
in the space that is at our disposal for this purpose,
be treated in much detail. For the present it must
suffice to say, that the way in which England was
won over to Christianity is a credit to those whose
work it was. The conversion was gradual, and for the
1 In answering the question, How ought the offerings of
the faithful to the altar to be divided ? Gregory quotes the
Vulgate rendering of Luke xi. 41, quod super est, date elemo-
synam, et eoce omnia munda sunt vobis. He has been accused
of taking what is really an adverbial phrase translating the
irXrjv of the original as if it meant " the surplus." But in
the Vulgate verwm tamen is the translation of TrXrjv, and this
Gregory omits ; quod superest is a very faulty translation
of Ta ivovra, which in other Latin texts is rendered quae
sunt, or quae habetis.

70 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
most part peaceful. The difference between Chris
tianity and paganism often made war more bitter ;
but the Gospel was not preached by the sword, and
was never offered as the only alternative to death.
Unlike the spread of Christianity by the fishermen
of Galilee, it spread from above rather than from
below. The King was won over, then his chiefs,
and then the people followed the lead of those whom
they were accustomed to obey. The mass of the
population were converted probably less by argu
ment than by example. This was one of the char
acteristic features of the conversion of the Eng
lish ; it was a conversion from above, beginning with
kings and nobles and descending to the people. In
France and Spain the Christianity of the conquered
worked upwards to the conquerors. In Britain,
the conquered stood aloof. Outsiders converted
the victorious kings, and through them the people.
These saw their rulers abandoning the old faith,
and they thought that it might be best for them to
abandon it also. But there was not much force
used to hasten conviction. Ethelbert expressly
abstained from putting pressure upon his subjects ;
for he said that " he had learned from his teachers
that the service of Christ must be a voluntary thing,
and not a matter of compulsion."
Of course, all did not run smoothly. There
were mistakes, and there were misfortunes. Some
times a preacher or a ruler was wanting in judg-

THE CONQUEST OF BRITAIN 71
ment. A Christian king might be followed by a
heathen son, and the relapse of the royal house
into paganism commonly meant the relapse of a
good many of its dependants. But in the course
of less than two centuries all English kingdoms
became, like the Roman Empire itself, professedly
Christian ; and the great work which the British
Bishops had refused to touch, which the Roman
missionaries began, and the Scottish missionaries
helped to cherish, was consolidated by that " wise
man from the East," Theodore of Tarsus (668-690).
It is worth while to get a clear view of the quick
ness with which the leaven of the Gospel began to
work. Using round numbers for the sake of clear
ness, we may say that the settlement of the Eng
lish in Britain began about a.d. 450 ; and by about
a.d. 600 their conquest of the Western half of the
country south of the Tweed was fairly complete.
The conversion of the different tribes began about
the same time, a.d. 597 ; and in less than 100 years
the organization of the English Church was fairly
complete. From a.d. 600 onwards the influence
of the Christian Church upon the laws and customs
of the new nation is manifest. The earliest English
laws that are known to us are those of Ethelbert,
the first Christian king ; and how the influence of
the Gospel told on such customs as the wergild and
compurgation will be pointed out in a subsequent
chapter.

72 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
The rapidity of the process is all the more re
markable because the time of Christian develop
ment was for the most part a time of war. Until
the reign of Edgar the Peaceful (958-75) there was
not often a period during which there was not warfare
in some part of the island. These frequent wars
of course made the spread of Christianity less rapid
than it might otherwise have been. They also
made the type of Christianity which prevailed very
imperfect. The Anglo-Saxon had some of the
heroic virtues, such as courage and self-reliance :
but he lacked self-control. There was probably
not much discipline in the armies of those days,
and still less in private life. The best examples
of discipline in the seventh century were the
monasteries ; and we must not forget that the
missionaries who converted the English were monks,
and that this was another characteristic feature of
the evangelization of England.

CHAPTER III
THE KELTIC CHURCH OF IONA;
COLUMBA AND AIDAN
TN studying the Lives of the Saints which have
-*- come to us from very early ages in the Church
down to quite modern times, we must remember
that for centuries they filled a place in literature
which is now filled quite otherwise. They were
the novels of all ranks of society. There never
was an age which devoured so many novels as we
do. And, if consumption may be gauged by pro
duction, there is no nation which reads so many
novels as the English do. A glance at Mudie's
catalogue or that of The Times' Book Club will show
us the difference between the amount of fiction
which is in circulation and the amount of solid
literature. And the thoughts to which such a
fact gives rise are not altogether cheering.
Can we imagine ourselves transferred to a state
of society in which there were no novels ? Of
course, if we were transferred, we should greatly
feel the loss of what we had once enjoyed. But,

74 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
even if we had been born in such an age, we should
find that at times we needed something more than
the daily experiences of life, with which to fill our
time and occupy our thoughts. All of us, even
the most prosaic, must have some food for our
imagination ; and from ages before the dawn of
history people have loved to listen to tales, not merely
of what has actually taken place, but also of what —
for all they knew to the contrary — might have
taken place. Imaginary men and women, and
imaginary monsters, have from the earliest times
been food for men's minds. Literature of this im
aginative character abounded at the time when
the Gospel was first preached to the world.
But a great deal of this literature was saturated
with polytheism. Gods and goddesses, nymphs
and satyrs, were the common ingredients ; and
thus, not merely paganism, but often paganism in
its foulest forms, contaminated the imaginative
literature that was current throughout the civil
ized world. What attitude was Christianity to
take in reference to writings, which, always as re
gards religion, and often as regards morality, were
of a thoroughly un-Christian and even anti-Christian
character ? Many Christian teachers thought that
the only safe course was to forbid the perusal of
such literature altogether. This was specially the
case in Western Christendom, where the leaders
of the Church took a very rigid and unsympathetic

THE KELTIC CHURCH OF IONA 75
line with regard to the whole of pagan literature,
even that portion of it which was free from
taint, and which, as some of the teachers in the
Churches of the East were able to see, had been,
in a very real sense, a preparation for the Gospel.
But it was the stricter view which prevailed, especi
ally where the Latin rather than the Greek language
prevailed. Consequently, converts from heathen
ism, after joining the Church, found themselves
cut off from almost all the literature to which they
had been accustomed, and especially from what
we should call " works of imagination." In fact,
they were in the condition in which we just now
tried to suppose ourselves. They were suddenly
transferred to a state of society in which there were
no novels.
The change was a violent one ; but, as a rule,
the situation was loyally accepted. People ab
stained from what was forbidden, and which they
knew had not been forbidden without reason. But
loyalty to new prohibitions does not put an end
to the craving for what was prohibited. These
Christian converts did not want stories about gods
and goddesses ; still less did they want indecent
stories about them. But they did want stories.
They did want something different from the fami
liar experiences of their own uneventful lives. And
they quickly had this want supplied by the pro
duction of countless stories of saints ; and not

76 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
unfrequently these stories were worked up into
complete biographies, beginning with the saint's
birth and ending with the death. These Lives
of the Saints were eagerly devoured, and for that
reason were frequently produced, for they minis
tered to a natural and constant craving : and of
course they were capable of being made not only
interesting, but instructive and edifying.
They are of every kind of merit. Some of them
are very valuable material rfor the historian. Others
contain a good deal of valuable material which can
be sifted by criticism from what is doubtful or worse.
Others again are pure fiction from beginning to end.
No such person as the saint whose life is described
with so much detail ever existed at all : he or she
has been invented to explain a name, or a custom,
or some existing statue or other object.1
A love of the marvellous is a common charac
teristic of mankind, and consequently these Lives
of the Saints abound in wonders. But a love of
the marvellous is not the only explanation that we
need in order to account for the miracles with which

1 The Bollandist, Pere~Delehaye, S.J., in his LSgendes
Hagiographiques, classifies Acts of Saints in six categories, the
two last being imaginative romances, in which the saint
himself is the creation of the writer, and fictions deliberately
invented with the object of deceiving the reader. There is
not much difference between the two classes. A translation
of the book by Mrs. Crawford was published by Longmans,
1907, The Legends of the Saints.

THE KELTIC CHURCH OF IONA 77
these biographies often abound. For many cen
turies it was commonly believed that a holy life
was sure to bear fruit in the power to work mir
acles. A saint was a person endowed with super
natural powers, and it would be almost a contra
diction to suppose that persons could be of excep
tional holiness and yet not possess this exceptional
gift. Therefore, to write the Life of a Saint with
out recording any miracles, would come very near
to denying that there was anything saintly in
the life. With regard to other details of the Life,
when the writer had no materials, he guessed at
what was probable ; of course he must do the same
with regard to miracles. His object was to interest
and to edify his readers ; and the Life of a Saint
without miracles would be very unedifying.
This is really not so very different from the prac
tice of writers of historical novels at the present
day. They make very free with events and with
chronology. Indeed, we admit a good deal of
imaginative construction into what is given to the
world as history. But, with regard to the miracu
lous element in the Lives of the Saints, there is
another consideration to be remembered. There is
sometimes no invention — perhaps not even any
exaggeration — but only a wrong point of view.
Something extraordinary took place, and it was
wrongly regarded as miraculous. With us, when
anything very extraordinary takes place, a mir-

78 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
acle is the very last hypothesis to which we resort
in order to explain it. We would perhaps sooner
leave it unexplained than adopt such a solution.
But, for many centuries of the Church's life, a mir
acle was the very first hypothesis to be suggested
as the explanation of what was surprising. It was
not only the easiest solution, but to many people
it seemed to be the most reverent solution.
We have then these three causes at work. The
love of the marvellous ; the feeling that miracles
are appropriate to a holy life ; and the belief that,
because God is Almighty, He is constantly manifest
ing His power by changing the course of nature.
Are we then to reject all miracles as incredible,
excepting those recorded in Scripture — and per
haps some of them ? That would be a needlessly
rash position to adopt, and even Dr. Schmiedel
does not adopt it. He holds that "it is not right
to deny unconditionally that miracles are possi
ble," though he refrains from committing himself
to the belief that they have taken place. He points
out that, even if we could examine all the miracles
that have ever been reported and be able to trace
these to natural causes, " we should be powerless
to prevent an event taking place to-morrow which
we should be obliged to recognize as a miracle, and
nothing would then be gained by the statement
that there are no such things as miracles. A scien
tific caution therefore bids us in no case to make

THE KELTIC CHURCH OF IONA 79
this statement a guiding principle " (The Johannine
Writings, p. 88). But first, what do we mean by
a miracle ? Not a violation of law : the laws of
God's Universe cannot be violated (1 Cor. xiv. 33).
But it may well be the case that, for sufficient rea
son, God sometimes produces a result which can
not be explained by any laws that are known to
us. Yet, even in such cases, we may be sure that
the highly exceptional event is the outcome, not
of lawlessness, but of law. On God's side, we be
lieve that such exceptional events depend upon the
sufficiency of the reason for them ; on our side, the
belief in them depends upon the sufficiency of the
evidence. Miracles, as Huxley has taught us, are
simply a question of evidence.
Let us then, in studying the Lives of the Saints,
try to approach this question with caution and
without prejudice. The assumption that miracles
are impossible is as unscientific as the assumption
that they must have taken place. What we have
to consider is, whether the occasion seemed to re
quire a special manifestation of Divine power, and
whether the reported manifestation seems to be
worthy of the Divine Wisdom and Goodness. These
two considerations will lead us to the conviction
that vast numbers of reported miracles are quite
incredible. But, when we have satisfied ourselves
upon these two points, we have further to ask, whether
the reported marvel really took place, and, if so,

80 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
whether it cannot be explained by the operation of
known laws. These two additional considerations
will lead us to reject, or at least to be doubtful
about, a good many more of the reported miracles.
When these two pairs of tests have been applied
with critical acuteness and fairness, will any alleged
miracles remain as materials for history ? The
present writer, speaking only for himself, answers
that question unhesitatingly in the affirmative :
but all that he cares to insist upon here is, that a
miracle is not a violation of law, and that the occur
rence of miracles is simply a question of evidence.
The Life of Cuthbert, by the Venerable Bede, will
illustrate a good deal of what has been stated above.
Bede was considerably in advance of his age, both
in the critical principles which he adopted and in
his efforts to carry them out in practice. He knew
that evidence must be sifted, and he knew the superi
ority of contemporary evidence, and of evidence
at first hand, over mere tradition and hearsay ;
and he took pains to obtain the best evidence that
was within his reach. He tells us, at the end of
his Ecclesiastical History that, in editing the Hiero-
nymian Martyrology he inserted the names of all
the martyrs of whom he could find definite infor
mation as to the kind of sufferings which they
endured or the judge who condemned them. This
seems to imply that he would not insert the names
of those about whom nothing was known : he pre-

THE KELTIC CHURCH OF IONA 81
ferred to leave the days blank, rather than insert
what lacked evidence. But Bede's work was en
larged by subsequent editors ; and, as only the
enlarged work has come down to us, we are in doubt
as to the precise character of Bede's critical work.
What he tells us seems to imply a sound critical
principle, yet we cannot be sure of the way in which
he applied it. But in his Life of Cuthbert we are
on surer ground. He dedicates it "to Bishop Ead-
frid x and to all the Congregation of the Brethren
who serve Christ in the Island of Lindisfarne,"
and this in itself is some guarantee that it was written
with care. But in the dedicatory letter he thus
assures them, and other readers who may not have
their knowledge of the facts which he relates :
" I have ventured, neither to write any circumstance
relating to so great a man, without the most sure
research, nor to give out for general transcription
the things which I have reduced to writing, with
out the most scrupulous examination of indubitable
witnesses. Indeed, it was not till I had investi
gated the beginning, progress and end of his most
glorious life and conversation from those who had
known him that I ventured to reduce anything
to writing. I may add that I have also thought
it right to mention here and there in the course of
1 Eadfrid was Bishop of Lindisfarne a.d. 698-721, and
was the artist who wrote and illuminated the famous Lindis
farne Gospels. G

82 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
my work the names of my authorities, as unques
tionable proof of the acknowledged truth of my nar
rative. Moreover, after I had digested my little
work, I kept it back in manuscript, and showed
it frequently to Herefrid the priest,1 when he came
here, as well as to several others who, from having
long dwelt with the man of God, were thoroughly
acquainted with his life, that they might correct
or expunge, as they thought advisable. Some
of these amendments I carefully adopted ; and (all
scruples having thus been removed) I ventured to
commit the result of this careful research to these
few sheets of parchment. And whilst, by God's
aid, I was so occupied, my little work was read
before the ancients of your congregation ; and, after
every part had been carefully examined, it was
found unnecessary to alter a single word."
Could any modern critical writer have taken
more pains to be accurate ? He has got his
information from those who knew Cuthbert per
sonally, and he gives the names of his principal
authorities. He has shown his narrative to various
other persons who knew Cuthbert well, and has
got them to suggest corrections. He has then
made a fair copy and has submitted this to a num
ber of people, who can find nothing that requires
1 He was the intimate friend of Cuthbert, and it was from
him that Bede got the beautiful account of Cuthbert's death
[chapters 37 to 39).

THE KELTIC CHURCH OF IONA 83
alteration. And what is the result ? There was
an earlier Life of Cuthbert written by a monk of
Lindisfarne, which was one of Bede's authorities.
This Life of Cuthbert has come down to us, so that
we are able to compare the two ; and the latest edi
tor of Bede's Historical Works tells us that Bede in
re-writing it " shows a marked tendency to exagger
atedly ascetic and miraculous element " (C. Plummer,
Baedae Opera Historica, I. p. xlvi.). That probably
means, that when Bede's informants told him these
wonderful particulars, he readily admitted them
as in the highest degree probable — indeed, as cer
tain to have occurred in the experiences of so holy
a man as Cuthbert. The headings of the chap
ters give plenty of examples : " How he was crippled
through a painful swelling in his knee, which was
cured by an Angel " ; " How the wind was changed
at his prayer " ; " How he saw the soul of St. Aidan
carried up to heaven by Angels " ; " How he fore
told that he should receive a supply of food by
the ministry of an eagle, and did receive it " ; " How
by prayer he extinguished the flames of a house
on fire " ; " How he cast out a devil from the Pre
fect's wife, before he had even seen her " ; " How
the Abbess Aelfred and one of her nuns were healed
by his girdle " ; " How he cured an Earl's wife
by water which he blessed and sent by his priest " ;
" How by tasting water he gave it the flavour of
wine " ; and so forth. Assuming that the evidence

84 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
was in many of these cases good, then mere coin
cidence, exaggeration, suggestion, telepathy, and
the operation of other laws, which are known now
but were unknown then, will explain a great many
of these wonders and other mediaeval miracles.
A writer in that age is not to be condemned as un
trustworthy in everything, because he freely admits
such stories as these. Lives of Saints may contain
very valuable historical material, although they
abound in details which criticism cannot accept
as miraculous, and very often cannot accept as
true.

In the first chapter we used the expression " Bri
tish Church," because we were speaking of the
Christians in those Keltic tribes whose home was
in Britain, and especially in that part of Britain
which is south of the Tweed. In this chapter we
use the wider term " Keltic," rather than " Brit
ish," because we have chiefly to do with the Chris
tians in that Keltic people, whose home was first
in Ireland, and then both in Ireland and on the
West coast of Scotland.1 They were known in
1 The Scots were the ancient inhabitants of Ireland, but
their original home is unknown. Scotia was another name
for Hibernia. The time at which Scoti migrated to Cale
donia and settled North of the Clyde is uncertain ; perhaps
about a.d. 500. They fought sometimes agamst the Picts,
sometimes with them against a common foe ; and, if there
had been no Saxons and Angles to oppose them, they would

THE KELTIC CHURCH OF IONA 85
the fourth century and for many centuries after
wards as Scots ; and this has caused much con
fusion in history and even about property. These
Scots from Ireland in process of time gave their
name to Scotland ; and hence the name " Scot
tish," which had been used quite correctly by early
writers of Scots in Ireland, came to be misunder
stood as meaning the Scots in Scotland, or per
haps even as meaning inhabitants of Scotland who
in origin were not Scots at all. In order to avoid
this confusion, it will be better to employ the term
" Keltic." These Keltic Christians were great missionaries,
and for a century after the arrival of Augustine
in England, while Roman missionaries were con
stantly passing through Gaul to England, Keltic
missionaries were constantly passing by various
routes across Europe, and founding Keltic centres
of Christianity and learning on each side of the
Alps, as at Luxeuil in the Vosges, St. Gallen and
Reichenau in Switzerland, and Bobbio in North
Italy. St. Columban (Columbanus) was one of
these missionary leaders. He was born and edu
cated in Ireland about 543, visited Britain on his
probably have come much further south than the Tweed,
The Picts seem to have been lost in the Scots, who gave their
name to the whole of Caledonia. Some writers place the
migration from Ireland much earlier and represent Scots as
joining Picts and Saxons in opposing the Romans in the
fourth century.

86 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
way to the Continent in 585, and went on to Lux
euil, where he founded a large monastery and a
new order of monks, which at once became very
popular, and for a time rivalled the Benedictine order.
After twenty years of work, he was imprisoned,
because, like the Baptist, he boldly rebuked vice
in high places. He escaped, and finally settled
at Bobbio, where he founded another monastery,
in which, November 21, 615, he died. He had
not much connexion with the English Church ;
but he is mentioned here, partly as a great example
of Keltic energy in spreading the Gospel, and partly
in order to distinguish him from another Keltic
saint of similar name, St. Columba. As the lives
of the two men were nearly contemporary, Colum
ba being about twenty-two years older than Colum
ban, as both were born and educated in Ireland
and then worked elsewhere, and as both were monks
and missionaries, and became abbots of famous
monasteries that were of Keltic origin, confusion
between the two is quite possible. Let us now
leave Columban, whose great work was done on
the Continent, and direct our attention to Columba,
whose work lay in the British Isles.
Of Columba we have a great deal of informa
tion from various sources, especially the Life of
him by his successor in the great monastery of
Hy or Iona, Adamnan. This Life of St. Columba
ranks with that of St. Cuthbert by Bede, and that

THE KELTIC CHURCH OF IONA 87
of St. Wilfrid by Eddius, as one of the most valu
able biographies of a saint that has come down
to us. It has been edited, in a way that has won
universal admiration, by Dr. Reeves, Bishop of
Down, 1857, and more recently, 1894, and very
admirably, by Dr. J. T. Fowler of Durham, who
has had the great advantage of coming after Bishop
Reeves. Moreover, his edition is cheap and is easily
obtained, whereas that by Bishop Reeves is neither.
But Adamnan's Life of Columba is not a biography
in the ordinary sense ; and for some reasons we
might wish that it were more biographical. It
is rather a collection of the cases in which the saint
manifested the possession of supernatural powers.
It is, in short, hagiology rather than history, and it
has been pronounced to be the most precious piece
of hagiology in existence. Its psychological inter
est is great, as giving a point of view which was
a matter of course then, but which we are unable
to take now ; and, besides this, there are many
incidental statements which help us to understand
Keltic monasticism, and the way in which the Gospel
spread from Ireland to Scotland.
Of the introduction of Christianity into Ireland
we know no more than of its introduction into Bri
tain. We find it there in the time of St. Patrick
who landed in Ireland about 432, and we must not
stay to speculate about its origin. But there had
been no Roman occupation of Ireland, and there

88 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
was no invasion of the English. Ireland escaped
the civilizing influence of the one and the disturb
ing influence of the other. As distinguished from
Britain, which was called " the Roman island,"
it was known as " the barbarous island." But
this barbarous island had among its pagan inhabit
ants three orders of what we might call learned or
cultured classes, the Druids, the Bards, and the
Brehons, a threefold division which may have had
something to do with the subsequent threefold
division of saints into seculars, monks, and her
mits. Columba was born in Ireland about 521, and
was educated in various places, chiefly monastic
schools, and in due course was ordained. The
" yellow plague," which devastated various parts
of Europe in 543, caused schools to be broken up ;
and Columba then began to found monasteries
himself. He founded one at Derry in 545, another
at Durrow in 553, and several more between then
and 562. The most celebrated of these was that
of Kells, from whence came the famous Book of
Kells or Great Gospel of Columcille, now in Dub
lin. It is one of the most beautiful specimens of
ancient illumination that has come down to us.
It was a dispute about a book which led to Colum-
ba's departure from Ireland. Columba had secretly
copied a book belonging to St. Finnian. Finnian
claimed the copy, as being the child of a book which

THE KELTIC CHURCH OF IONA 89
he had brought from Rome, and a copy made with
out his leave. Columba claimed the copy, as be
ing his own work. King Diarmait decided for
Finnian : the man that owned the cow owned the
calf. About this and other things there was a
battle between the friends of each, and Columba's
friends, backed by the saint's prayers, won. But
there was bloodshed ; and Columba, perhaps be
cause he was conscience-stricken, perhaps because
public opinion was against him, went into exile
to Britain.
It was in 563, and the forty-second year of his
age, that Columba settled in the island of Hy or
Iona, which is about three miles long and a mile
or more broad, separated from the Mull of Ross
by a mile of sea. He was satisfied with it, when
he discovered that from it Ireland, the scene of his
late troubles, was not visible. It was on the borders,
both of the Scots, who had migrated previously from
Ireland, and also of the Picts, who had been there
for ages, and was an excellent centre for mission
ary work. There is no hint that Columba either
asked or received any sanction from Rome for this
undertaking, any more than Columban did for his
missionary work on the Continent. Columban's
independence is the more remarkable, as his missions
were nearer to Rome.
Of Columba's monastery at Iona nothing remains,
and it is not certain that the existing mediaeval

90 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
ruins are on the same site. But in the Isle of Saints
(Eilean na Naoimh), where he founded a second
monastery, are some beehive cells and other stone
buildings which may be his. Columba was the
first Abbot of Iona, but he was often absent,
leaving the monastery to be ruled by one of the
elder brethren. Just as St. Patrick attacked the
heathenism of the Irish at the court of King Laog-
haire, and St. Augustine attacked the heathenism of
the English at the court of King Ethelbert, so St.
Columba attacked that of the Picts at the court of
King Brude. At first, the King of the Picts closed
his gates against him ; but Columba made the sign
of the cross, and the gates opened of their own accord.
The Druids, like Elymas the sorcerer with the pro
consul, Sergius Paulus, tried to turn away King
Brude from the faith : but Columba in the end pre
vailed. A Druid named Broichan had been the
king's tutor, and he was very hostile. He got some
Druids to lay wait for Columba and his company,
as they came from the royal residence to sing even
song. But Columba, with his stentorian voice,
began to chant, " My heart is inditing of a good
matter ; I speak of the things which I have made
unto the king " ; and the Druids were afraid to
molest him ; all the more so as the people were
interested in the new singing. Broichan then by his
incantations raised a storm against Columba on
Loch Ness, but the saint sailed away against the

THE KELTIC CHURCH OF IONA 91
wind. Columba told Broichan to set free an Irish
maiden whom he held captive, and the Druid
refused. Columba told him that it would cost him
his life ; and when Broichan fell ill, he sent to
Columba to say that the girl should be freed.
Columba blessed a pebble, and told the messenger
to put it in the water that Broichan drank, and
said that then, if the maid was set free, the Druid
would recover. All which came to pass. When
King Brude was ill, the pebble could not be found, and
the king died. He was succeeded by a Christian,
who was friendly to the mission.1
At a famous convent at Drumceatt in 575 Columba
rescued the ancient order of Bards from extinc
tion. They had become very unpopular, owing
to their abuse of their privileges, especially their
right to hospitality. Columba pointed out that
they were very useful in preserving national tra
ditions, and the Bards were mended, instead of
being ended. Their numbers were reduced, and
their privileges curtailed. The chief Bard, in grati
tude, composed a poem in Columba's honour, and
it is still extant. At this same convention Columba
got a decree passed exempting women from military
service. It would have been well if there could
have been a decree to forbid monks from fighting.
1 It is said that a belief in pebbles, as charms against ill
ness, is still found among Irish peasants.

92 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
We read of two more battles in which Columba
was interested ; but we do not know how far he
was responsible for them.
In 593 Columba believed that he was dying ;
angels had beenTsent for his soul. But, at the prayers
of the Churches, they were recalled, and four years
were added to his life. When the four years had
expired, as the saint returned from the barn to the
monastery, his old white horse came and laid his
head on him and shed tears. His attendant would
have driven the weeping animal away. " Leave
him alone," said the saint ; " you, who are a rational
being, do not know, without my telling you, that I
am about to die ; but to this dumb creature its
Maker has in some way made known, that its master
is going to leave it." Not long afterwards he began
to transcribe the Psalter, and got as far as xxxiv.
10, " The lions do lack and suffer hunger, but they
who seek the Lord shall want no manner of thing
that is good." There he stopped, went to the church,
gave the brethren his blessing, and died. This was
just after midnight, between June 8 and 9, 597,
the morning of Trinity Sunday, and a week after
Augustine had baptized King Ethelbert at Canter
bury. The work of the Keltic missionary to the
Picts and Scots in North Britain ended as the work
of the Roman missionary to the English in South
Britain began.
It was in the monastery founded by Columba

THE KELTIC CHURCH OF IONA 93
at Iona that Oswald, afterwards King of Northum
bria, took refuge, when his father Ethelfrid was
defeated and slain at the river Idle by Redwald in
617. (Ethelfrid, we may remember, was the last
king who won a great victory for heathen English
over Christian Britons.) While Oswald was in exile
at Iona, he was converted and baptized, along with
some young nobles who had come with him. In
634, after Oswald had defeated the treacherous
Britons who had murdered his elder brother Eanfrid,
he succeeded to both the Northumbrian kingdoms,
established his court at Bamborough, and sent to
Iona for a bishop to come and preach to his sub
jects •, for, although the Roman missionary Paulinus
had previously made many converts (625-633) there
had been a considerable revival of heathenism
under Eanfrid, who himself apostatized. The first
bishop who was sent from Iona was not a success,
and he returned disgusted and discouraged. This
Keltic enthusiast could not get a hold on the rough
English of Northumbria. " It is of no use," he
said to the monks of Iona, " to attempt to convert
such people." One of the monks remonstrated.
" Perhaps you forgot the Apostle's maxim about
milk for babes. Perhaps you dealt too severely
with untrained hearers ; gave them teaching that
was too high for them and expected fruit from them
too soon." The speaker was Aidan. The other
monks, who had been sitting silent said, " Let Aidan

94 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
be sent." At the end of 635 Aidan set out to be
Bishop to the Northumbrians, and the choice proved
to be a very happy one.
Once more we have the happy union between a
Christian missionary and a converted king. Os
wald himself acted as interpreter, when Aidan
preached. And Aidan, true to the traditions of
Iona, fixed upon a small island near the Northum
brian coast as the place for his church, and became
the first Bishop of Lindisfarne. One may walk
across to it from the mainland at low tide, and there
fore it was much more accessible than Iona. As
it is close to Bamborough, Aidan and Oswald could
keep in constant touch with one another, and the
intercourse between the Keltic missionary Bishop
and the English King is among the most beautiful
episodes in Church History. Each was so single-
hearted, so bent on living the Christian life, and
on making the joys and hopes of it known to others.
What Aidan advised, Oswald endeavoured to carry
out. Either invited by them, or attracted by
tidings of the good work in Northumbria, monks
from Iona came over to Lindisfarne, which per
haps already began to be called " Holy Isle," and
placed themselves at the disposal of Aidan. Churches
were built, and the Christianity introduced by
the Roman missionary Paulinus, and preserved
from extinction by James the Deacon, was revived
and extended. It spread along the Tweed to Mel-

THE KELTIC CHURCH OF IONA 95
rose, where Boisil founded a monastery, and there
became the trainer of St. Cuthbert.
Oswald has been compared by Bishop Light-
foot to Josiah.1 What the Son of Sirach says in
Ecclesiasticus (xlix. 1-3) of Josiah may be said,
word for word, [of Oswald : " The remembrance
of him is sweet as honey in all mouths, and as music
at a banquet of wine. He behaved himself up
rightly in the conversion of the people, and took
away the abominations of iniquity. He set his
heart right toward the Lord : in the days of wicked
men he made godliness to prevail." He succeeded
two apostate princes, his cousin Osric and his brother
Eanfrid. He found the Church in Northumbria
desolate and disorganized. After a reign of eight
years, he left it, thanks to Aidan and his fellow-
workers, well-ordered and vigorous.
As was mentioned just now, Oswald began his
reign with a battle, in which he conquered the Bri
tons who had slain his brother. This was at Heaven-
field, north of the Roman wall, near Hexham (634).
The British King Cadwalla, though a Christian,
had allied himself with Penda, the heathen King
of Mercia, whom he exceeded in ferocity. The two
allies thought to destroy the Northumbrian king
dom, Cadwalla because it was English, Penda be
cause it was Christian, and both of them because
1 Leaders in the Northern Church, pp. 22 f.

96 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
they coveted the Northumbrian territory. Os
wald marched out to meet Cadwalla, and before
the battle he believed that St. Columba appeared
to him and said, " Be of good courage, and play
the man." Oswald then erected a cross, which
he held up himself, while his soldiers made it fast
in the ground. Then he addressed his small army.
" Let us all kneel, and together beseech the true
and living God Almighty, that in His mercy He
will defend us from a proud and fierce enemy ; for
He knoweth that we have undertaken a righteous
war for the salvation of our race." The prayer
was heard, and Cadwalla, the victor in a hundred
fights, was defeated and slain.
Oswald, says Bede (iii. 6), brought under his
dominion peoples of the four tongues spoken in Bri
tain, Britons, Picts, Scots, and English. He counts
him as the sixth Bretwalda, and Adamnan calls
him " Emperor of the whole of Britain." Evi
dently his superiority was recognized by Cynegyls,
King of Wessex. When Cynegyls was baptized
at Dorchester in Oxfordshire (a.d. 635) Oswald
stood godfather, and joined with him in granting
Dorchester to the Roman missionary Birinus as
his episcopal see. Birinus had been sent by Pope
Honorius I., and by his pious labours, says Bede,
many churches were built and many peoples called
to the Lord. It was perhaps at the time when
the King of Wessex was baptized, that King Oswald

THE KELTIC CHURCH OF IONA 97
married his daughter, Cyneburh. But we must
return to the work in Northumbria.
There can be little doubt that the main cause of
the success of Oswald and Aidan in restoring the
Christian faith was the self-denying simplicity of
their own lives. Without ostentatious or morose
austerity, they showed that they were indifferent
to worldly pleasures, and cared for wealth only as
a means of spreading the Gospel. Aidan seems to
have been one of those energetic men to whom idle
ness is misery, and who find their recreation in a
change of work. He divided his time between
study, teaching, and the services of the Church.
He travelled about his huge diocese on foot, and
would never ride, unless driven to do so by neces
sity ; and he was always on the look-out for oppor
tunities to do good to rich and poor alike ; if they
were believers, to strengthen them in the faith ; if
they were heathen, to win them over to it. He
would give entertainment, but never gifts, to the
rich ; and whatever he received from them he spent
either on the poor or in ransoming those who had
been sold as slaves. And " it was the highest com
mendation of his doctrine with all men, that he
taught no otherwise than he and his followers
lived." Not very often did he find time to visit the court
at Bamborough ; but when he did do so and dined
with the king, he and the two or three clergy who
H

98 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
accompanied him would rise early from table to
read and study, or chant the Psalms. On one of
these occasions there was an incident which caused
it to be remembered and recorded. It was the
Easter festival, and Aidan was sitting at Oswald's
table. A silver dish with royal dainties was placed
before the king, and they were about to say grace,
when the king's almoner entered, and said that
there were many poor people sitting in the street,
asking for alms. Oswald ordered the food to be
taken out to them, and had the silver dish cut into
small pieces and distributed among them. Aidan,
delighted at this benevolence, seized the king's
right hand and exclaimed, " May this hand never
grow old." And when Oswald's right arm was
cut off in the battle in which he was slain, it was
placed in a silver shrine and preserved in St. Peter's
Church at York, where it was believed to be entire
and uncorrupted in Bede's own day, nearly a hun
dred years later.
For Oswald's reign ended, as it began, with a
great battle ; but on this field he won, not an earthly
crown, but a heavenly one. The place was Maser-
field, which may be the same as Oswestry, or Oswald's
Tree ; and this perhaps means that Oswald again
set up a cross. The first battle was against Cadwalla,
the Christian King of the Britons. The last battle
was against Cadwalla's heathen ally, Penda, King
of the Mercians ; and here the pagan conquered.

THE KELTIC CHURCH OF IONA 99
The " most Christian King " (Christianissimus rex)
Oswald was surrounded and slain by the heathen.
This time also his prayer on the field of battle has
been preserved, and they were his dying words :
" O God, have mercy on their souls," — words which
afterwards passed into a proverb. It was noticed
that he died on his birthday, August 5. For years
afterwards the monks of Hexham used to visit the
scene of his first battle, in order to celebrate there
the anniversary of his last. Penda cut off his head
and arms and stuck them upon stakes in derision.
The arms were afterwards taken to Bamborough,
the uncorrupted right arm being eventually taken
to York. The head was placed in the coffin of
St. Cuthbert, and at last found a resting-place,
with Cuthbert's body, in Durham Cathedral. The
greater part of the coffin may still be seen there in
the Chapter Library. And what is believed to be
King Oswald's skull was seen by many of us a few
years ago, when last the tomb of St. Cuthbert was
opened. The skull has a cleft in it, showing plainly
where the blow that proved fatal fell.
King Oswald's defeat and death took place in
642. Penda pressed his advantage, and it looked
as if Christianity might again be seriously injured
in Northumbria. He advanced to Bamborough,
and failing to take it by assault prepared to burn
the defenders out. He piled wood and straw against
it, waited for a favourable wind, and then fired it.

100 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
From one of the Fame islands opposite Bamborough
Aidan saw the danger, and prayed earnestly that
the evil which Penda designed might be averted.
The wind changed, and the fire and smoke were
blown back upon the heathen besiegers.
Aidan remained as close a friend of Oswald's
successor Oswin as of Oswald himself. Oswin
was so dutiful to him, that Aidan predicted that
so humble a king was too good to live long. And
not very long afterwards Oswin was murdered.
Aidan was broken-hearted at his royal friend's
death ; and twelve days later he died himself,
August 31, 651. In these last days he had a hut
built for himself against the outer wall of Bam
borough Church ; thither he retired to die. About
the time that he passed away, Cuthbert, tending
sheep on the Lammermoor hills, saw some shooting
stars. After he heard of Aidan's death, he said
that what he saw must have been angels carrying
Aidan's soul to heaven. And he thereupon entered
the monastery of Boisil at Melrose.
It has been claimed for Aidan that he was the
apostle of England. A pen of great authority has
written, " Augustine was the apostle of Kent, but
Aidan was the apostle of England." William Bright,
late Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History at
Oxford, who has made this early period of English
Church History peculiarly his own, says with great
truth that this " uncritical antithesis " has done

THE KELTIC CHURCH OF IONA 101
great mischief to " historical proportion." It is
one of those crisp, easily remembered sayings,
which have enough truth in them to prevent them
from being speedily rejected, but also enough error
to cause them to be seriously misleading. More
over, it is a dictum which plays only too surely into
the hands of those who think that every argument
is to be adopted which tells against Rome. It
cannot be denied that Augustine began the conver
sion of the English ; but Protestant prejudices, and
perhaps English prejudices, make us willing to cut
down the work done by Augustine to a minimum.
Augustine came from Rome, and he had no pre
vious connexion with the British Isles ; therefore,
we do not like to admit that he did so very much for
what has become the Protestant Church of England.
Aidan owed nothing to Rome ; and in some mat
ters, which were then of great moment, maintained
the customs of his own Church against those of
Rome. Moreover, although not English, he was at
any rate British, and he worked in close conjunc
tion with English kings. Therefore, we are will
ing to attribute the conversion of the English and
the founding of the English Church mainly to
Aidan. But, even as a matter of policy, this is a perilous
line to take. The Roman controversialist, who
is well acquainted with the history of the period,
can easily show, that a great deal more must be

102 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
assigned to Augustine, and a great deal less to Aidan.
And this is the real objection to the telling anti
thesis ; not that it is controversially dangerous
to the side that uses it, but that, whoever uses it,
it remains historically untrue. No one supposes
that it was written in the interests of Protestant
prejudice : it was written because the writer was
convinced that it was true, and perhaps because
the subject which he was treating led him to give
a generous estimate of one who was a " leader in
the Northern Church." But it is rightly condemned
as " uncritical."
No one can deny that Augustine was an apostle.
This epigram admits that he was the apostle of
Kent. He was the first to preach the Gospel in
Kent and the first to preach the Gospel to the Eng
lish. But Aidan was not an apostle at all, not
even the apostle of Northumbria. Let us be over
flowing in our gratitude for all that he did for the
English, whether Christian or pagan, who lived north
of the Humber. He was indefatigable as a restorer
of what had been laid waste, and as a winner of
souls that had hitherto not been won ; and appar
ently he was more successful in his sphere of work
than Augustine was in his. His was a nobler type
of the missionary spirit. He had more sweetness
and breadth of character ; was less punctilious, less
anxious about details, better able to take a wide
and sympathetic view He knew how to be trust-

THE KELTIC CHURCH OF IONA 108
ing and even adventurous, without sacrificing dis
cretion. " This grace of discretion," says Bede,
" marked him out for the Northumbrian mission ;
but when the time came, he was found to be adorned
with every other excellence " : and, in his untiring
activity, he was " a strange contrast to the sloth-
fulness of our own age." Bede, though he strongly
disapproved of Aidan's Keltic independence as to
the Easter cycle, and other ecclesiastical usages,
is yet full of sympathetic admiration for Aidan's
character and work ; and we may readily believe
that every word of the praise bestowed by this Eng
lish writer, who was devoted to Rome, upon the
Keltic missionary, who took no account of Rome,
is as justly, as it is generously, bestowed.
But, when all is said about the greater attractive
ness of Aidan as compared with Augustine, about
the wider extent of his work and its greater perman
ence — the fact remains, that Augustine was an
apostle, and that Aidan was not. He did nothing
for the English beyond the limits of Northumbria,
and to the Northumbrians he was not their first
evangelist. In that field he entered upon the labours
of Paulinus, who had opened out the way for him.
That he was a better worker than Paulinus, we can
well believe ; and it may be that he was a better
man. But no such disasters disturbed his work
as those which overwhelmed the work of Paulinus,
and he had an enormous advantage over his pre-

104 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
decessor in having the monastery of Iona to draw
upon. From Aidan's old island-home devoted clergy
were always to be had. But let as little as you please
be made of the work of Paulinus, the fact is incon
trovertible that in the mission to the Northumbrians
he, and not Aidan, was first in the field. Paulinus,
and not Aidan, is the apostle of Northumbria :
and, in the end, ^the Keltic form of Christianity,
introduced and established by Aidan, passed away,
and the Roman form, as first preached by Paulinus,
prevailed. Before leaving the subject of the great work done
by Aidan, it is necessary to point out one very
remarkable feature in it. As has been already indi
cated, his mission was altogether independent of
Rome, and was initiated and cherished by Iona.
At that time there were two great ecclesiastical
influences acting upon the English, one coming from
Rome and the other from Iona ; and for a time it
might seem doubtful which of the two would pre
vail and drive the other out of the field. We may
be thankful that the victory was with Rome. There
is no question as to the chief source of influence on
the Roman side : it was of course the Bishop of
Rome. Augustine was sent by Pope Gregory and
he referred the questions which perplexed him to
Gregory for decision. It was Gregory who sent
Mellitus, the first Bishop of London and third
Archbishop of Canterbury, with a second band of

THE KELTIC CHURCH OF IONA 105
missionaries to reinforce Augustine in 601 ; and he
wrote various letters to bishops and kings on the
Continent, to facilitate the journey of Mellitus to
England, just as he had done in the case of Augus
tine. He also sent with them " all things necessary
for divine worship and the service of the Church."
Among those whom Gregory sent with Mellitus
were Laurentius, who had come with Augustine
and had by him been sent back to Rome with a
letter to Gregory, and whom Augustine named as
his successor in the see of Canterbury, and also
Paulinus, who became the apostle of the Northum
brians. Another of the same company was Justus,
who became first Bishop of Rochester and the fourth
Archbishop of Canterbury. He received the pall
from Pope Boniface V., and it was he who conse
crated Paulinus bishop to go in 625 to Northum
bria. Paulinus, after converting King Edwin,
established his see at York. But, after the over
throw of Edwin in 633, Paulinus returned to the
South and became Bishop of Rochester. As he
did not receive the pall from Pope Honorius I. until
he had left York, it is doubted whether he is to be
counted among the Archbishops of that see. And,
as we have seen, it was Honorius I. who sent Birinus
as a missionary to Wessex. These details are men
tioned (and others might be added), in order to show
that it was the Bishop of Rome who was the source
of influence on the Roman side, and also to show how

106 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
great was the share which the Roman missionaries
had in the conversion of the English.
But who was the source of influence at the other
centre, the centre of Keltic Christianity in North
Britain ? It was the Abbot of the Monastery of
Iona. And the remarkable thing to which atten
tion should be given is, that the Abbot of Iona was
not a bishop. He was only a presbyter ; and yet
he had bishops who were apparently under his
jurisdiction. It was he who got Aidan consecrated
and sent to Northumbria ; and it would seem as
if Keltic Bishops applied to him in difficulties and
perhaps even for direction in their work. This
rather strange reversal of positions will appear less
strange to us when we remember two facts. First,
the immense amount of respect that was paid to
the memory of St. Columba, a respect which breathes
through every chapter of Adamnan's Life of him and
the traditions respecting him. Nothing is too won
derful for him to have done, or to have had done to
him, through the power of God. That such a man
as he should direct bishops, would seem to be only
what was in accordance with the fitness of things.
And, just as Romanists hold that much of the apos
tolic authority of St. Peter is continued to each
Bishop of Rome, so the Keltic clergy, and especi
ally those who had been trained at Iona, may have
thought that much of Columba's authority ought
to be conceded to whoever sat in Columba's seat.

THE KELTIC CHURCH OF IONA 107
Secondly, we must remember that in the Keltic
Church there were, as a rule, no diocesan bishops.
Among the Scots of Ireland and of Scotland, as
well as among the British Christians in Strathclyde
and Wales, bishops were attached to tribes rather
than to districts or cities. Keltic bishops had no
episcopal sees. The system of sees and dioceses
was the Roman system : but it had no place among
the Kelts. It would have seemed a surprising thing
to one who was accustomed to the Roman system
that a bishop of a diocese should be in any degree
under the direction of a presbyter, and of a presbyter
outside his diocese. But to the tribal bishops of
the Keltic Church it may not have seemed at all
unnatural that they should accept direction from
the successor of St. Columba.
But when we are considering the respective claims
upon our gratitude which can be urged for Augustine
and for Aidan, or (as it is perhaps better to say) for
the Roman Church and for the Keltic — the impor
tant thing to remember is, which system, in the
end, swallowed up the other. It is perhaps rather
invidious to try to strike a balance between the
Roman missionaries and the Keltic missionaries,
as to the amount of service which they rendered in
converting the English nation to Christianity ;
although those who are specially interested in the
Roman missionaries have nothing to fear, when
such a balance is drawn. It is certain that the

108 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
Roman missionaries were first in the field, and also
that the Keltic bishops in Wales refused to help
them. But there is a third thing which is certain,
and it is that which is decisive. The work of the
Keltic missionaries, which they had accomplished
quite independently of Rome, was re-modelled ac
cording to the Roman fashion. It was the Roman
type of Christianity, and not the Keltic, which
became dominant in England. We shall be able to
consider that point more fully in the next chapter.
The present chapter may conclude with a notice of
a few of the points which distinguished the Keltic
system, some of which help us to be thankful that
it did not prevail and come down to ourselves.
It would perhaps be an exaggeration to call it a
barbarous form of Christianity ; but it was rude
and simple in the extreme.1 Its sacred buildings
were devoid of ornament, whether architectural or
pictorial. Often they were of timber, or even less
substantial materials ; and there seems to be no
evidence that the Keltic timber churches ever at
tained to the beauty of the old timber churches of
Norway. They appear to have been small and very
regular, with neither aisles nor apse. The cathe
dral church at Lindisfarne was of wood thatched
with reeds. The one ecclesiastical art which grew
to perfection was that of illuminating ; but such
1 " Rustic simplicity " is the expression which Bede puts
into the mouth of Wilfrid at Whitby (iii. 25).

THE KELTIC CHURCH OF IONA 109
glorious examples of this art as the Book of Kells,
which has been attributed to Columba himself, is
thought now to belong rather to the age of Bede.
Even here, however, the limitations of the Keltic
character seem to come in. There is extraordinary
minuteness of finish and richness of colouring.
There are endless tracings of fine lines, " as firm as
if drawn by a machine," and yet often requiring a
magnifying glass to follow them. " But, when the
human figure or historical scenes are attempted,
the effect is poor and often barbarous, and even
flowers and trees were avoided " by these artists.1
Here, as in so many other things, the bent of the
Keltic religious feeling seems to have been regularity
rather than freedom. They would confine rather
than copy nature. The Keltic Church seems to
have remained uninfluenced by the ecclesiastical
developments on the Continent, and to have dis
liked what may be called religious civilization.
We may well believe that the Kelts in Ireland and
Scotland did not give a welcome to Roman civiliza
tion when they came across it : and they did not
often come in contact with it. Even the influence
of Roman Christianity did not often extend beyond
the limits of the Roman Empire : and the power
of the legions had only for a time extended into
Northumbria, and had never extended into Ireland.
Consequently, Keltic Christianity was of aboriginal
1 Madan, MS. Books, v.

110 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
growth ; very independent and very insular. This
of course involved not a little narrowness, but it
did not involve selfish indifference to all outside
their own Church and nation. These Scots of Ire
land and Scotland did not exhibit the race-hatred
which disfigured the Christianity of the British in
Wales. The British in Wales not only abstained
from trying to convert the heathen English ; they
refused to have anything to do with them when
other people had converted them. Bede tells us
that in his day the Britons still treated the English
as pagans. It was far otherwise with the more
generous Kelts of Ireland and Iona. They streamed
across, not only to Northumbria, but to the Alps
and even across the Alps, seeking for fields in which
to win souls for Christ. The spirit which breathed
in many of them was that which is expressed in the
words of Mochonna, son of the provincial King of
Ulster. He was devoted to Columba, and announced
his intention of accompanying him when he went
into exile. Columba represented to him that his
parents and his country had claims upon him, and
that such claims ought to be respected. " Who
are my parents ? " was the reply, " and what is my
country ? It is thou who art my father ; it is the
Church that is my mother ; and my country is
where I can gather the largest harvest for Christ."
It was that spirit which gave Iona to Scotland ; and
it was that spirit which gave Lindisfarne to North-

THE KELTIC CHURCH OF IONA 111
umbria. We ought to be very thankful that there
were such men as these to bring so many of our fore
fathers into the Christian Church. And our grati
tude need not be diminished by the further thought,
that we ought also to be thankful that the kind of
Christianity which they introduced had very soon
to make way for something better.

CHAPTER IV
THE EARLY ENGLISH CHURCH ;
WILFRID AND BEDE
T T is an historical fact of great importance, which
-*- still, however, needs to be constantly repeated,
that the English Church was not created by the
State, but, on the contrary, that the English State
was created by the English Church. There was a
united Church of England before there was a united
Kingdom of England, and it was the union of the
dioceses of England under one archbishop which
was the main cause of the union of the kingdoms
of England under one king. But we have not yet
reached the time when this important fact can be
regarded as an historical truism, which every one
knows, and no one would dispute.
In order that it may not be supposed that preju
dice in favour of the Church of England makes one
assert the priority in time of the English Church to
the English State, one can quote the words of one
of the chief of the English historians who are still
left to us. Stubbs, Freeman, Bright, Creighton,
na

THE ENGLISH CHURCH 113
and many others have passed away ; but among
those who still remain is the historian of Italy and
her Invaders, The Dynasty of Theodosius, The Life
of Theodoric, and The Life of Charles the Great. Dr.
Thos. Hodgkin is not a member of the Church of
England, but of the Society of Friends. He need
not, therefore, be suspected of bias in favour of the
English Church.
In his recent work (1906) on The History of England
from the Earliest Times to the Norman Conquest he
pauses at the point which we have reached, a little
after the deaths of Oswin and Aidan, and remarks
thus : " From this brief review of the relations of
the various English kingdoms to one another to
wards the close of the seventh century, it will be
abundantly evident how far we yet were from any
thing like national unity. There does not even
seem to be any dawning feeling of fellowship of race.
Angle wages with Angle and Saxon with Saxon a
long and embittered warfare ; and more than once
a Mercian or West Saxon king avails himself of
British help to win the victory over his kinsfolk.
If Anglo-Saxon unity was at length obtained — and
we know that it was not till far on in the tenth cen
tury that it was even approximately realized —
this result was due undoubtedly to two great causes :
the influence of the national Christian Church, and
the necessity of self-defence against the Scandi
navian invaders. With the first of these causes alone
I

114 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
we have here to deal. It cannot be doubted that
zeal for their newborn Christian faith was already
in some measure drawing the English kings together.
When Oswald of Bernicia stood sponsor for West
Saxon Cynegils, when his brother Oswy persuaded
East Saxon Sigebert to forsake the follies of idolatry,
a moral bond of union was formed, which might be
developed into a political relationship. The con
sciousness of common interest in the "Kingdom of
God might well become, and eventually did become,
a consciousness of fellow-citizenship in one great
country" (p. 179).
But, if the newborn Church of the English was
to become a model of unity to the English nation,
it was necessary that it should first become united
in itself, and that was very far from being the case.
As we have seen, two influences were at work in
converting the English nation, one issuing from
Rome, and the other from Iona ; and, although these
two were entirely in agreement as to the essentials
of the Christian faith, yet they differed considerably
in externals — in liturgy, in the time for keeping
Easter, and in the form of the tonsure. Some of
these points of difference, and especially the last,
seem to us to be very trivial, and to belong to those
things which Gregory himself had told Augustine
need not be in all Churches the same. Neverthe
less, there was very serious inconvenience when
Christians of the same nation and locality differed

THE ENGLISH CHURCH 115
about such things ; and all experience shows that
great religious bitterness may be generated by differ
ences about usages or tenets which in themselves
are unimportant. It was destructive of Christian
sympathy and decency that at the same court, the
king x and his followers should be keeping the Easter
festival according to the Scottish usage, while the
queen,2 who had lived in Kent under the Roman
system, was still keeping the fast of Holy Week.
On the whole, the differences among the English
ran as follows. Kent and East Anglia closely fol
lowed Rome. Wessex, which had been largely con
verted by the Roman missionary Birinus, for the
most part did the same. The two Northumbrian
kingdoms were, in the main, decidedly Scottish,
although owing to the earlier influence of the Roman
Paulinus, which had been kept alive by his fol
lower James the Deacon, the Roman system was
not unknown there. Mercia and Essex, owing to
the influence of Northumbrian missionaries, seem
to have been at least partly Keltic in their Chris
tianity. We are not surprised that Oswy, King of Northum
bria, should be impressed by the intolerable diver
gence between himself and his queen as to the right
time of keeping Easter. Both could not be cor
rect, and the question ought to be settled ; so in
1 Oswy, King of Northumbria.
2 Eanfled.

116 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
664 he summoned a synod at Whitby, where St.
Hilda, formerly abbess of Hartlepool (649-657), had
established a religious house for both monks and
nuns, over which she presided (657-680). This
house must for ever be dear to lovers of English
literature as having been the home of the first English
poet, Caedmon. The temptation to linger over him
is very great, but we must pass on. Although Hilda
had been baptized by Paulinus at York, on a day
which has been called " the birthday of the North
umbrian Church," April 11, Easter Eve, 627, she
had afterwards come under the influence of Aidan,
and had become attached to the usages of Iona ;
and at the Whitby synod she gave her support,
which was powerful, to that side of the controversy.
The leading advocate, in pleading before King Oswy,
was Colman, third Bishop of Lindisfarne (661-664).
The leading advocate on the other side was the pres
byter Wilfrid. Wilfrid had been under both in
fluences. He had been a novice in the monastery
at Lindisfarne, and had gone to Rome with Benedict
Biscop in 653. He had returned to England in 658
and had entered the monastery at Ripon, where
he was ordained priest shortly before the conference
at Whitby. He was an enthusiastic supporter of
the Roman usage.
It is worth while to understand the question at
issue and the chief arguments used. Both sides
agreed that Easter Day must be a Sunday, and

THE ENGLISH CHURCH 117
that the Sunday must be so many days after a par
ticular new moon. The Keltic usage was to take
the first Sunday on or after the fourteenth day of the
moon ; the Roman usage was to take the first Sun
day on or after the fifteenth day. Thus the Keltic
usage allowed Easter Day to fall on the fourteenth
day and excluded the twenty-first day ; while the
Roman excluded the fourteenth and admitted the
twenty-first. That was the question ; now for the
arguments. Colman appealed to the authority of St. John,
who, it is said, with the Quarto-decimans who fol
lowed him, began the Paschal feast on the fourteenth.
But the Quarto-decimans' custom was really quite
different from the Keltic. They had kept the four
teenth day, whether it was a Sunday or not. In
short, they had simply followed the Jewish passover.
This custom had been universally condemned. The
whole of Christendom, the Keltic Church included,
had agreed that Easter Day must be kept on a
Sunday. Wilfrid appealed to the authority of St.
Peter. Rome had received its rule from him and
had never varied. This plea was as worthless as
the other. It may be doubted whether St. Peter
ever laid down any rule about Easter ; and it is
quite certain that the Roman rule had changed.
Having found out from experience that its Easter
cycle was vicious, it had adopted a better one. Col
man appealed to the miracles wrought by Columba

118 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
and his successors : was it likely that men who had
such marks of Divine favour were in error about
the chief Christian festival ? To which Wilfrid made
the insolent rejoinder : " Concerning your father
Columba and his followers, whose sanctity you say
you imitate, and whose rules you observe, whjch
have been confirmed by signs from heaven, I might
answer, that when many at the Day of Judgment
shall say to our Lord, that in His Name they pro
phesied, and cast out devils, and wrought many
wonders, our Lord will reply, that He never knew
them." This was not the way to win conscientious
men over to a better way. But he was willing to
admit that Columba and others were saints. Never
theless, was it reasonable that two tiny islands like
Iona and Lindisfarne should set up customs at
variance with the rest of Christendom ? Here was a
solid argument at last ; but it was not the decisive
one. Wilfrid returned to the authority of " the
most blessed prince of the Apostles, to whom our
Lord said, Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will
build My Church, and the gates of hell shall not
prevail against it ; and to thee I will give the keys
of the Kingdom of Heaven."
King Oswy turned to Colman and asked him,
whether these words were spoken by our Lord to
Peter. Colman admitted it. " And can you show
any such power given to your Columba ? " No, he
could not. " Do you both agree that the keys of the

THE ENGLISH CHURCH 119
Kingdom of Heaven were given to Peter by our
Lord?" They both answered, "We do." Then
said the king, " I cannot have him as an adversary
who is admitted to have the keys." The majority
agreed with the king, and the Roman rule was
adopted. Hilda accepted it loyally, but Colman
and the clergy who held to him returned to Iona.1
Bishop Agilbert of Dorchester was at this con
ference, and was on the Roman side. Why was the
dispute with Bishop Colman left to the presbyter
Wilfrid ? That question leads to an interesting
fact respecting language. Bishop Agilbert was a
Frank, and he had not acquired the English lan
guage. These two Teutonic languages had a common
origin, and seventy years earlier Augustine had used
Franks to interpret to the English. During these
seventy years, each language had diverged more
and more from one another, so that now a Frank
could not usefully take part in an English debate,
and Agilbert asked to be excused.
The decision respecting Easter carried with it a
similar decision respecting the tonsure and other
matters, and in a comparatively short time con
formity with Rome was established in all English
dioceses, although a few even of the English clergy
preferred to migrate to Iona. Fifty years later
(710) the northern Picts conformed, and Iona itself
1 See Diet, of Christian Biography, I, pp. 61, 599 ; IV.,
pp. 1179f.

120 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
in 716. The Britons in Wales were the last to give
way : they yielded, however, in 768, and then all
Christians in Britain kept Easter at the same time.
The conference probably met in Lent, in order
to have the question about Easter settled before the
festival. Soon after Easter, this year (664) was
marked by a total eclipse of the sun, and this was
connected with the outbreak of a virulent disorder
called the " yellow pest," which began in Kent
about midsummer, and went steadily north, carry
ing off multitudes. Just as on the Continent in
the fourth century those who still held to paganism
declared that the grievous calamities of the age were
caused by the wrath of the old gods, who were pun
ishing men for the desertion of their temples, so in
some parts of England this yellow pest was attri
buted to a similar cause, and many of the English
in Essex returned to the worship of their fathers.
Perhaps they were confirmed in their belief that
Christianity was the cause of the pestilence, when
they noticed how specially fatal the plague was in
monasteries, whether of monks or nuns. This
special fatality is very intelligible, if only the num
bers gathered together in a small enclosure be con
sidered. But we must also remember the entire
ignorance and neglect of sanitary precautions ; and
also the fact that it was the custom in monasteries
to sleep in the clothes in which one had been working
during the day. Nor was this all. Abstention

THE ENGLISH CHURCH 121
from washing was a common form of asceticism ;
and there were many who allowed themselves the
luxury of a bath only three or four times in the year.
Indeed, one has read of an ascetic who never washed
any part of her body, excepting the tips of the fingers
with which she received the Eucharist. Monas
teries, therefore, were hot-beds ready for the plague ;
and it is in no way surprising that some religious
houses lost all their inmates. But it must have
seemed a telling^argument for the pagans and apos
tates, that precisely the strongholds of the new
religion were the places which suffered most from
the scourge, which, as they maintained, had been
sent by the wrath of Woden and Thor.
When Colman resigned the see of Lindisfarne after
his defeat at Whitby, Tuda, an Irishman who ac
cepted the Roman Easter, was consecrated as his
successor. Tuda was soon carried off by the yellow
pest ; and then the Northumbrian kings with their
council of wise men chose Wilfrid, the victor at
Whitby, to succeed him. Wilfrid begged to be
allowed to go to Gaul for consecration, in order to
secure that none of his consecrators should have
any taint of the Keltic heresy. Leave was granted,
and he was consecrated with great magnificence,
such as he dearly loved, at Compiegne, perhaps early
in 665. Twelve bishops were present, among them
Agilbert, formerly Bishop of Dorchester, who had
let Wilfrid take the lead at Whitby, and who was

122 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
now Bishop of Paris. Wilfrid made the grave mis
take of staying on in Gaul, we know not why : but
the fine churches and vestments and music may
have attracted him. He did not start for England
till the spring of 666, and he then took 120 men with
him. A storm drove the vessel ashore on the coast
of Sussex, which was still heathen. A thick belt
of forest at that time cut off Sussex from the rest of
England, and this natural barrier had not yet been
penetrated by the missionaries. A band of Sussex
wreckers came down on the distressed crew, hoping
to make a prize of the richly laden vessel. Wilfrid
tried to buy them off with some of his treasures
" All is ours," they cried, " that the sea brings us."
A heathen priest stood by and uttered incantations
against Wilfrid and his party. One of them felled
the enchanter with a stone. This discouraged the
wreckers. The stranded vessel was got off the beach,
and Wilfrid got safely away, with the loss of five
men. When Wilfrid at last reached Northumberland
he found troubles of another kind awaiting him.
Though the party whom he had defeated had ac
cepted the Roman Easter, they had not been eager
to accept the man who had deprived them of their
old usages. His long absence gave them a chance
of getting rid of him, and when Wilfrid got back he
found another Bishop appointed and consecrated.
This was Chad, one of the most beautiful characters

THE ENGLISH CHURCH 123
in early English history. The see had been moved
from Lindisfarne to York, and Chad, consecrated
by Wini of Winchester and two British Bishops,
was established as Bishop of York. Wilfrid went
off to Ripon, and there and at Hexham he devoted
much time to building a fine basilica. At both
places crypts, which may be his, remain, but
nothing of his work survives above ground.
We have now reached March, 668. On the fifth
Sunday in Lent, March 26, Pope Vitalian conse
crated Theodore of Tarsus to be Archbishop of
Canterbury.1 Both Deusdedit, the late archbishop,
and the man who had been elected to succeed him,
had been cut off by the pestilence. In May, 669,
the second Sunday after Pentecost, this very capable
Oriental, brought from the Eastern Church to Rome,
and sent from Rome to the extreme limits of Wes
tern Christendom, was enthroned on the seat of St.
Augustine ; a momentous day for England.
Tarsus had produced a St. Paul to found churches
at the extreme East of Europe ; and it produced a
Theodore to consolidate newly founded Churches
at the extreme West. The Apostle and this organ
izer were very unlike one another in many things ;

1 Benedict Biscop was then in Rome, and Vitalian com
missioned him to escort Theodore to Canterbury. They
travelled slowly through France, and spent some months
with Agilbert, Bishop of Paris, who could give Theodore
valuable information about the dioceses in Britain.

124 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
but both of them had great gifts for the work which
God required them to do. Omitting comparisons,
let us confine our attention to Theodore.
He was sixty-six, and he knew that, in the rough
climate to which he was so unused, the night in
which no man can work might come very soon. If
he was to accomplish the great commission which
had been entrusted to him, he must labour strenu
ously ; and he set to work at once. As it proved,
he had a primacy of twenty-one years before him ;
but that no one could have expected when he arrived.
It was an excellent omen that he was heartily
welcomed by both kings and people, and it must
have increased the interest in him that he came
from the far East. But his great advantage was
that he had been sent direct from Rome and had
been consecrated by the Bishop of Rome himself.
The greatest advantage of all had to be discovered
by experience of him, for it lay in his own strong
personal character. He was masterful and deter
mined ; perhaps we may say despotic ; with a clear
head and a strong will : and these were just the
qualities which were needed for the work which he
had to do. He came to a Church which lacked
unity, organization, and culture. The English
nation had been converted piecemeal, from a variety
of centres, and by missionaries whose ecclesiastical
systems did not agree. Five years had passed since
the Roman system had conquered the Keltic at

THE ENGLISH CHURCH 125
Whitby in 664 ; but general uniformity had not been
reached. With just one bishop to each kingdom,
the dioceses were far too large, and the work could
not be effectually done. There were still heathen
scattered up and down the kingdoms ; and Sussex
and the Isle of Wight, separated from the rest of
England, the one by its belt of forests and the other
by its belt of sea, were still mainly heathen. More
over, in spite of the learning which some mission
aries had brought from Iona or Ireland or Rome,
there was a very low condition of education among
the clergy. Many no doubt had been too busy to
study. After going through the dioceses and regulating
what called for immediate attention, Theodore
developed a great school at Canterbury, where
Latin and Greek were taught to such purpose that,
as Bede says, some came to know these languages
as well as their native tongue. Not only theology
and other ecclesiastical subjects were taught, but
astronomy, music, and medicine. Theodore himself
taught, and was aided by Hadrian, whom Vitalian
had selected as archbishop, but who had begged
that Theodore might be chosen instead. He did
not want to shirk, he said ; he would gladly go to
England and work, but he did not feel equal to going
as archbishop. He was Theodore's very competent
helper in many things.
Then came the question of unity and organization ;

126 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
and Theodore made a great advance towards this
in summoning a synod to meet at Hertford in Sep
tember, 673. Of his six suffragans, four came ;
and Wilfrid (who was now established as Bishop of
York, Chad having retired to Lichfield) sent persons
to represent him. Many teachers came with the
bishops, but only the bishops were regarded as
members of the synod. It was a very notable
assembly. The English parliament has been called
" the mother of parliaments," other nations having
copied us in this. But the synod at Hertford was
the mother of the English parliament. In it the English
Church met for the first time as a single body ; and
at that time the English Church was the only repre
sentative of the English nation. The synod at
Hertford was the first of our national assemblies ;
and it decreed that a synod should be held annually,
on the first of August at Clovesho. Theodore pro
posed the division of the dioceses ; but there was
so much opposition that he did not insist. He
was able, however, to bring this about in parti
cular cases, first in East Anglia and then in Mercia.
Then, in a high-handed way, without consulting
Wilfrid, he divided Northumbria into four dioceses,
leaving Wilfrid at York, but taking Bernicia, Deira,
and Lindsey, from that see. Wilfrid protested ;
Theodore persisted ; and then Wilfrid appealed to
Rome, and left the country to plead his own cause —
the first instance of an appeal to Rome in the his-

THE ENGLISH CHURCH 127
tory of the English Church. In his absence, Theo
dore, without assistant bishops, consecrated three
bishops for the three new dioceses. Pope Agatho
called a council to consider the matter. Fifty
bishops assembled in the great basilica of the Lateran,
and their decision was a very wise one. Wilfrid
had been irregularly deprived of the greater part of
his diocese, and the bishops who had been violently
intruded must be expelled. But — Theodore had
done the right thing, though he had done it in the
wrong way. Wilfrid must hold a council at York,
and with the council's concurrence select bishops
to assist him. He must choose men with whom he
could work peaceably, and then present them to
Theodore to be consecrated. Thus each side got
what was essential — Wilfrid that his rights as
Bishop of York should be respected ; Theodore
that so huge a diocese should have more than one
bishop. Wilfrid regarded the decision as a triumph ; and
he found the attractions of Rome so great that he
stayed on there till the next Easter (680), and was
much delighted when the Pope invited him, as Bishop
of York, to take part in a Council of 150 Bishops,
to consider the case of the Monothelites. His satis
faction received a rude shock, when at last he reached
home. He had forgotten that not only Theodore,
his Metropolitan, but Egfrid, his king, were com
mitted to the arrangement which Rome had con-

128 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
demned. He had forgotten, or had never known,
that by no means all Englishmen had the same love
for Roman decrees that he had. They revered the
Bishop of Rome, and regarded him as the leader
of the Church. They would probably not have
disputed his authority. But they had the dislike,
which Englishmen have shown all through history,
of having the affairs of the nation settled by a power
outside the nation, by " outlandish " jurisdiction.
It did not matter whether the outside power was a
Pope, or a King of Denmark, or a Duke of Nor
mandy, or a King of Spain, or a King of Hanover.
What they thought fair and fitting was, that Eng
lish affairs should be determined by English rulers
in Church and State. Consequently, when Wil
frid came and waved in their faces the decree of a
Roman Bishop and Council, upsetting the arrange
ments made by their own archbishop and king, they
at once concluded that such a decree must have been
either forged, or obtained by bribery. The Bishop
of Rome would never have issued such a decision
unless swayed by evil influences. No one seems to
have raised the question, whether the Bishop of
Rome had any right to decide such a ques
tion. For two or three centuries (350-650) the Western
Church had been steadily moving in the direction
of, Igreater centralization. Slowly, but surely, it
had been developing into a vast monarchy. The

THE ENGLISH CHURCH 129
monstrous claims of later Popes were not yet heard :
but the germs of such things were there. The seat
of the Papacy was the centre of the old Roman
Empire, and this at once prepared men's minds for
the theory of a great ecclesiastical authority in the
same historic centre. The barbarian tribes, con
scious of the weakness caused by their own internal
divisions, welcomed the idea of a central source of
unity. The personal ability of some Popes, the
sanctity of others, and, as times grew worse, the
grasping ambition of many more, all contributed to
make the theory of a universal episcopate a growing
fact. Those who were sent out from Rome to con
vert the nations and consolidate the Churches stated
the authority of him who sent them with the con
fidence of men who believe that what they say is
indisputable. And this confidence was contagious.
Converts were not prone to question claims which
were always stated as unquestionable. We need
not wonder, therefore, that the Northumbrians did
not at once raise the question, What right has
the Bishop of Rome to decide matters about the
Bishopric of York?
But they put Wilfrid in prison as an impostor :
and when at last he was released, he went off in
681 to convert his recent assailants, the heathen
savages in Sussex. As Bede says, though Wil
frid's own diocese was closed to him, " he could
not be restrained from the ministry of preaching K

130 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
the Gospel." There was a famine in Sussex, and
Wilfrid taught the people how to catch fish, before
* himself becoming a fisher of men. The king gave
him 250 people as slaves. He taught them, bap
tized them, and set them free. This is the most
beautiful part of Wilfrid's life, and we will leave
him at this work. He lived to^be restored to North
umbria, to be again expelled, to appeal again to
Rome, walking across Europe at the age of seventy,
in order to plead once more in person. The result
was a compromise. He lived five years longer,
and in the autumn of 709 he passed peacefully
away, just as the monks in the choir of his minster
of St. Andrew at Oundle were chanting the 104th
Psalm. He ceased to breathe, when they reached
the verses : " When Thou hidest Thy face, they
shall be troubled ; Thou shalt take away their spirit
and they shall die, and shall return again to their
dust. Thou shalt send forth Thy Spirit, [and they
shall be created, and Thou shalt renew the face of
the earth."
We have now passed well within the limits of
the lifetime of the beautiful writer, to whom nearly
the whole of our knowledge of this period is due,
and whose death marks the close of our period.
The Venerable Bede was born in 672 or 673, and
therefore he was thirty-six or thirty-seven when
Wilfrid died. Almost the whole of his simple life
is contained in the very brief autobiography which

THE ENGLISH CHURCH 131
he has placed at the end of his Ecclesiastical History.
Let us have his own words : —
" Thus much concerning the ecclesiastical his
tory of Britain, and especially of the race of the
English, I, Baeda, a servant of Christ and priest
of the monastery of the blessed Apostles, St. Peter
and St. Paul, which is at Wearmouth and at Jarrow,
have with the Lord's help composed, so far as I
could gather it, either from ancient documents, or
from the tradition of the elders, or from my own
knowledge. I was born in the territory of the said
monastery ; and, at the age of seven, I was, by the
care of my relations, given to the most reverend
Abbot Benedict, and afterwards, to Ceolfrid, to
be educated. From that time I have spent the
whole of my life within that monastery, devoting
all my pains to the study of the Scriptures ; and
amid the observance of monastic discipline, and
the daily charge of singing in the Church, it has
been ever my delight to learn, or to teach, or to
write. In my nineteenth year I was admitted to
the diaconate, in my thirtieth to the priesthood,
both by the hands of the most reverend Bishop
John,1 and at the bidding of Abbot Ceolfrid. From
the time of my admission to the priesthood to this
my fifty-ninth year, I have endeavoured, for my
own use and that of my brethren, to make brief
1 Of Hexham.

132 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
notes upon the Holy Scripture, either out of the
venerable Fathers, or in conformity with their
meaning and interpretation." Then he gives a
list of his works, so far as they had been written
at that time (731), and he ends with this prayer :
" And I pray Thee, good Jesus, as Thou hast graci
ously granted to me sweetly to drink the words of
Thy knowledge, so Thou wouldst also mercifully
grant me to attain one day to Thee, the Fountain of
all wisdom, and to appear for ever before Thy face."
A fitting prayer still, for all Christian students.
No one knows the origin of the epithet " Vener
able," but it is said to have been applied to Bede
as early as the ninth century : and that it rightly
describes him, no one who knows his character can
doubt. If there are any among the race of man
kind who are worthy of our veneration, assuredly
Bede is one of them. As William of Malmesbury
says of him, he was " a man whom it is easier to
admire than to extol as he deserves." And yet,
though it is indeed easy to admire him, it is easier
still to love him. In the whole of our national
history, from the time when the English first landed
on this island, down to our own day, there is no
character more truly lovable than Bede.
Yet, well as the epithet " Venerable " suits him,
it has one disadvantage. People think of him as
a very old man. J. R. Green speaks of " the old
man laying down his pen " at a time when Bede was

THE ENGLISH CHURCH 133
only fifty-eight. Dr. Hodgkin calls him the " aged
saint." And the stained window at Jarrow, which
professes to depict his death, represents him as a
man of eighty or ninety ; and yet Bede was only
sixty-two or sixty-three when he died.
In order to do justice to the beautiful story of
Bede's life, it is necessary to take account of the
condition of England at the time when he was born
into the land to enlighten and ennoble it. The
mere fact that Bede was living then would have
made the close of the seventh century an epoch in
the history of England. But there are other great
landmarks besides the life of the father of English
History, and some of these landmarks have already
been indicated.
In his birth and in his education, in his work
and in his death, Bede was pre-eminently a " son
of peace." Yet, not only was the son of peace
there labouring for peace, but God's peace was
beginning to find a home in the English nation and
in the English Church.
The struggle between the English and the Britons
had come to an end. We may date the close of it
from the day when King Oswald defeated Cadwalla
at Heavenfield in 635 ; for, from that time onwards,
no British prince waged serious war against the
English nation.
And the confusion which of necessity had pre
vailed in the newly-founded English Church had

184 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
just come to an end also. The light of the Gospel
had spread from different and not quite harmonious
centres ; and, when the circles of light met and
overlapped, some disorder was the result. But,
under the strong and firm direction of Theodore of
Tarsus, whose long pontificate of over twenty years
(669-690) gave him great opportunities, order was
brought out of the confusion, and the whole was
consolidated as one Church. It was early in the
pontificate of Theodore that Bede was born, prob
ably in the year 673, the very year of the Council
of Hertford. The birthday of Bede, therefore,
coincides with the birthday of peace between the
British and English nations, and the birthday of
peace and order in the English Church.
It also coincides with the birthday of English litera
ture. The literature of England, like that of most
countries, has its source in poetry and religion. A
thousand years before Milton wrote his great poem
on the fall and redemption of man, Caedmon, the
servant of Hilda's monastery at Whitby, anticipated
the great republican poet, by singing the sacred
narratives of the Old and New Testament in Eng
lish verse, just a few years before Bede was born.
It was thought so divine that men said that he
had received it direct from heaven. " Others after
him," says Bede, " tried to make religious poems,
but none could rival him, for he learned the art
of poetry not from men, but from God." The

THE ENGLISH CHURCH 135
birth of English prose brings us to Bede himself,
and it also has its source in religion. The first
piece of English prose-writing that is known to us is
Bede's translation of the Gospel of St. John, in
completing which he died.
Once more, the birthday of Bede coincides with
that of organized learning and culture in England.
Archbishop Theodore and his friend Hadrian had
founded the great school at Canterbury, and their
well-trained scholars had spread as far as North
umbria and won the admiration of Bede himself.
Such, then, were some of the features of the age
into which Bede was born. It had seen the dawn
of peace between the two irreconcilable nations in
the island. It had seen the beginnings of order
and organization in the new-born English Church.
It had seen the birth of English literature in the
sacred poems of Caedmon. And, in Theodore's
school at Canterbury, it had seen the first attempt
at a permanent centre of English education. As
compared with the age which preceded it and the
age which followed it, it was a time of general peace
and hopefulness, though not without some signs
of the corruption which too often accompanies
peace, and which grew darker during the latter part
of Bede's life. But, during the earlier part, it was
a time when a son of peace might live and work
with contentment. To study the life of Bede in
its proper chronological position, between the con-

136 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
quests of the English invaders which preceded it
and the conquests of the Danish invaders which
followed, is like reading the Book of Ruth between
the Book of Judges and the Books of Samuel and of
Kings. It is a bright and peaceful idyl between
two stern and stormy epics ; a beautiful episode,
upon which the student of history, bewildered by
rapid changes and wearied by the din of countless
battlefields, lingers with singular pleasure. The
anarchy of the days in which every man did what
was right in his own eyes has passed out of view :
the inroads of the Philistines and Syrians have not
yet begun.
In the far too brief sketch which Bede gives of
his own career, we have, in a few simple touches,
the clear outlines of a beautiful life — a life spent
in quietude, in intelligent self-culture, in venera
tion for the past, in sympathy with the present
in large-hearted usefulness to man, in profound
devotion to God.
Nor can we add much to what he himself has told
us. The traditions which other writers have added
may, for the most part, be set aside as wholly in
credible, or as wanting in satisfactory evidence. In
all probability, he never went outside Northumbria,
and, excepting one visit to Lindisfarne, rand one to
York, never very far from his home. His life was
spent almost entirely in his beloved monastery of
Wearmouth and Jarrow (for, in Bede's eyes, the

THE ENGLISH CHURCH 137
two houses were one) ; and, therefore, stories of
his having studied at Cambridge, and having gone,
at the Pope's invitation, to Rome, may be left out
of account. The latter tradition, however, is of
interest, for it testifies to the European reputation
which Bede at once acquired. It was thought
probable that the Pope might have sent for the far-
famed teacher at Jarrow, to consult him respecting
certain difficult questions which were perplexing
the Head of Western Christendom.
We can, nevertheless, fill in, here and there, the
outline of Bede's life, sometimes from other pas
sages in his own works, and sometimes from other
trustworthy evidence.
When he was seven years old, he tells us, he was
given by the care of his relations to be educated in
the monastery at Wearmouth under Benedict.
" By the care of my relations," he says. It never
occurs to him that his relations were freeing them
selves from care by getting rid of him. He never
doubts for a moment, nor probably did they, that
in consigning him to the care of these excellent
monks, they were doing the very best thing
possible for him, both as regards this world and as
regards the world to come. Such dedications of
children, like that of the little Samuel, were com
mon in those days. These relations were prob
ably not his parents, otherwise he would have men
tioned them. The yellow pest may have carried

138 THE CHURCHES LN BRITAIN
off his parents ; for there were one or two returns
of pestilence after the great visitation of 664. In
one of these, the monastery at Jarrow 2 (to which
Bede had been transferred from Wearmouth) was
attacked with such virulence, that every inmate
who could take part in the choral services of the
monastery was carried off, excepting the abbot
Ceolfrid and one little chorister. But these two,
in spite of the sobs which would break out at times,
kept the services up at the canonical hours. At
first they dropped the antiphons, as beyond their
strength ; but that seemed so miserable, that, after
a week, they restored them and got through as best
they could, till the gaps in the choir could be filled.
Is not that a lovely picture ? And there is not much
doubt that the little chorister here mentioned was
Bede himself.
j; The Northumbrian writer Alcuin, who was born
at York the year that Bede died, and was educated
there in the school founded by Archbishop Egbert,
gives us another charming anecdote about Bede.
It shows (what, indeed, is abundantly evident from
Bede's own works) that the devotion to the ser
vices of the Church, which he exhibited as a boy
during the plague, was retained by Bede in later
life — a fact which is by no means always found in

1 Anonymous History of the Abbots, § 14 ; not Bede's His
tory of the Abbots, as Green sayB.

THE ENGLISH CHURCH 139
the careers of exceptionally religious boys. Alcuin
spent the last twenty-three years of his life (781-
804) almost entirely on the Continent in the service
of Charlemagne ; but he wrote many letters to his
friends in England, and in one of these to the monks
of Wearmouth, he says : " It is told that our master
and your patron the blessed Bede said : ' I know
that angels visit the canonical hours, and the con
gregations of the brethren. What if they do not
find me among them ? Will they not say, Where
is Bede ? Why comes he not to the prescribed devo
tions with the brethren ? ' " We find the same
thought, about the angels being at the daily services
of the Church, in Bede's own Commentary on St.
Luke : " Whenever we enter the Church and draw
near to the holy mysteries, we ought to approach
with all humility and fear, as well because of the
presence of the angelic powers, as of the reverence
due to the sacred oblation." And those who in
their travels are fond of visiting churches may care
to hear what Bede says of such a practice. In com
menting on St. Mark's account of our Lord's visiting
the Temple after the triumphal entry into Jerusalem,
he remarks : " So we, when we come to any town or
village, in which there is a house of prayer dedicated
to God, first turn aside to this, and, when we have
commended ourselves to God in prayer, then go
about the worldly business for which we came."
Let us return to Bede's autobiography. " Amidst

140 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
the observance of monastic discipline and the daily
charge of singing in the Church it has been ever my
delight to learn, or to teach, or to write." There,
in a single sentence, you have the life of the Chris
tian scholar. There, in all its simple dignity, you
have the career of one who has consecrated his life
to study ; and to study, not for the mere excite
ment of learning " some new thing," not for the
miserly accumulation of knowledge ; but to study
for the sake of imparting knowledge, and of leav
ing the world wiser and brighter than he found
it ; to study that he might be a help to those who
survived him, being dedicated to God and blessed
by Him. Bede lived for his scholars ; for his hearers
in that generation, for his readers in generations
yet to come. As he reads, his thought is of them ;
as he writes, his thought is again of them ; and,
as he lies on his death-bed, almost his last thought
is of them. In his last sickness, he insisted on go
ing on teaching and dictating. " I don't want my
lads to read what isn't true," he said, " and to spend
their labour for nothing, when I am gone." And,
a little nearer his end, he would sometimes inter
rupt his teaching to say, " Learn quickly, for I
know not how soon He who created me may take
me away." No wonder that, when he was in health
and strength, his enthusiasm and skill in teaching
attracted hundreds of students. Some say 600 ;
but, in Latin, " 600 " sometimes means simply

THE ENGLISH CHURCH 141
" very many " ; yet it may have been literally
true. x
The causes of Bede's success as a teacher are
not difficult to discover. First, it is scarcely too
much to say that he had gradually accumulated all
the knowledge of his time. All that was best worth
knowing in every department of learning he was at
pains to acquire. His works, which consist of
more than sixty distinct treatises, may be called
an encyclopedia of the knowledge of Western Chris
tendom in the eighth century. As we might ex
pect in one who, as he says, " devoted all his pains
to the study of Scripture," the majority of his works
are on Biblical subjects. The remainder are trea
tises on astronomy, chronology, arithmetic, medi
cine, philosophy, grammar, rhetoric, poetry, and
music ; biographies of saints and other famous
men ; a book of hymns and a book of epigrams ;
and, chief of all, the Ecclesiastical History of the
English Nation. Bede had great advantages, be
sides his personal endowments of ability and char
acter. Thanks to the abbots Benedict and Ceol
frid, the libraries at Wearmouth and Jarrow were
excellent, and Bede's love of reading was insatiable.
Benedict had made no less than five journeys to
1 This usage may possibly have arisen from the original
number of a cohort being 600 men. Cicero writes to Atticus
(VIL ii. 3) : venio ad epistolas tuas, quas ego sexcentas uno
tempore accepi. In his letters, Cicero frequently has this use.

142 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
Rome,1 and had brought back many precious books,
and this collection was added to by Ceolfrid. Among
those given by Ceolfrid were three copies of the
revised translation of the Bible made by Jerome,
commonly called the Vulgate, and one copy of the
old Latin translation. Bede in his commentaries
often compares the two versions. When Ceolfrid
went on a pilgrimage to Rome, which he did not
live to complete, he took with him one of the copies
of the Vulgate. This has come down to us and
has been identified as the famous Codex Amiatinus,
our best authority for the readings of the Vulgate.1
Besides this advantage of libraries, Bede had that
of good instructors from various schools, Scottish,
Roman, Gallican, and English. From Trumbert,
the disciple of St. Chad, and from Sigfrid, who was
" thoroughly skilled in the knowledge of the Scrip
tures," he would learn Biblical interpretation as
it was understood in Ireland and Iona. Acca,
Bishop of Hexham and pupil of St. Wilfrid, would
teach him much of the learning of the Roman school,
1 He had visited Rome six times ; but the third visit (667)
was from Lerins, not from Britain.
a Dedicatory lines are prefixed which originally stated that
this copy of the Vulgate was written by Ceolfrid to be given
to the Pope. They have been tampered with, but De Rossi
and Hort discovered the original wording. It is not impro
bable that the MSS. from which this copy was made at Jarrow
or Wearmouth were brought from Rome by Theodore of
Tarsus. See Kenyon, Textual Criticism of the New Testament,
p, 192.

THE ENGLISH CHURCH 143
and perhaps something of music, in which he was
skilled. Acca and Bede corresponded on Scrip
tural questions, and Bede dedicatedsome of his Com
mentaries to Acca. It was at Acca's suggestion
that Bede wrote his History, and Bede sometimes
quotes Acca as his authority for certain statements
(iii. 13 ; iv. 14). Bede's monastic learning was of
Gallican origin. With the great English school at
Canterbury he corresponded, and it is highly prob
able that some of Bede's own teachers and assist
ants received their training there. He may have
borrowed books from Canterbury, and still more
probably from Hexham.
But we must also take account of a serious dis
advantage under which Bede laboured. Many mon
asteries had a scriptorium, a large room set apart
for the multiplying of books, with a number of
monks trained in the art of copying MSS., or of
writing from dictation. There was nothing of this
kind at Jarrow. In the preface to his St. Luke
Bede tells us that, in addition to all his monastic
duties, he had to be his own dictator, and short
hand-writer, and copyist. That meant very slow
work, especially as unwarmed rooms in a cold
climate often made writing impossible during the
winter. At Lindisfarne there was a good writing
school, derived from Iona ; and at Canterbury there
was another, derived from Rome. The beautiful
Lindisfarne copy of the Gospels, now in the

144 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
British Museum, was made during the life-time of
Bede. He may have seen it, when he visited the
island. Another cause of Bede's great success was his
enthusiastic love for his work and his power of kind
ling enthusiasm in others. To learn, and to teach,
and to write, he says, were always a delight to him.
Hence his refusal of the dignity of abbot ; for, he
said : " The office demands household care ; and
household care brings distraction of mind, which
hinders the pursuit of learning." His industry
was immense. Consider the difficulty of corre
spondence in those days, and then think what it
must have been to have collected the materials
for his Ecclesiastical History, while he was studying,
and teaching, and commenting on Old and New
Testament at Jarrow. He had 'correspondents,
who were collecting information for him in Lindsey,
in East Anglia, in Mercia, in Wessex, in Kent,
and in Rome. This fact, and the gradual dispersion
of his scholars, as they completed their education
and went out into the world, fully explain the fame
which Bede had acquired in many parts of Europe
even during his own lifetime. He was a man under
whom, and with whom, and for whom it was a
gain, and an honour, and a delight to work.
Lastly, and above all, Bede succeeded, because
all his work was done in a spirit of profound devotion.
It was work honeycombed and penetrated through

THE ENGLISH CHURCH 145
and through with prayer. He was not one who
thought that time spent in praise and prayer is
just so much time lost for the work of life. " Amidst
the observance of monastic discipline and the daily
charge of singing in Church," to quote his own
words once more, his reading and teaching and
writing were done. Nor was he one who left his
religion behind him on the doorstep, when he re
turned from service in the Church to work outside.
His reading and teaching were to him a religious
service ; and his chief delight was in the spiritual
progress of his pupils. The joy of teachers is made
full, he tells us in his Commentary on the First
Epistle of St. John, when by their teaching many
are brought to the communion of the Church and
of Him by Whom the Church is strengthened and
increased. And the work thus done for God and
God's children is done also in humble reliance on
God's blessing. He has a sure hope that what God
has helped him to accomplish will, by God's bounty,
be blessed to himself and to his readers. And he
entreats all who hear or read his History to offer
frequent supplications for him to the throne of grace.
There is very much more that might be told
about Bede's works and his surroundings, about
the monastic life in his day, and about the con
dition of England and of Europe at the time when
he was living this life at Jarrow ; but this sketch
of his life must come to a close.

146 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
The beautiful story of Bede's death has been often
told, and may be found in various books.1 Those
who have never read it yet, will assuredly be glad
to be induced to do so. He passed away on the
evening before Ascension Day, which in 735 would
be May 25. He had just dictated the last sentence
of the part of the Gospel of St. John which he had
been translating. Then, lying on the floor of his
cell, and with his head raised so as to look towards
the place where he used to pray, he sang, " Glory
be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy
Ghost," and the rest, and thus breathed his latest
breath. It will be a sad day for the Church of England
when none of its members draw either instruction
or inspiration from the life and death of Bede.
1 In the Preface to Joseph Stevenson's translation of The
Historical Works of the Venerable Bede, pp. xvii-xix ; in the
Preface to Whelock's Beda ; Leland's Collect, iii, 84 ; Ma-
billon, Acta SS. ord. S. Bened., Ill, i, 500 ; Baronius, Annal.,
A.D. 731, § 20 ; and other works cited by Stevenson. By
English writers about Bede the letter of Cuthbert to Cuthwin
which gives the account is commonly much abbreviated.

CHAPTER V
MONASTICISM
THE life of Bede leads naturally enough to a
consideration of two tendencies which mark
the history of the Western Church during the time
that the English nation was being converted, and
the English Church was being organized ; for to
both of these tendencies Bede's life contributed
a good deal. From the fifth to the seventh or
eighth century, Western Christendom had been
moving in two directions, which were not altogether
unconnected ; or (perhaps we should say) towards
two points, which to a large extent might be reached
by travelling along one and the same road ; it had
been becoming more distinctly monastic in spirit and
organization, and it had been steadily developing into
a vast monarchy (see p. 128). The influence of Bede
told quite decidedly in furthering both these move
ments. By precept and example he showed how
salutary and how happy the monastic life could be ;
and by precept and example he taught that the one
safe centre of Church order and discipline was Rome.

148 THE CHURCHES LN BRITAIN
And the two movements aided one another. The
Popes supported monasteries, even when they came
into conflict with regular ecclesiastical organiza
tion ; and the monasteries naturally enough sup
ported the claims of the Popes who favoured them.
It is not difficult to criticize monasticism. There
is much in it which is not only contrary to modern
ideas of what is good for the individual and for
society, but which is at variance with human nature
itself. It takes men away from those who have
a claim upon their sympathy and services, and it
prevents them from fulfilling the ordinary obliga
tions of man to his fellowmen. It directly opposes
some of the strongest among the original emotions
of human nature, the affection between husband
and wife and between parent and child. In the
place of these natural duties and relationships it
substitutes a number of artificial duties and rela
tionships, the transgression or neglect of which
constitutes equally artificial offences. For the
bracing atmosphere of the outside world it sub
stitutes that of a hothouse, which may possibly be
more pure — although this is not always the case —
but is certainly more enervating.
All this, and a good deal more, is true. Neverthe
less, monasticism must have substantial advan
tages to set against these real and manifest defects.
It is not to be supposed that a system which is so
ancient and which still survives, which has arisen

MONASTICISM 149
in religions of such very different character and has
spread so widely in each of them, and which, in spite
of monstrous and notorious failures,1 has been so
persistently renewed, is unable to show that it
answers to some elements in human nature and
can do some real good to mankind. A mode of
life that has been tested by such very different
kinds of men through so many centuries, and still
survives and flourishes, cannot be merely a gigan
tic blunder. It must offer something that many
human beings crave. We may go further than
that and say that, as a matter of fact, it offers grati
fication at one and the same time to two appar
ently opposed cravings, one of which is often very
powerful, while the other always is so. These two
are, aspirations for self-sacrifice and love of self.
The monk and the nun were self-sacrificing, for they
surrendered all those things which to most of us
make life worth living — wealth, rank, fame, the
joys of family life, and the inclinations of one's
own will. But this manifest and far-reaching self-
sacrifice, which often involved long and violent
struggles for its accomplishment, was in reality
self-seeking. It was often, if not commonly, tho
roughly selfish in motive and in aim. The monk
and the nun entered the monastery in order to escape
distraction and temptation in this life, and in order
1 These have been most frequent and most fatal among
the Latin races.

150 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
to secure eternal happiness in the life to come. It
is no sufficient answer to this to say that the selfish
ness that leads people to enter a monastery is not
worse than the selfishness which prevails among
those who remain outside : religious selfishness is
certainly more subtle, and is probably harder to
cure. Selfishness is bad wherever it is exhibited,
and it is not easy to balance one kind against
another. It is more easy to see that a monk is not
necessarily a bad citizen because he retires from
the discharge of ordinary social duties. That de
pends upon the condition of the society from which
he retires. In an age in which the selfishness of
ordinary men is exhibited in bestial sensualism,
pitiless greed, and ruthless oppression of the weak,
a striking example of rigorous self-control in all these
things is an immense gain to society, and those who
set such example may be rendering as great a ser
vice as the soldier who fights its battles or the trader
who supplies its needs. Granted that the example
would be all the more fruitful if it were exhibited
in the world outside rather that in the seclusion of
the convent ; yet it is better that it should be mani
fested in the convent than not at all. Monks and
nuns represent, not the highest life that is attain
able by human beings, but a life which, among
other uses, may at least serve as an emphatic
protest against some of the worst features that
disfigure and defile the outside world.

MONASTICISM 151
But, however we may strike the balance between
the merits and demerits of monasticism, whether
we regard it as a good thing which human frailty
has almost invariably depraved, or as a system
which is radically wrong in principle and only
accidentally, under exceptional conditions, produces
good results, it must always be reckoned as one of
those influences which have taken a leading part
in shaping the history of Christianity and of civiliza
tion. And it is not of Christian origin. Like Orien
talism and Hellenism, it has come in from the out
side, and, having been admitted into the Christian
Church and been greatly modified by it, has in
turn had a great ^effect upon Christian thought and
organization. In considering monasticism, as we find it in Britain
after the conversion of the English, we may pass
over the three stages through which it commonly
passed elsewhere. These were : the hermit period,
of solitaries living entirely apart in the desert ; the
laura period, of hermits' cells grouped round the cell
of some one who had a reputation for special sanc
tity and spiritual wisdom ; and the monastery period,
in which buildings, with a definite plan in accord
ance with definite regulations, are substituted for
the unorganized group of separate dwellings.1 The
monastic system which existed in Britain before
1 Kirsopp Lake, The Early Days of Monasticism on Mt.
Athos, pp. 4 f ; Lingard, The Anglo-Saxon Church, I, pp. 147 f.

152 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
the coming of Augustine, and the system which he
brought with him from Rome, had each of them
already reached the third of these periods, and we
need not ask when and where and to what extent
it had passed through the other two. Our know
ledge of both these types of monasticism is very
incomplete. From the biographies of different
saints we learn a good deal about the one,1 and from
scattered notices in Bede we learn something of
both, and he tells us that in his time the period of
decline and corruption had already begun. Augus
tine and his companions had come from a monas
tery founded by Gregory the Great in Rome, and
it is likely enough that the Pope had drawn up the
rule under which the monks lived. This is perhaps
implied in the letter of his successor Honorius to
Archbishop Honorius, June, 634 (Bede, H.E., ii, 18)
in which he speaks of the Archbishop's love in follow
ing magistri et capitis sui sancti Gregorii regulam.
But we do not know any particulars of this rule, or
whether it differed materially from other monastic
rules, especially, whether it was very different from
the Benedictine rule which eventually succeeded
it The Benedictine rule in the end superseded, not
only whatever rule Augustine may have brought
with him to England, but also the Scottish rule of
1 See e.g., Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae, edited by Charles
Plummer, especially Vol. I., pp. cxi-cxxix, and Adamnani
Vita S. Columbae, edited Jby J. T. Fowler, pp. xxxvi-lvi.

MONASTICISM 153
St. Columba, which was afterwards brought from
Iona to various centres in Northumbria and else
where. We may believe that, as in the case of the
struggle between the rule of Benedict and the rule
of Columban on the Continent, the victory of the
former was a survival of the fittest.
Authorities are not agreed as to who it was that
introduced the Benedictine system into England.
Some say that this was due to Wilfrid, who had been
brought up under the Scottish system at Lindisfarne,
but had seen the superiority of the other rule in his
travels on the Continent and especially at Rome.
Others attribute it to Benedict Biscop, who tra
velled to Lyons with Wilfrid in 653 and went on to
Rome without him. In his six pilgrimages to the
tombs of the Apostles he may often have stayed in
Benedictine monasteries. Others again attribute
the introduction to Augustine himself, an hypothesis
which assumes that the monastery on the Caelian
from which he came had a rule which was essen
tially that of Benedict. There is yet another view,
that the true Benedictine rule never existed in Eng
land at all until the revival of monasticism under
Dunstan, and this may safely be adopted as correct.
The only fact that is of much importance is that it
was this rule which ultimately prevailed in England,
as on the Continent.
The increase of monasteries had everywhere been
enormous. It-is said that the names of 1,481, founded

154 THE CHURCHES LN BRITAIN
before a.d. 814, are known. The number of those
whose names are not known must be very large. We
have some idea of the increase in England from a
statement that is made by Bede in his famous letter
to Bishop Egbert of York. Having pointed out (§ 7)
that there are many villages in out-of-the-way places
which for many years have never been visited by a
bishop, he suggests that the King of Northumbria,
Ceolwulf, should be asked to co-operate in increasing
the number of bishops. There is, however, this
difficulty (§ 9) that " by means of the foolish dona
tions of former kings, it is no easy matter to find a
vacant place for the foundation of an episcopal see " ;
for all the suitable places are already in the posses
sion of some monastery or other. Bede therefore
advises that the Great Council, with the Archbishop
and the King, should decree that one of the mon
asteries be made an episcopal see ; and he thinks
that the monks would consent to this, if they were
allowed to elect the bishop either from their own
body or from persons in the diocese.1 If funds
should be wanted for the maintenance of the bishop-
1 We have an instance of this policy being adopted in the
case of the Abbey of St. Martin at Tours. Pope Hadrian I.
in 786 granted permission to the abbot and brethren to elect
a bishop of their own, who was to have jurisdiction over the
territory held by the monastery, and was to be wholly inde
pendent of the Metropolitan of Tours. The latter was to
have no authority over the priests of the monastery, and no
right to officiate in it.

MONASTICISM 155
ric, then he trusts that the revenues of some of the
less satisfactory monasteries may be taken for this
purpose. In connexion with this last suggestion Bede makes
known to us a monstrous abuse of the principle of
monastic foundations. The abuse became possible
through what may be regarded as an evasion of one
of the chief rules in monastic discipline. The three
primary duties of the monk were obedience, chas
tity, and poverty. In course of time it was argued
that the poverty of the individual did not involve
the poverty of the corporation. Although each
member of the community was unable to call even
a sandal his own, yet the community as a whole
might be rich in buildings, lands, and any kind of
endowment. Private property was forbidden, but
corporate property might be acquired to any extent.
This, of course, opened the door to indefinite relaxa
tion of the rigours of monastic discipline, especially
when study and teaching and the practice of various
arts had taken the place of manual labour as the
proper occupation of a monk. But the evils con
sequent upon the abandonment of the rule of poverty
did not end there. A door was opened for the foun
dation of sham monasteries. Land granted for
the foundation of a monastery was secured as the
property of the monastery in perpetuity. Persons
of influence obtained grants of land on the plea
that they were about to found a monastery, bribed

156 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
the king to grant them a charter (which was con
firmed by ecclesiastical and civil authority), and
then founded what they called a monastery, but
what was really a home for dissolute persons. This
abuse, Bede says, was very common : instances of
it were frequent ; so much so, that it was difficult
to find land for discharged soldiers and other de
serving persons. And the abuse was not confined
to one sex ; there were convents of sham nuns as
well as of sham monks. For this evil there is only
one remedy — expulsion from the boundaries of the
Church by episcopal authority, which, however, is
not easy to get, for there is a good deal of episcopal
connivance in the matter.1 Thus, while the pro
perty of some of the genuine monasteries in which
discipline had become very lax was to be taken for
the maintenance of additional bishoprics, the sham
monasteries were to be simply abolished, and their
lands set free for any good purpose, ecclesiastical
or civil. In these suggestions of Bede we have a
remarkable anticipation of the treatment of the
monastic houses under Henry VIII., as it was planned
by Wolsey, rather than as it was carried out by
Cromwell. Bede has been criticized for suggesting
that the monastery that was chosen by the Council
as an episcopal see should be allowed to elect one of

1 This seems to mean that the king was not the only per
son who took bribes in this nefarious business.

MONASTICISM 157
their own monks, or some one in the diocese, to fill
the see. Would it not have been better to allow
them to elect the best man, wherever he was to be
found ? No doubt : but we must remember that
Bede's object is to anticipate and overcome pos
sible opposition. The~monks would be less likely to
oppose the erection of an episcopal see in their mon
astery, if it was suggested to them that they them
selves might fill it, and indeed were expected to fill
it, with some one who was well known to them.
They were not bound to look further and elect an
eminent stranger. Yet Bede may have been preju
diced in the matter. The founder of his own mon
astery, Benedict Biscop, was very much opposed
to the policy of bringing an outsider from one
monastic house to rule a house in which he was a
stranger. Ceolfrid, before starting on the journey to
Rome which he did not live to accomplish, charged
the brethren to " choose one of the more efficient
of their own number as their father." Such pre
cedents (and they did not stand alone) would seem
to Bede to be decisive. But the success of Theodore
of Tarsus as Archbishop of Canterbury was a pre
cedent for a more liberal policy. He, however, had
the advantages of coming from the East, from the
home of the great Apostle of the Gentiles, and of
having been consecrated for his difficult post by the
Bishop of Rome himself. Bede may have thought
that so unique a combination of favourable con-

158 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
ditions could not be a precedent for the appoint
ment of an outsider.
These abuses were not the only thing which led
to the almost total extinction of monasticism in
England before the end of the ninth century. Monks
were originally laymen who desired to fly from the
temptations of the world. They required priests
to minister to them, but becoming a monk was a
different thing from taking orders. When, how
ever, monks worked as missionaries, as was the case
in England, it was found very advantageous that
they should be ordained. This innovation divided
monks into two classes, clerics and laymen, and the
clerics regarded themselves as superior to the lay
men. The proportion of clerics gradually increased,
and they became a college of canons separate from
the true monks, though continuing to live side by
side with them. They were intermediate between
the monks and the secular clergy outside. They
lived together under rule, and so far were like the
monks ; but unlike the monks, and like the secular
clergy, they mixed rather freely with the world.
In some cases the monastic rule was formally aban
doned, and the position of canonici x was adopted,
1 See Stubbs, Constitutional History, I, pp. 222 f. He
quotes from the legatine councils of a.d. 787 : Ut episcopi
diligenti cura provideant quo omnes canonici sui canonici
vivant et monachi seu monachae regulariter conversentur ; and
he remarks that this is the first time that the word canon
occurs in an English document.

MONASTICISM 159
with the consent of the whole body ; and they
called themselves monks or canons, just as they
pleased. There is little doubt that this revolution
took place in England as well as on the Continent,
for somewhat later we find Alfred and Dunstan
labouring to restore the monastic rule in its integrity.
We do not know the details of this early mixture
of monks and canons, but what took place in the
case of cathedrals was something of this kind. Some
of these, as Canterbury, were originally monastic.
Others, as York, were originally secular. When a
bishop who was not a monk was appointed to a mon
astic see, his secular clergy did not live in the mon
astery, but with the bishop in his own house ; they
did parochial or missionary work, while the monks
kept up the services in the cathedral church. When
a bishop who was a monk was appointed to a secu
lar see, he acted as a bishop in the cathedral church,
but as an abbot in his own house. At Canterbury
there was the monastery of St. Augustine side by
side with the monastic cathedral, and we are not
surprised to find that the latter gradually became
more and more of a metropolitan cathedral and less
and less of a monastery.1 The Chronicle, under
year 870, tells us how Archbishop Ceolnoth (833-
870) admitted seculars, because pestilence had re
duced the monks to five, and he could not get monks
1 Stubbs, Historical Introductions to the Rolls Series, pp,
372 f,

160 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
to fill the vacancies ; and under 995 the story is
repeated, when the expulsion of the seculars by
Elfric is narrated. The latter passage is a Latin
insertion in the Chronicle and of dubious authority.
By some the expulsion of the seculars is attributed
to Siric, who was translated from Ramsbury to
Canterbury in 990, and who advised what William
of Malmesbury calls the " infamous precedent,
utterly unworthy of men " of buying off with money
the Danes whom they could not repel with the
sword. But the story may be taken as good evi
dence of two things : first, of the existence of a
mixture of monks and clerks in some monasteries,
and secondly, of Dunstan's moderation in not ex
pelling the clerks. The expulsion, at any rate, is
not attributed to him. He died May 19, 988.
The abuses which Bede and other writers reveal
as disfiguring monastic life in his day, and still more
in subsequent times,1 must not cause us to forget
two important facts, viz. that it was to those who
led the monastic life that the conversion of the Eng-
1 We must remember that entrance into a monastery was
not always voluntary, and those who were made to enter the
monastic hfe as a penance were not hkely to make good
monks or nuns. Even one corrupt inmate of this kind might
do an immense amount of harm. Penitentials sometimes
advised or ordered that breaches of the seventh and eighth
commandment should consign the offender to a monastery.
In the end the corruption became such that Luther tells us
of a bishop who used to say of any scoundrel : " He is no good
to God or man ; let him go into a monastery."

MONASTICISM 161
lish tribes was due, and also that in the matter of
laxity and decline the English monks have a better
record than their brethren on the Continent, except
where continental monasteries owed their origin
to English missionaries, such as Boniface and Willi-
brord. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that
the English Nation owes its Christianity entirely
to those who lived the monastic life according to
either the rule of Rome or the rule of Iona ; and
thus to the first generations of Christians among
the Saxons and Angles monasticism must have
seemed an essential feature in Christianity. They
had no experience, and they had never heard, of
Christianity apart from monasteries and monks.
Consequently the monastic system had a hold upon
the gratitude and affection of the people which it
often lacked elsewhere. When every missionary
centre was a convent and every convent a missionary
centre, those who had learned the faith from its
inmates, and were retained and strengthened in it
by their help, had a reverence for an institution to
which they owed so much, and took a pride in
what seemed to be at once essentially Christian and
national. And the consciousness that they were
esteemed by their converts probably helped to keep
the English monks from deteriorating so rapidly
as did the monks of the Latin races. In them " the
history of monachism is one long record of corrup
tions and reforms, in which constant changes and
M

162 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
the institution of new rules were insufficient to
counteract increasing decline." 1
The foundation of a genuine monastery was re
garded as a serious work which requires much solemn
preparation in the way of fasting and prayer. We
find this in Bede's 2 account of Bishop Cedd's pro
ceedings, when King Oidilwald or Ethelwald of
Deira, son of King Oswald, asked him to accept
some land as a site on which to build a monastery,
it being the king's wish to have some place to which
he could retire for devotion while he was alive, and
in which he might be buried when he died. A
brother of Cedd, named Caelin, had been chaplain to
the king, and had brought the king and the bishop
together. The site chosen was a wild spot in the
mountains, like a robber's stronghold, apparently
in order that the transition from desolation to con
secration might be as great as possible, in accord
ance with Isaiah xxxv. 7 : in cubilibus, in quibus
prius dracones habitabant, orietur viror calami et
junci. The monks are to turn a howling wilderness
into a garden of good works.
But this process means more than clearing the
ground and erecting a building. The site is re-
1 Stubbs, Introduction to the Chronicles and Memorials of
the Reign of Richard I, in Historical Introductions to the Rolls
Series, p. 367.
2 H.E., iii, 23 ; see also Florence of Worcester, Chron.,
ad ann. 653.

MONASTICISM 163
garded as not only desolate, but desecrated. It
may have been occupied by wicked men, and it
has certainly been the home of wild beasts. It
must be cleansed from its previous pollution by
fasting and prayer, in order to be made acceptable
to the Lord. So Cedd asks the king to allow him
to spend the following Lent in this wilderness, and
this is granted. Excepting Sundays, Cedd fasts
rigorously, allowing himself only one very slight
meal each evening, viz., an egg, a little bread, and
milk and water. This he said was the usual dis
cipline at Lindisfarne, according to the instruction
which he had received from the monks there. This
means that it was Keltic discipline, for Lindisfarne
was at this time a branch of the great monastery
at Iona and had the same ritual as Iona : and ac
cording to Iona ritual every site which was to be
used for a sacred edifice, whether monastery or
church, must first be sanctified by fastings and
prayers. After Cedd had fasted in this way for
thirty days he was summoned to the king, who
required his help in matters of business. Such a
summons could not be ignored. But if he went, the
necessary period of fasting would be broken, and
(apparently) the whole would have to be begun
again. Cedd had three brothers, all of them priests.
He got one of these, named Cynibill, to take his
place and continue the fasts for ten days longer,
which was willingly and piously done ; and as soon

164 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
as the forty days were completed the work of build
ing was begun. This was the beginning of the con
vent of Laestingaeu (Lastingham), in a lonely part
of the moors in North Yorkshire. As was natural
in such a house, the rules were the same as those of
Lindisfarne, and therefore of Iona. And it was
quite in accordance with those rules that Cedd
should be the first abbot.
This narrative is of considerable interest, for it
illustrates several things. The idea that fastings
have what may almost be called a magical effect,
and that, unless the prescribed ritual is accurately
carried out, the spell will be broken, is thoroughly
Keltic. Fasting came to be regarded as a means of
compelling the Almighty to do what was desired.
If the right amount of fasting is endured, He is (so
to speak) bound in honour to yield. This notion
is very common in the Lives of the Irish saints,
who of course shared the views that prevailed at
Iona. In these Lives, fasting " is used, not merely
to obtain a divine decision, but to find out the authors
of crimes, and more extraordinary still, to obtain
the destruction of superfluous population, or the
death of a saint whose influence excited jealousy.
With this are closely connected the (to our ears)
blasphemous stories, in which the saints are repre
sented as extorting terms from the Deity, and say
ing what they will or will not accept at His hands,
or as upbraiding Him because He does not conform

MONASTICISM 165
to all their wishes. This is quite in the spirit of the
heathen, who whips or drowns his idol if it displeases
him ; and the images of the saints inherit the same
treatment." 1
The narrative also illustrates the peculiar char
acter of the Keltic episcopate noticed in a previous
chapter. It was not diocesan until much later, and
bishops might be under the jurisdiction of an abbot
who was only a priest. Here, at Lastingham, we find
Cedd in office as abbot, although he had as bishop
a field of work in Essex. This required that he
should be, to a considerable extent, a non-resident
abbot. But during his absences from Lastingham
he always had a propositus 2 to act for him as head
of the monastery ; and he seems to have appointed
different persons on different occasions. Some
what later, this officer was called a " prior." Cedd
acted as interpreter between the two parties in the
Synod at Whitby, which is no great distance from
Lastingham. He went thither as an adherent of
the Keltic tradition, but he was converted by Wil
frid's reasoning to the Roman one, a.d. 664. A visit
to his monastery at Lastingham in the end proved
fatal to him. He chanced to go thither in time of
pestilence, and soon afterwards sickened and died.
1 C. Plummer, Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae, I, pp. cxx. f.
3 Both propositus and praepositus are found in MSS. The
English "provost" and German "probst" come from the
former, the French privdt from the latter form.

166 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
This was probably soon after the Synod at Whitby,
for it is known that a plague was raging in that year,
and it has been pointed out already that the insani
tary conditions of monastic life caused the mor
tality in monasteries to be great, whenever an
epidemic occurred. Cedd was buried outside the
church, which was probably built of wood ; for
Bede tells us that when a church of stone was erected
in later times, the body of Cedd was placed within
it, on the right hand of the altar. His death was
not by any means the only one which occurred at
the monastery at Lastingham. Cedd had had many
of the brethren to help him in his missionary work
among the East Saxons, and when they heard that
Cedd had died and been buried at Lastingham, thirty
of them returned thither to end their days there and
be buried near their old master. They had not
to wait long. With the exception of one lad, they
were all carried off by the pestilence, which, from the
epithet " yellow " which is often applied to it, is
thought to have been some kind of typhus. The
lad sickened, but, as Bede remarks, " I do not doubt
that he was delivered when at the point of death by
the intercessions of his father (whose affection had
brought him to the body1), so that he might both
himself escape eternal death, and also show the
1 The use of corpus perhaps intimates that the father
beheved that his son was already dead. The son became
a priest.

MONASTICISM 167
ministry of life and salvation to other brethren by
his teaching."
It is possible that the withdrawal of this large
number of missionaries from work among the East
Saxons had something to do with the apostasy of a
considerable number of those who had been already
converted. One of the Essex kings and many of
the nobles and commons forsook the worship of the
Church and began to rebuild the temples and restore
the old idolatry. This lapse is sufficiently accounted
for by the calamity of the pestilence. Over and
over again, in the history of Christianity, great
sufferings, such as continual wars, famines, and
pestilences, have been interpreted to mean that the
ancient gods are angry with mankind because of
the cessation of their worship ; and this form of
argument is very easy to follow and not easy to
answer. Even if there had been no withdrawal of
thirty missionaries from Essex, this apostasy of
large numbers of the East Saxons would probably
have taken place. But the withdrawal must have
made the lapse of the weaker brethren more easy ;
and the lapse would probably have been checked
sooner, but for the departure of these disciples of
Cedd. We may perhaps say that their desire to
end their days in the monastery near his grave illus
trates the rather perverse working of the monastic
spirit. It is strange that they should have thought
that a return to Lastingham, a place which was then

168 THE CHURCHES LN BRITAIN
far removed from population, was more in harmony
with Christian duty than work among the East
Saxons, who were sick both in body and soul. The
other king of the East Saxons remained faithful,
and with the help of Bishop Jaruman from Mercia
succeeded in reconverting the apostates to the faith.
Cedd before his death had appointed his brother
Ceadda — better known as Chad — as his successor,
and Chad became the second abbot of Lastingham.
If the order in which Bede gives the names — Cedd,
Cynibill, Caelin, Ceadda — is the order of seniority,
the youngest brother is the most famous of the four.
Bede mentions as a remarkable fact that four
brothers should all become celebrated priests (sacer-
dotes praeclari), and that two of them should have
been promoted to the episcopate. In a conspicuous
way they illustrate the growth of the English Church
and especially of the English clergy ; for all of them
were of English birth, and they received ordination
independently of the Roman missionaries.
Cedd's appointing his own brother as abbot was
no doubt an excellent measure ; a better man could
hardly have been found in England ; but the danger
of making such posts family possessions was one
from which the English Church in the next two or
three centuries did not wholly escape. We find
Benedict Biscop warning the monks of Wearmouth
and Jarrow against it. "I tell you of a truth," he
said, " that in comparison of two evils, it would be

MONASTICISM 169
much more tolerable for me that this whole place,
in which I have built a monastery, should be
reduced into an eternal wilderness (should God so
will it), rather than that any brother of mine accord
ing to the flesh, of whom we are assured that he has
not entered into the way of truth, should succeed
me as abbot in its government." x Instances are
quoted of monastic estates being held by a series of
generations, which implies that either celibacy was
not strictly observed, or that the abbots were fathers
of families before they were ordained. Possibly
this latter plan was deliberately adopted in order to
keep the property in the family.
1 Bede, Lives of the Abbots, II. In the Penitential of
Theodore it is laid down, Ipse non potest aliquem ordinare
de suis propinquis. Stubbs, Constitutional History, I., p. 224.

CHAPTER VI
THE ENGLISH DIOCESES
THE instructions which Gregory the Great gave
to Augustine for his guidance in the estab
lishment of Christianity in Britain seem to show
that he was hardly aware of the differences between
the Teutonic tribes which had settled in the island ;
and perhaps he was imperfectly informed as to the
wide difference between these immigrants and the
original inhabitants. He appears to have regarded
them all as one nation. He writes to Augustine
of "the English," "the Church of the English,"
and "the Bishops of Britain" (Bede, H.E., i. 27,
29 ; cf. 30). He enjoins a very simple scheme as to
episcopal jurisdiction. Augustine is to ordain twelve
bishops who are to be subject to him, with the Bishop
of London as their Metropolitan, and the Metro
politan is in future to be elected by his own synod
and to receive the pall from Rome. Augustine is
also to ordain a bishop for the city of York, who is
in turn to ordain twelve bishops to serve under him
170

THE ENGLISH DIOCESES 171
as Metropolitan when he has received the pall from
Rome. This first Bishop of York is to be subject
to the authority of Augustine, to whose care all the
Bishops of Britain are committed : but after the
death of Augustine the Bishop of York is to be in
no way subject to the Bishop of London.1 In other
words, England is to be divided into two provinces,
each governed by its Metropolitan, one at London
and one at York, and each province is to have twelve
episcopal sees. So long as he lives, Augustine is to
be supreme ; but after his death the northern
province is to be entirely independent of the southern
Metropolitan. The scheme is simple and symmetrical, but it was
made in ignorance of the circumstances, and it was
never carried into effect. Even now, the Archbishop
of York has far less than twelve suffragans, and
there has never been an Archbishop of London. The
fact that there were not twenty-four territorial
divisions, nor any civil divisions that could conveni
ently be subdivided into twenty-four, was perhaps
enough to cause Gregory's scheme to fail. There
were not twenty-four kingdoms, or twelve, or six,
but seven, to be considered. And, besides this,
there was the fact that the different kingdoms had
been converted to Christianity in different ways
1 It was very natural that Gregory should name these two
cities : they would be the two cities in Britain that were best
known to him.

172 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
from different sources ; and although the essentials
of Christianity were everywhere the same, there
were considerable differences of form, which might
easily harden into schisms and render a uniform
organization impossible. Roughly speaking, Roman
missionaries had converted Kent, Essex, East Anglia,
and part of Northumbria, Scottish missionaries
had converted Mercia and part of Northumbria.
Northumbrian missionaries had converted Wight
and Sussex. And there was much confusion and
difficulty until Theodore of Tarsus organized and
consolidated the whole.
Meanwhile, the ecclesiastical divisions had taken
a form very different from that which had been
projected by Pope Gregory, for local institutions
proved stronger than papal injunctions. The dio
ceses for the most part followed the divisions which
already existed between the different kingdoms.
To such an extent was that the case, that where our
knowledge is imperfect, as it often is, the limits of
the one are a fairly safe guide to the limits of the
other. It may happen that in some instances we
know the limits of the dioceses, without being sure
about the civil divisions. In such cases the limits
of the ancient dioceses are a good guide to the limits
6f the ancient kingdoms and principalities. And
this historical feature is not confined to England.
In other countries also the ecclesiastical map fre
quently follows the civil map, not only in its original

THE ENGLISH DIOCESES 173
construction, but also in its subsequent modifica
tions. Here the Scottish Church in Ireland and Scot
land, from which some of the missionaries who con
verted the English came, hardly comes under con
sideration. Bishops there had originally no terri
torial jurisdiction : they were bishops of tribes rather
than of districts, and they were little more than
officials for performing certain episcopal functions,
such as ordaining. It was the heads of monasteries
that had jurisdiction. The head of a monastery
might be a bishop, but his being one did not increase
his jurisdiction. There is, however, this much of
illustration to be obtained from the Keltic Church,
that when in a later age divisions of the nature of
dioceses were formed, they were in the first instance
coincident with the tribal boundaries.1
The ecclesiastical organization in Gaul is closely
analogous to that which prevailed in England, but
there we have to deal with cities rather than king
doms. The episcopal seat was placed in the chief
city belonging to the tribe, and the jurisdiction of
the bishop coincided with the jurisdiction of the
city. To a considerable extent this ancient principle
still holds good, or, if there has been modification,
it has been of a simple kind : a large diocese has
been divided, or two small ones have been united.
Virtually, the principle is the same as that which
1 C. Plummer, Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae, I., p. cxiii.

174 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
originated English dioceses, viz., that ecclesiastical
divisions should depend upon earlier civil divisions.
And the same principle holds goods in Germany also ;
but there it is less easy to trace it than in France,
because the changes in the civil divisions have been
more numerous.
It would be interesting to consider to what extent
the English dioceses have been determined by the
shires, the limits of which have changed very little
for many centuries. But the shires themselves are
of later date than the period which we are consider
ing. The fact with which we are concerned is that the
original jurisdiction of the English sees was deter
mined, not in accordance with the arrangement
prescribed by the Pope, but by the limits of the
already existing kingdoms. Each kingdom, it was
thought, ought to have its bishop with as much
reason as it had its king. We have seen how quickly
experience proved that one bishop was quite inade
quate to the work that had to be done, and how
Theodore of Tarsus set himself to work to break up
the larger dioceses, and how, at a later day, Bede
urges Egbert of York to work for an increase in the
episcopate. Nevertheless, the principle that civil
boundaries are to be the guide in determining epis
copal jurisdiction seems to be kept in view. It is
perhaps true to say that this principle was never
formally laid down : it was possibly adopted almost
as a matter of course. Boundaries were wanted

THE ENGLISH DIOCESES 175
for a new purpose : boundaries already existed for
an old purpose, and they would serve the new
purpose very well : then why think of anything
different ?
Theodore of Tarsus was perhaps the last in
stance of a foreigner obtaining one of the principal
sees. Not till a later day does that become an
abuse and a grievance. At first it was neither ;
it was a necessity. The infant English Church
was unable to walk alone : it must for a time be
guided by pastors brought from outside the nation,
for there were no Englishmen capable of holding
such responsible posts. But as soon as the Eng
lish Church was able to walk alone, it was allowed
to walk alone, and it continued to do so. After
Theodore of Tarsus had done his work, the clergy
of the English Church were almost always English
men, at least for some centuries.1 And it is surely
a mistake to regard this fact as evidence of the weak
and temporary character of the work of Augustine.
If the bishops of his succession quickly died out,
we may regard that as evidence of the success of
his labours. It is one of the greatest triumphs
of missionary effort to be able to train up a native
1 There had been one native archbishop before Theodores
" Deusdedit, of the nation of the West Saxons," who was
consecrated by Ithamar of Rochester, March 26, 655 (Bede,
H.E., iii., 20). In the same chapter we read of four other
native bishops, Ithamar, the first of all, Thomas, Bertgils,
and Damian.

176 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
ministry, independent of the original source. When
Central Africa has a ministry of its own, and re
quires no more Europeans to supply it with clergy,
will that be evidence that the Universities' Mission
has been a failure ? Whatever estimate we may
form of the results of the mission of Augustine,
we must not place the rise of an independent English
clergy to its discredit.
There is yet another particular in which the
scheme set forth by Pope Gregory has not been
fulfilled. That London has never become a Metro
politan see, and York has never had twelve suffra
gans, has been already pointed out. But, besides
this, the northern Metropolitan has never been
wholly independent of the southern one, for York
has always been in a subordinate place to Canter
bury, especially in the period previous to the Norman
Conquest. Only once, and for a very short time,
was the dignity of Canterbury impaired and its
jurisdiction very seriously curtailed ; and then
it was not York that gained by the temporary de
gradation of the see of Augustine. Offa, the vigorous
and victorious King of Mercia, whose conquests
had almost reduced the seven kingdoms to three,
Northumbria, Mercia, and Wessex, and seemed
likely to reduce them to one, had an ambitious
ecclesiastical policy, which was no doubt intended
to strengthen his political position. That he was
regarded, even on the Continent, as a power to be

THE ENGLISH DIOCESES 177
reckoned with is shown by the fact that Pope Had
rian I. thought it worth while to write to Charle
magne and tell him that he did not believe the
rumour that Offa wanted Charlemagne to help
him to depose the Pope. Hadrian calls Offa " King
of the English nation," and says that he has re
ceived ambassadors from him. And Offa evidently
had influence at Rome. He seems to have thought
it an unfortunate circumstance for his kingdom
that neither of the Metropolitan sees lay within it.
Jaenbert or Jambert was then Archbishop of Can
terbury (765-791), and, like Offa, was a man of
strong character. It was some years after the
monks of Canterbury had elected him to the vacant
see that Offa began his conquest of Kent, in which
struggle he was opposed by the Archbishop. When
Offa's success was complete, and Jaenbert had
become by the law of conquest his subject, Offa
determined to have a Metropolitan see in the king
dom of Mercia. The see on which he fixed was
Lichfield, and he desired to make the Bishop of
Lichfield a Metropolitan, with jurisdiction from
the Humber to the Thames. To this scheme Pope
Hadrian gave his consent. He may have thought
Offa was a person whom it was worth while to
gratify : or he may have acted on the principle, Divide
et impera ; two rival Metropolitans would more
easily be kept under Roman influence than one
with undivided jurisdiction. And it is possible that
N

178 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
he really thought the plan a good one on its own
merits. He certainly gave it his sanction. In
786 he sent two legates to Jaenbert and Offa, and
after hearing their views, one of them, George,
Bishop of Ostia, went on a visitation tour to York,
and with Archbishop Eanbald held a council at
which Alcuin was present. The other, Theophy
laot, Bishop of Todi, visited Offa's dominions. Some
what later both legates attended a council at Chel
sea, which for obvious reasons is called in the Saxon
Chronicle " the contentious synod." Such seems
to have been the order of events, but there are
chronological and other difficulties. In spite of
the strenuous opposition of Jaenbert and his sup
porters, sanction was given to the promotion of
Lichfield to be a Metropolitan see, to which was
assigned authority over seven dioceses in Mercia
and East Anglia, while Canterbury was left with
only five, viz., London, Winchester, Rochester,
Selsey and Sherborne. Higbert, the Bishop of
Lichfield, was to continue to hold the see under
these new conditions, but he had to wait until he
received the pall from Rome before he could assume
the new title. This evidently arrived in 788, for
in that year he signs one charter as bishop and another
as archbishop ; and in 789 there is again a synod
at Chelsea, which is presided over by Archbishop
Jaenbert and Archbishop Higbert. Offa, in grati
tude to the Pope, promised an annual tribute to

THE ENGLISH DIOCESES 179
Rome of 365 gold mancuses, one of which, with Ofja
Rex on it, is still in existence,1 It has been thought
that this tribute was the origin of " Peter's Pence,"
but that is by no means certain. It is more prob
able that the Romefeoh or Romescot did not originate
before the reign of Alfred or of his son Edward, and
it is in connexion with Edward that the word Rome
feoh first occurs : Bede never mentions it. When
830 Saxon silver pennies were found in Rome some
thirty or more years ago, they were with high proba
bility assumed to be a remittance of Peter's Pence.
Of Alfred there were three, of Edward 217, of Athel
stan 393, of Edmund 195 ; which gives one some
idea of the time when this remittance was sent.
Be this as it may, Offa's tribute to Rome did not
secure the permanence of his new archbishopric.
After about sixteen years (787-803), Higbert had
to resign ; Canterbury recovered its rights, and there
never again was an Archbishop of Lichfield.2
In what has been said above no account has been
taken of the diocesan divisions which may have
existed in Britain before the conversion of the Eng-

x A silver mancusa was equivalent to thirty silver pence ;
a gold one was worth nearly ten times as much.
2 This conflict between the Archbishop of Canterbury
and the King of Mercia about Lichfield is the chief among
the very few instances of quarrels between Church and State
before the Norman Conquest. Archbishop Jaenbert died
about 792, and therefore did not live to see the restoration of
the rights of Canterbury.

180 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
lish. It may be doubted whether there were any.
What we know of the Keltic Church in Ireland and
Scotland would lead us to the conclusion that the
British Bishops had no dioceses in the strict sense
of the term. But the signatures of the British
Bishops at the Council of Aries in a.d. 314 rather
point in the other direction. What is certain is
that we do not know what the limits of episcopal
jurisdictions, if they existed, were. The conquest
by the English invaders obliterated all such divi
sions, and civil divisions took their place — the
civil divisions which served to determine the limits
of the English dioceses, when they arose. See
below respecting the seven British Bishops,
Stubbs (Const. Hist., ch. viii.) has pointed out
what a blessing it was that the English Church
was thus prevented from inheriting any traditions
from Romano-British Christianity, such as those
which had infected the Christian Church in France
and in the Rhineland. Our insular position prob
ably contributed to this happy result. There was
nothing of Roman imperialism mixed up with our
ecclesiastical organization. Bishops in England were
not compelled, as they often were in France, to
accept the position of civil magistrates and other
secular offices, and they were rarely local poten
tates, as German Bishops often were. This feature
in English ecclesiastical organization is illustrated
by the places which were selected as episcopal sees.

THE ENGLISH DIOCESES 181
Sometimes, no doubt, the chief town of the kingdom
was chosen, and this was specially likely to be the
case at the outset, when the conversion of the king
led to the conversion of his subjects. In the cases
of Canterbury, London, York, Rochester, and Win
chester, we have the chief town as the seat of the
bishop. But Dunwich, Elmham Selsey, Sher
borne, Lichfield, Hereford, and Hexham were
villages. So also were Crediton, Ramsbury, and
Wells, the sees created by Edward the Elder. Per
haps Lindisfarne maybe taken as another example;
but that may have been chosen because, like its
parent, Iona, it was an island, rather than because
it was not a centre of population. In this way
English Bishops escaped a great deal of political
entanglement. They did not become dukes or
counts, and were able to keep free from court intrigues.
This was less true of the two Metropolitans than
of the rest ; for the fact of their having jurisdic
tion in several kingdoms brought them necessarily
into secular relationships with civil rulers, and
sometimes into rivalry with them. First Canter
bury and then York assumed the right to coin money,
and the pieces bore the Metropolitan's name and
likeness. In the great find of silver pennies at
Rome, mentioned above, there were six of Pleg
mund, Archbishop of Canterbury. The promotion
of Higbert to be Archbishop of Lichfield, and his
resignation or deprivation (both of them appar-

182 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
ently for political reasons), are rare examples of
anything of the kind. In short, by being outside
political struggles and remote from courts, they
were able to do spiritual work in a more spiritual
manner ; and when they did act as counsellors
to princes, or intervened as peacemakers between
combatants, they were able to do so without being
at once suspected of being influenced by party
motives. A few centuries later the influence of the
world upon the Church had increased, and England
had to reconcile itself to the fact that not only were
its bishops obliged to be statesmen, but that some
times the secular office caused the spiritual office
to be neglected and almost forgotten.
It was remarked above that the Keltic Church
in Ireland and Scotland had no bishops with terri
torial jurisdiction, and that this may possibly have
been the case in the British Church before the
conversion of the English nation. This is to some
extent illustrated by the case of Cedd, who was
a bishop of the East Saxons and also abbot of a
monastery in Northumbria (see above p. 165). He
was an Englishman by birth, but he had been brought
up and ordained at Lindisfarne, the offshoot of
Iona. Florence of Worcester, under the year a.d.
621, states that " Cedd, the brother of Ceadda
(Chad), succeeded Mellitus in the bishopric of
London." This is almost certainly a mistake ; but
from what Florence himself tells us under the year

THE ENGLISH DIOCESES 183
a.d. 653 we can see how the inaccuracy has arisen.
One of the Kings of the East Saxons, while on a
visit to the King of Northumbria, was converted
to Christianity and baptized by Finan, Bishop of
Northumbria ; and on his return to Essex he took
with him Cedd, who was then only a priest, to preach
to his people. His success was great, and Finan
suggested to Cedd that he should return to North
umbria and be consecrated bishop, in order to be
more efficient among the East Saxons ; and this
was done. Thus, neither did the King of the East
Angles appoint Cedd to be bishop in his kingdom,
nor did the bishop of any southern see consecrate
him. It was (so to speak) by a private arrange
ment between Finan and Cedd that the latter worked
among the East Saxons as a bishop rather than as
a priest. He was a missionary bishop in Essex.1
But seeing that London was in Essex, and that Cedd
was working in territory which was afterwards in
the diocese of London, Florence of Worcester not
unnaturally, although inaccurately, speaks of him
as Bishop of London. He appears as such in no
lists of the Bishops of London, and probably never
had what could be called a diocese. He had merely
a field for missionary labour.
1 A little later we find in Wessex shire-bishops without
any see ; and Dunstan seems in the first instance to have
been consecrated by Odo as a chaplain-bishop to King Edgar,
before Worcester became vacant by the death of Kynewald.

184 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
Consecration by a single bishop was not uncommon
in those times, and it must often have been difficult
to secure more than one consecrator. It appears
to have been specially frequent in the Keltic Churches.
Roman authorities seem to have regarded it as
irregular, but valid. Augustine asked Gregory this
very question, and the reply was, " In the English
Church, while you are its only bishop, you cannot
consecrate save in the absence of other bishops.
For when do bishops come over from Gaul, to attend
as witnesses in the consecration of a bishop ? " 1
The rule that three bishops should take part in conse
crating a bishop is ancient, but its object seems to
have been to avoid surreptitious consecrations about
which the Church knew nothing, and also to make
sure that the consecrator himself had been pro
perly ordained. It would be most improbable
that all three consecrators were men about whose
episcopal authority there were serious doubts ;
but this might be the case with regard to one.2
It will be noticed that Gregory in his reply to Augus
tine does not mention the possibility of getting
Keltic Bishops to assist Augustine in consecration.
This may be a mere oversight, but it is perhaps
1 This is Bede's text : qui testes adsistant (H.E., i., 27),
which makes better sense than the reading in the Benedictine
Gregory, illi adsistent, " when bishops come over, they will
attend, etc."
2 See Bright, Early English Church History, p. 69 ; C.
Plummer, Bede, II., p. 49.

THE ENGLISH DIOCESES 185
deliberate. Gregory would regard them as schis-
matical on account of their defective Paschal cycle
and other peculiarities. But the Keltic Bishops
of Iona and its offshoots had no such feeling, and
therefore Finan, when he consecrated Cedd, got
two other bishops, who would be either British, or
(more probably) Scottish, to assist him. This
shows that, however common consecration by one
bishop may have been among the Keltic Churches,
it was not the rule, otherwise Finan would not have
taken the trouble to find others to help him in con
secrating Cedd. The important point, however,
for our purpose is that Finan, whether with or
without the assistance of other bishops, could not
give Cedd any jurisdiction in Essex. Cedd was
not Bishop of Essex, and still less was he Bishop
of London. He had no diocese, but only authority
to discharge episcopal functions.
Nor can we get anything with regard to dioceses
in the British Church out of the fact that " seven
bishops of the Britons " (Bede, H.E., ii., 2) met
Augustine in the disastrous conference at Augus
tine's Oak. There has been much discussion as
to who these bishops were, whether they had sees,
and, if so, where the sees were. Those who care
to make guesses under good guidance may read
what Haddan and Stubbs (Councils, III., 41) and
Bright (Early English Church History, pp. 75 f.)
have written on the subject. The conclusion of

186 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
the former discussion is that " there is no trust
worthy evidence to show who these bishops were " ;
of the latter, that " we cannot identify these bishops."
Very little also can be made of the statement
which Wilfrid is said to have uttered in the address
which he gave at the consecration of the basilica
which he had erected at his beloved Ripon. The
exact year of the dedication is not known, but it
was probably in or soon after a.d. 671. To this
great ceremony he invited the Kings of Deira and
Bernicia and a great many persons of high rank,
both ecclesiastical and civil. In the address to
the people, Wilfrid is said to have read a list of
the lands which kings and princes and others had
given for the good of their souls. Among these
lands, he stated, were the sacred places which the
British clergy had relinquished, when they fled in
terror before the English invaders. This statement,
if it can be trusted, gives us the interesting fact
that Wilfrid had been able to secure Church lands,
which had previously belonged to the British Church,
for the benefit of the English Church ; but it tells
us nothing as to whether these possessions of the
British Church had been part of a British diocese.
The recovery by the English Church of property
that had been given to the British Church, and
then deserted by it, is a bit of history worthy of
note ; but it gives no help in clearing up the doubts
as to the existence of a territorial episcopate in

THE ENGLISH DIOCESES 187
Britain previous to the conversion of the English
(see Eddius, Life of Wilfrid, 22). It illustrates
Wilfrid's great influence that he was able to accom
plish all this and to get together such a distinguished
company for the dedication of his great church at
Ripon. And it perhaps explains some of his subse
quent difficulties ; for kings and princes may have
been not unwilling to get so powerful a person out of
the way. The ceremony at Ripon may be regarded
as the most brilliant point in his very chequered
career, and it throws light on what preceded and
what followed it.
It has been narrated already how Wilfrid, after
being chosen to fill the see of York, went to Gaul
to seek consecration. He wanted to have at least
three consecrators, and he did not want to have
among them any bishop who was tainted with the
Keltic error about the keeping of Easter. Boniface
of Dunwich was free from this taint, but it was not
easy to find two others. It has also been narrated
how Wilfrid's enemies caused Chad to be appointed
to the see of York during Wilfrid's long absence in
Gaul. Chad was sent by King Oswy to Canterbury
to be consecrated. But, owing to the death of
Deusdedit, the see of Canterbury was vacant. So
also were the sees of Lindisfarne and Rochester.
But Boniface at Dunwich was available, and it is
not known why Chad passed him by and took the
longer journey to Winchester. Boniface might have

188 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
seemed preferable, for he had been consecrated by
Honorius of Canterbury, whereas Wini of Winches
ter owed his consecration to Gallic prelates. How
ever, Wini was chosen ; and, in order to secure three
consecrators, he adopted the highly interesting
course of getting " two bishops of British race " —
probably from Devon or Cornwall — to assist him
in consecrating Chad for the see of York. This
was a meritorious step in the direction of remov
ing the barrier between the British and English
Churches, and it is evidence that Wini did not think
that differences about the Paschal question and
the tonsure ought to produce a schism. Thus an
Englishman who had been consecrated in Gaul to
an English see joined with two bishops of the Brit
ish Church in consecrating one who had been brought
up in the traditions of the Scottish Church of Iona
in its offshoot at Lindisfarne. This was altogether
a happy combination ; but to those who held that
Keltic differences of usage as to Easter and the ton
sure were schismatical, it gave an opening, which
was afterwards used, for objecting to the validity
of the consecration of Chad.1 Bede himself had this
1 There was yet another objection, viz., that Chad had
been consecrated to a see that was not vacant. There could
not be two Bishops of York. Bede says that Theodore per
suaded Chad not to give up the episcopal office, and then
himself completed his consecration afresh {dewuo) in the
Catholic manner. This must mean reconsecration. Eddius
and Malmesbury say that Chad was re-ordained through
all the grades. See Bright, pp. 227 f., 440 f.

THE ENGLISH DIOCESES 189
feeling, for (forgetting Boniface of Dunwich) he says
that at this time Wini was the only bishop in Britain
who was ordained canonice. The date of Chad's
consecration should be placed a.d. 666 ; for he held
the see of York for three years and was deposed in
669. When Theodore of Tarsus (a.d. 669-690) set to
work to organize the young English Church, and
decided that the large dioceses which were con
terminous with the different kingdoms must be
divided, he in the main adopted the principle
which had determined the limits of those dioceses ;
i.e., he followed the lines of territorial or tribal
divisions which previously existed. He found the
following sees already in existence : Canterbury,
founded a.d. 597 ; London and Rochester, a.d. 604 ;
York, founded a.d. 625 and restored 664 ; Dunwich
a.d. 630 ; Dorchester, a.d. 634 (afterwards Win
chester) ; Lindisfarne, a.d. 635 ; Mercia, without
definite see, a.d. 656, but settled at Lichfield 669. 1
East Anglia was divided according to the existing
divisions of North folk and South folk (Norfolk
and Suffolk) : the latter retained Dunwich, while
1 It was probably in September, 669, that Chad, retiring
with characteristic humility from York, began work again
as a bishop in Lichfield. Bede, however, seems to imply
that Chad was reconsecrated before he had received any see
(H.E., iii., 2). In narrating how Winfrid was consecrated
to succeed Chad, Bede again points out that the limits o,f
ecclesiastical and civil jurisdiction were the same.

190 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
Elmham was given to the northern people, a.d.
673. Then Northumbria was divided. Deira re
tained York ; Bernicia in addition to Lindisfarne
received Hexham, a.d. 678 ; and a missionary bishop
for the Picts was established at Whithern, a.d. 681.
Lindissi or Lindsey, the northernmost of the three
divisions of Lincolnshire, received a bishop of its
own with a see at Sidnacester, a.d. 678. Its inhabit
ants are called Lindisfari by Bede,1 and they seem
to be constantly paying the penalty of being a
border folk, for they are conquered and recon
quered again and again by Northumbria and Mercia.
At the time when the see of Sidnacester was founded,
Lindsey had been regained for Northumbria by
Egfrid; but afterwards Ethelred got it back for
Mercia, in or soon after a.d. 679. This change,
however, did not interfere with Lindsey's being
recognized as a separate diocese. Mercia itself
was then divided. In addition to Lichfield, North
and South Hecana received a bishop with a see at
Hereford, a.d. 676 ; the Middle Angles received
one with a see at Leicester, a.d. 680 ; and in the
same year Worcester became a see for Hwiccia It
was not until after the death of Theodore that the
forest of Selwood was treated as a dividing boun
dary in the kingdom of Wessex. Winchester remained
the see of the Eastern half, while the Western re
ceived a see at Sherborne, a.d. 705. A little later,
1 H.E., iii., 24 ; iv., 3, 12 ; v., 23.

THE ENGLISH DIOCESES 191
Sussex, which was becoming absorbed by Wessex,
received a missionary bishop with a see at Selsey,
a.d. 709.1
Modern experience shows that the division of a
large diocese leads to a development of work and
organization in each of the parts. The same
result evidently followed in the seventh and eighth
centuries in England. On the one hand, country
churches increased, and a parochial system with
an endowed clergy gradually grew up ; on the other,
monasteries greatly increased ; aud the latter was
the larger result of the two.
This general agreement between the limits of
dioceses and the existing civil divisions, combined
with the fact that the same men were often mem
bers both of ecclesiastical councils and of the civil
" witan," contributed to a result of great import
ance in the history of England. In no other coun
try in Europe did Church and State work so har
moniously together. The same English people were
ruled in one way for civil and military purposes
as were ruled in another way for ecclesiastica]
purposes. There was no vanquished population
who had been protected by the Church from oppres
sion by the victors. And before long the Eng-
1 See Stubbs, Constitutional History, I., p. 226, from which
most of these details are taken.'" Under Edward the Elder
(901-24) the policy of dividing dioceses seems to have been
continued ; as if each shire of Wessex was to have a bishop.

192 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
lish Church became independent of Italy and Gaul
and was manned by a native clergy. It was an
enormous advantage to have priests and bishops
who had been born and bred in England, had
English ideas, and spoke the English language. This
advantage to a considerable extent counteracted
the evil of having the services of the Church con
ducted in a foreign tongue, and it certainly gave
strength to the English Church. It may have had
something to do with the strength that came of this
advantage that the English Church was able to give
Boniface as an Apostle to Germany about a.d. 716,
and Willibrord as an Apostle to the Frisians in 690,
and to lend Alcuin to Charlemagne, 781 to 790,
and 792 to 804. * If we may not say that this proves
that the English Church was strong enough to spare
such men, we may at least say that it was strong
enough to produce them. " It was by Anglo-Saxon
missionaries from the seventh to the eleventh cen
turies that Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Norway,
and Iceland were converted to the gospel " (Stubbs,
Lectures on Early English History, p. 16).
The Council of Hertford in a.d. 673 has been al
ready mentioned. In 680 Theodore held his second
1 Alcuin tells us that he was able to do his native country
good service when Charles, indignant at the way in which the
Northumbrians treated their princes, thought of chastising
them. Alcuin interceded and softened his wrath. See
Collier, Eccles. Hist., I., p. 339 f.

THE ENGLISH DIOCESES 193
famous synod, which met at Hatfield on September
17. Pope Agatho held a synod at Rome at Easter
in this year on the Monothelite question, and Theo
dore probably wished to show that the English
Church was at one with Rome in upholding the ortho
dox view. Wilfrid, as already stated, had stayed
on in Rome after his own question was decided, and
was present at this synod.1 Theodore himself had
been expected to attend, and it is said that the
Pope postponed the meeting of the council in order
to give him time to arrive. This shows that he
was regarded in Rome as a prelate of great import
ance. In his letter to the Council of Constantinople,
which was to meet soon after the Roman Synod,
Pope Agatho speaks of Theodore as famulum atque
coepiscopum nostrum, magnae insulae Britanniae
archiepiscopum et philosophum?
It is unfortunate that Bede, in his brief account
of the historic Council of Hatfield (H.E., iv., 17, 18),
does not give the names, or even the number of the
bishops who were present; Had he done so we
should have been more sure of the exact arrange
ment of the English dioceses at that time. He
merely quotes part of the document which Theodore
1 Wilfrid is sometimes said to have been present at the
Council of Hatfield. He had probably not yet reached Eng
land ; when he did reach England he was put in prison by
Egfrid. In either case, he could not have been at the council.
2 Dictionary of Christian Biography, IV., p. 929. O

194 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
had drawn up as a record of the proceedings, in
which it is stated on September 17, 680, " Theodore,
by the grace of God, Archbishop of the island of
Britain and of the see of Canterbury, being 'presi
dent, and the other venerable bishops of the island
of Britain sitting with him," certain things were
agreed to. The only other name given of those
who were present is that of John the Archchanter
of St. Peter's and Abbot of St. Martin's at Rome,
and there is some evidence that he was sent by a
council held in Rome the previous year. Bede here
merely says that he had come from Rome per jus-
sionem papae Agathonis, duce reverentissimo abbate
Biscopo cognomine Benedicto ; and in his Lives of the
Abbots (Benedict, 6) it is more clearly stated that
Benedict Biscop obtained Agatho's leave to take
the archchanter back to Wearmouth to teach eccle
siastical singing.1 One thing, however, comes out
quite clearly in the scattered evidence which exists
respecting the organization of the first dioceses in
the English Church. The original plan of Gregory
the Great of having two provinces, each under one
archbishop with bishops under him, was entirely
ignored by Theodore, and without any protest
1 Bede says that at first the knowledge of Church music
was confined to Kent. Putta, whom Theodore consecrated
to succeed Damian in the see of Rochester, was maxime modu-
landi in ecclesia more Romanorum peritus {H.E., iv., 2). James
the Deacon and Eddius the biographer of WiKrid were the
first to teach music in the north.

THE ENGLISH DIOCESES 195
or interference on the part of Rome. So masterful
a prelate was not likely to share the jurisdiction
over England with another Metropolitan ; and he
may have rightly believed that, for the present, at
any rate, it was expedient that the whole should
be under the control of one and the same ruler.
There is extant a letter in which Pope Vitalian,
who consecrated Theodore, writes to him, nobis
visum est . . . commendare tuae sagacissimae sanc-
titati omnes ecclesias in insula Britanniae positas.1
The letter is a forgery, but this sentence in it seems
to be true enough to fact.
The last thing that we know of this great arch
bishop is his being reconciled to Wilfrid and res
toring him to the see of York in 686. This recon
ciliation completed and secured the diocesan organi
zation of the English Church, the creation of which
is the grandest result of Theodore's remarkable
episcopate. And, it may once more be repeated,
this union of the whole English nation under one
ecclesiastical organization anticipated and prepared
the way for the union of the nation under one politi
cal organization. The English Church is older than,
and is the direct parent of, the English State. The
one ordered Church existed long before the one

1 C. Plummer, Bede, II., p. 205. The passage is quoted
by Ralph de Diceto in his history of the Archbishops of
Canterbury.

196 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
ordered Kingdom, which it helped to bring into
existence. It is worth while to dwell upon this. It is, of
course, well to remember that, although we call our
selves Britons, our right to the name depends solely
on our living in Britain. By descent we are
Germans. All our very mixed ancestors — Jutes,
Angles, and Saxons, Danes, Norwegians, and Normans
— belonged to the Teutonic race. There is very
little Keltic blood in our veins, and hardly any
Keltic element in our language or institutions.
But this important fact must not lead us to suppose
that our various Teutonic ancestors at once coalesced
with one another as soon as they settled in Britain.
Originally, in [their primeval home on the Con
tinent, they had had the same customs and institu
tions. But they had separated into different tribes,
and had developed differently, before any of them
invaded Britain. And, when they did emigrate
to Britain, they did not all come at once. They came
at very different times, and continued to develop in
different ways in their new home (pp. 39 f.). ^They
were not a horde of savages, without organization ;
they brought an established organization with them.
But the customs and institutions of those who
migrated later were not the same as the customs
and institutions of those who had migrated earlier,
and who had continued to develop since their
settlement in Britain. There was radical resem-

THE ENGLISH DIOCESES 197
blance, but there was much difference in detail.
And this was the case with their language also.
Each of these tribes spoke a Teutonic dialect, but
the dialects were different. The elements of unity
were overwhelmed by the elements of difference.
Hence come the seven or eight great kingdoms, each
of them independent of one another, and each having
its own customs and laws ; and some of the king
doms had important subdivisions. There was some
times a Bretwalda, who ranked above the other
kings and perhaps had some authority over them ;
but there was no Empire of which he was Emperor,
and no Federation of States over which he presided.
The Bretwalda never stood, as the Archbishop
of Canterbury constantly did, at the head of an
organized body, the officials of which were under
his control (p. 66). There was no political bond of
unity whatever.
The leaven of Christianity at once introduced a
unifying force. It worked through all the politi
cally separate lumps, and made them capable of
becoming spiritually one lump. We see it at work
even before the arrival of Theodore, when Oswy of
Northumbria and Egbert of Kent " consult together
as to the state of the Church of the English," and
"with the choice and consent of the holy Church
of the race of the English " elect Wighard to be
sent to Rome to be consecrated " Archbishop of
the Church of the English " in succession to Deus-

198 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
dedit (Bede, H.E., iii., 29; iv., 1). And when Theo
dore, by means of his organization of the dioceses
under one archbishop, had brought unity into the
English Church, the thing was done. As Chris
tians, East Saxons and West Saxons, East Ang-
lians and Mercians, were one nation already. They
might be under different kings, but they were under
one archbishop, and in spiritual matters they all
had the same rights and the same laws, which were
quite independent of the civil power. An English
man migrating from one kingdom to another found
himself under exactly the same ecclesiastical govern
ment as before. He had a different bishop, but
the system was the same. Politically he might have
a different status and might have to change some
of his customs, but as a member of the Church there
was no change. Henceforward it was very easy
for kingdoms to coalesce. One kingdom might
swallow up another, but that caused no great com
motion in the populations. They were one nation
already for religious purposes, and they did not object
to becoming one nation for political purposes.1
The restoration of Wilfrid to the see of York is
an expression which, although accurate enough in
itself, might easily be misleading, if not accom
panied by explanation. The bishopric to which he
was restored in 686 was very different from that
1 Stubbs, Lectures on Early English History, pp. 3-10 ;
Constitutional History, pp. 163 f.

THE ENGLISH DIOCESES 199
which he had ruled from 669 to 678 ; it had been
immensely reduced, and therefore, by consenting
to accept the reduced bishopric, Wilfrid really gave
his assent to the division of the diocese upon which
Theodore had from the first insisted. Lindisfarne,
Hexham and Sidnacester had all of them received
bishops, whose dioceses were taken out of the old
diocese of York ; and in addition to these three
sees, there was that of the bishop for the Picts at
Whithern. If Theodore conceded a good deal in
offering to restore Wilfrid to York, Wilfrid also
conceded a good deal in consenting to reductions
which had been made without his consent.
Study of the origin of the English dioceses and of
the way in which they were increased and syste
matized by Theodore of Tarsus has something more
than mere antiquarian interest. Dr. Stubbs is not
an historian who is given to exaggeration or to empty
flourishes of rhetoric. This is how he sums up the
matter. " It is difficult, if not impossible, to overstate the
debt which England, Europe, and Christian civiliza
tion owe to the work of Theodore. He was the
real organizer of the administrative system of the
English Church, and in that work laid the founda
tion of English national unity. He brought the
learning and culture of the Eastern Empire into the
West, and with the aid of Hadrian and Benedict
Biscop established schools from which the scholars

200 THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN
and missionaries of the following century went out
to rekindle the light of Christian culture in France
and the recently converted parts of Germany ; and
thus formed a most important link between ancient
and modern life. His work was, to a great extent,
one of unwearied and unpretentious industry ; his
culture was, for the time, enlightened and tolerant,
and, although he has never been canonized or even
beatified, both his character and his work seem to
place him among the first and greatest of the saints
whom God has used for the building up of the Church
and development of the culture of the world." 1
Not only has Theodore never been canonized
by authority ; he has not become a saint in popu
lar estimation. There do not appear to have been
many legends about him ; and those which have
come down to us point rather to his reputation as
a masterful ruler than as an ascetic or a saint. Thus,
Theodore is said to have received legatine autho
rity over England, Scotland, and Ireland. We
do not read of miracles being attributed to him
either during his lifetime or after his death. On
the other hand, one hostile critic accuses him of
having been bribed. The admirers of Wilfrid found
it hard to be just to Theodore.
1 Dictionary of Christian Biography, IV., p. 932.

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE

VOLUMES I. AND IT. A.D.
British Bishops at Aries . . . . . .314
British Bishops at Ariminum ..... 359
Capture of Rome by Alaric . . . . .410
First Mission of Germanus to Britain . . . 429
The Hallelujah Victory, Easter .... 430
Second Mission of Germanus to Britain . . . 447
Death of Germanus, July 31 . . . . 448
Settlement of the Saxons, about .... 449
End of the Western Empire  476
Battle of Mons Badonicus, about .... 493
Gildas writes the De Excidio Britanniae, about . . 537
Accession of Ethelbert, King of Kent, about . . 660
Coming of Columba to Britain ; Foundation of Iona . 563
Gregory sends Augustine to Britain .... 696
Arrival of Augustine in Britain .... 597
Baptism of King Ethelbert, June 2 . . . . 597
Consecration of Augustine as archbishop ; Death of
Columba ........ 597
Coming of Mellitus with letters from Gregory . .601
Conference with British Bishops at Augustine's Oak,
about  602
Death of Gregory, March 12 .... . 604
Justus, Bishop of Rochester ..... 604
Mellitus, Bishop of the West Saxons . . . 604
Death of Augustine, May 26 ; Succession of Laurence . 605
Death of Boniface IV, May 25 .... 615
Death of Columban, November 21 . . . 615
Death of Ethelbert, February 24 ; Conversion of Eadbald 616
Death of Laurence, February 2 ; Succession of Mellitus . 619
Death of Mellitus, April 24 ; Succession of Justus . 624
201

202 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE
A.D.
Paulinus consecrated by Justus, July 21, and sent to
Northumbria ....... 625
Edwin, King of Northumbria, baptized, April 11 . 627
Death of Justus, November 10 ; Succession of Honorius . 627
Felix consecrated by Justus and sent to the East Angles,
about  628
Birth of Benedict Biscop ...... 628
Battle of Hatfield, October 12 ; Death of Edwin . 633
Birth of WiKrid  634
Battle of Heavenfield ; Accession of Oswald . . 634
Aidan sent from Iona ; Foundation of Lindisfarne . 635
Cynigyls, King of the West Saxons, converted by Birinus . 635
Birth of Aldhelm, about  639
Birth of Ceolfrid  642
Battle of Maserfield, August 5 ; Death of Oswald . . 642
Death of Paulinus, October 10 . . . . . 644
Hilda takes the veil ...... 647
Wilfrid enters Lindisfarne ..... 648
Death of Birinus, December ..... 650
Benedict Biscop and Wilfrid leave Kent for Rome . 653
Cedd Bishop to the East Saxons .... 654
Wilfrid leaves Rome ...... 654
Consecration of Deusdedit, first Saxon Archbishop,
March 26  655
Penda defeated and killed at Winwaed, November 15 655
Diuma Bishop of the Mercians, about . . . 655
Foundation of Whitby  657
Birth of WiUibrord, about  657
Colman succeeds Finan at Lindisfarne . . . 661
Wilfrid at Ripon  661
Wilfrid ordained priest, about ..... 663
Conference at Whitby ...... 664
The yellow Pest ; Deaths of Tuda, Deusdedit, and Cedd . 664
Consecration of Wilfrid by Agilbert at Compiegne . . 665
Benedict Biscop's second visit to Rome, about . . 665
Consecration of Chad by Wini and two British Bishops . 665
Wilfrid returns to Britain and retires to Ripon . 666
Benedict Biscop's third visit to Rome (from Lerins) . 667
Tfreoplpre consecrated at Rome for Canterbury, March 26 668

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 203
A.D.
Theodore leaves Rome for Britain, May 27 . . 668
Theodore reaches Canterbury, May 27 669
Theodore restores Wilfrid to York .... 669
Foundation of Lichfield ...... 669
Hadrian founds a school at Canterbury . . .671
Benedict Biscop's fourth visit to Rome . . .671
Return of Benedict Biscop ..... 672
Birth of Bede, about  673
Theodore holds the Council of Hertford, September 24 . 673
Foundation of Elmham ...... 673
Benedict Biscop founds Wearmouth .... 674
Cuthbert retires to Fame ..... 676
Foundation of Hereford ...... 676
Benedict Biscop's fifth visit to Rome . . .678
Wilfrid's diocese divided ; he appeals to Rome . 678
Wilfrid in Frisia and in Rome ..... 679
Council at Rome, November ..... 679
Wilfrid's appeal heard, March ..... 680
Return of Benedict Biscop with John the archchanter,
about  680
Bede enters the monastery at Wearmouth . . 680
Theodore holds the Council of Hatfield, September 17 680
Wilfrid returns to Britain and is imprisoned . . 680
Death of Hilda, November 17  680
Benedict Biscop founds Jarrow .... 681
Wilfrid released ; he works in Sussex . . .681
Benedict Biscop's sixth visit to Rome, about . . 684
Consecration of Cuthbert, March 26 . . . . 685
Wilfrid restored to York  686
Death of Cuthbert, March 20  687
Death of Benedict Biscop, January 12 690
Death of Archbishop Theodore, September 19 . . 690
Mission of Willibrord to Frisia ..... 690
Wilfrid again expelled ...... 691
Willibrord's first visit to Rome, about . . . 695
Willibrord's second visit and consecration . . . 695
Council of Easterfield ; Wilfrid's second appeal . . 702
Wilfrid at Rome to plead in person .... 702
Return of Wilfrid ; he is restored to Hexham and Ripon . 704

204

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE

and '

Foundation of Sherborne ....
Foundation of Selsey ....
Death of Wilfrid at Oundle, October 3
Council of Clovesho .....
Boniface goes to Frisia, about .
Bede visits Egbert at York
Bede's letter to Egbert, November .
Death of Bede, May 25 .
Resignation of Daniel, Bishop of the West Saxons
Death of Bishop Daniel ....
Council of Clovesho .....
Letter of Boniface to Archbishop Cuthbert, about
Death of Archbishop Cuthbert, October 26
Jaenbert consecrated ArGhbishop of Canterbury, about .
Alcuin sent to Rome by King Alfwold
Alcuin meets Charlemagne at Parma, Spring
Alcuin migrates to the court of Charlemagne
The " contentious synod " at Chelsea, about
Higbert made Archbishop of Lichfield by Offa
Hadrian ......
Death of Archbishop Jaenbert, August, about
Death of Pope Hadrian, December 25
Death of King Offa, July 29 .
Coronation of Charlemagne by Leo III
Higbert ceases to be Archbishop of Lichfield
Council of Clovesho confirms Higbert's resignation
Death of Alcuin .....
English Bishops protest against fetching the pall
Rome ......
Death of Charlemagne, January 28 .
Danes join with the Welsh against Egbert
Birth of King Alfred ....
Alfred sent to Rome to Leo 1~V
Ethelwulf takes Alfred to Rome
Death of Ethelwulf, January 13
Accession of Alfred .....
Alfred wins London, about
Alfred secures foreign teachers, about
Death of Alfred, October 26, about .

from

A.D. 705
709709716
718
733734735 744
745747747
760765780
781782
785
786792
795796800
802803
804806814835848853855858871885
893901

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 205
A.D.
Edward takes possession of London and Oxford . 912
Death of Edward and accession of Athelstan, about . 924
Birth of Dunstan ....... 925
Athelstan's expedition to Scotland .... 934
Battle of Brunanburh  937
Death of Athelstan, October 27 .... 940
Edmund places Dunstan at Glastonbury, about . 942
Dunstan made Abbot of Glastonbury, about . . 946
Edmund assassinated, May 26 . . . . . 946
Edred makes Dunstan his treasurer .... 946
Wilfrid's minster at Ripon burned, about . . . 950
Wulfstan, Archbishop of York, imprisoned . . 952
Death of Edred at Frome, November 23 . . . 955
Edwy crowned by Archbishop Odo at Kingston, January 956
Persecution and flight of Dunstan .... 956
Death of Wulfstan  956
Edgar elected king in Mercia ; return of Dunstan, about . 957
Divorce of Edwy by Archbishop Odo . . . 958
Death of Edwy, October ; Edgar King of all England . 959
Edgar appoints Dunstan to Canterbury . . . 959
Dunstan goes to Rome for the pall .... 960
Dunstan consecrates Oswald as Bishop of Worcester . 961
Dunstan consecrates Ethelwold as Bishop of Winchester . 963
Ethelwold begins to expel the secular clergy . . 964
Ethelwold translates the body of St. Swithun, July 15 . 970
Oswald promoted to York, about .... 972
Dunstan and Oswald crown Edgar at Bath, May 11 . 973
Death of Edgar, July 8  975
Edward the Martyr assassinated, about . . . 979
Dunstan and Oswald crown Ethelred the Redeless at '
Kingston  979
Death of Dunstan, May 19  988
Siric, Archbishop of Canterbury, advises the Danegeld,
about  991
Death of Oswald of York, February . . .992
Death of Siric  995
Translation of the body of St. Cuthbert to Durham . 995
Great victories of the Danes, 997, 998, and . . 999

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