HISTORY of the CHRISTIAN CHURCH*
FOURTH PERIOD
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THE CHURCH AMONG THE BARBARIANS
FROM GREGORY I. TO GREGORY VII.
a.d. 590 to 1049.
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CHAPTER II.
CONVERSION OF THE NORTHERN AND WESTERN BARBARIANS
§ 6. Character of Mediaeval Missions.
The conversion of the new and savage races which enter the theatre of history at the threshold of the middle ages, was the great work of the Christian church from the sixth to the tenth century. Already in the second or third century, Christianity was carried to the Gauls, the Britons and the Germans on the borders of the Rhine. But these were sporadic efforts with transient results. The work did not begin in earnest till the sixth century, and then it went vigorously forward to the tenth and twelfth, though with many checks and temporary relapses caused by civil wars and foreign invasions.
The Christianization of the Kelts, Teutons, and Slavonians was at the same time a process of civilization, and differed in this respect entirely from the conversion of the Jews, Greeks, and Romans in the preceding age. Christian missionaries laid the foundation for the alphabet, literature, agriculture, laws, and arts of the nations of Northern and Western Europe, as they now do among the heathen nations in Asia and Africa. "The science of language," says a competent judge,6 "owes more than its first impulse to Christianity. The pioneers of our science were those very apostles who were commanded to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature; and their true successors, the missionaries of the whole Christian church." The same may be said of every branch of knowledge and art of peace. The missionaries, in aiming at piety and the salvation of souls, incidentally promoted mental culture and temporal prosperity. The feeling of brotherhood inspired by Christianity broke down the partition walls between race and race, and created a brotherhood of nations.
The mediaeval Christianization was a wholesale conversion, or a conversion of nations under the command of their leaders. It was carried on not only by missionaries and by spiritual means, but also by political influence, alliances of heathen princes with Christian wives, and in some cases (as the baptism of the Saxons under Charlemagne) by military force. It was a conversion not to the primary Christianity of inspired apostles, as laid down in the New Testament, but to the secondary Christianity of ecclesiastical tradition, as taught by the fathers, monks and popes. It was a baptism by water, rather than by fire and the Holy Spirit. The preceding instruction amounted to little or nothing; even the baptismal formula, mechanically recited in Latin, was scarcely understood. The rude barbarians, owing to the weakness of their heathen religion, readily submitted to the new religion; but some tribes yielded only to the sword of the conqueror.
This superficial, wholesale conversion to a nominal Christianity must be regarded in the light of a national infant-baptism. It furnished the basis for a long process of Christian education. The barbarians were children in knowledge, and had to be treated like children. Christianity, assumed the form of a new law leading them, as a schoolmaster, to the manhood of Christ.
The missionaries of the middle ages were nearly all monks. They were generally men of limited education and narrow views, but devoted zeal and heroic self-denial. Accustomed to primitive simplicity of life, detached from all earthly ties, trained to all sorts of privations, ready for any amount of labor, and commanding attention and veneration by their unusual habits, their celibacy, fastings and constant devotions, they were upon the whole the best pioneers of Christianity and civilization among the savage races of Northern and Western Europe. The lives of these missionaries are surrounded by their biographers with such a halo of legends and miracles, that it is almost impossible to sift fact from fiction. Many of these miracles no doubt were products of fancy or fraud; but it would be rash to deny them all.
The same reason which made miracles necessary in the first introduction of Christianity, may have demanded them among barbarians before they were capable of appreciating the higher moral evidences.
I. THE CONVERSION OF ENGLAND, IRELAND, AND SCOTLAND.
§ 7. Literature.
I. Sources.
Gildas (Abbot of Bangor in Wales, the oldest British historian, in the sixth cent.): De excidio Britanniae conquestus, etc. A picture of the evils of Britain at the time. Best ed. by Joseph Stevenson, Lond., 1838. (English Historical Society’s publications.)
Nennius (Abbot of Bangor about 620): Eulogium Britanniae, sive Historia Britonum. Ed. Stevenson, 1838.
The Works of Gildas and Nennius transl. from the Latin by J. A. Giles, London, 1841.
*Beda Venerabilis (d. 734): Historia Ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum; in the sixth vol. of Migne’s ed. of Bedae Opera Omnia, also often separately published and translated into English. Best ed. by Stevenson, Lond., 1838; and by Giles, Lond., 1849. It is the only reliable church-history of the Anglo-Saxon period.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, from the time of Caesar to 1154. A work of several successive hands, ed. by Gibson with an Engl. translation, 1823, and by Giles, 1849 (in one vol. with Bede’s Eccles. History).
See the Six Old English Chronicles, in Bohn’s Antiquarian Library (1848); and Church Historians of England trans. by Jos. Stevenson, Lond. 1852–’56, 6 vols.
Sir. Henry Spelman (d. 1641): Concilia, decreta, leges, constitutiones in re ecclesiarum orbis Britannici, etc. Lond., 1639–’64, 2 vols. fol. (Vol. I. reaches to the Norman conquest; vol. ii. to Henry VIII).
David Wilkins (d. 1745): Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae (from 446 to 1717), Lond., 1737, 4 vols. fol. (Vol. I. from 446 to 1265).
*Arthur West Haddan and William Stubbs: Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents relating to Great Britain and Ireland: edited after Spelman and Wilkins. Oxford (Clarendon Press), 1869 to ’78. So far 3 vols. To be continued down to the Reformation.
The Penitentials of the Irish and Anglo-Saxon Churches are collected and edited by F. Kunstmann (Die Lat. Poenitentialbücher der Angelsachsen, 1844); Wasserschleben (Die Bussordnungen der abendländ. Kirche, 1851); Schmitz (Die Bussbücher u. d. Bussdisciplin d. Kirche, 1883).
II. Historical Works.
(a) The Christianization of England.
*J. Ussher. (d. 1655): Britannicarum Eccles. Antiquitates. Dublin, 1639; London, 1687; Works ed. by Elrington, 1847, Vols. V. and VI.
E. Stillingfleet (d. 1699): Origenes Britannicae; or, the Antiqu. of the British Churches. London, 1710; Oxford, 1842; 2 vols.
J. Lingard (R.C., d. 1851): The History and Antiquities of the Anglo-Saxon Church. London, 1806, new ed., 1845.
Karl Schrödl (R.C.): Das erste Jahrhundert der englischen Kirche. Passau & Wien, 1840.
Edward Churton (Rector of Crayke, Durham): The Early English Church. London, 1841 (new ed. unchanged, 1878).
James Yeowell: Chronicles of the Ancient British Church anterior to the Saxon era. London, 1846.
Francis Thackeray (Episcop.): Researches into the Eccles. and Political State of Ancient Britain under the Roman Emperors. London, 1843, 2 vols.
*Count De Montalembert (R.C., d. 1870): The Monks of the West. Edinburgh and London, 1861–’79, 7 vols. (Authorized transl. from the French). The third vol. treats of the British Isles.
Reinhold Pauli: Bilder aus Alt-England. Gotha, 1860.
W F. Hook: Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury. London, 2nd ed., 1861 sqq.
G. F. Maclear. (D. D., Head-master of King’s College School): Conversion of the West. The English. London, 1878. By the same: The Kelts, 1878. (Popular.)
William Bright (Dr. and Prof, of Eccles. Hist., Oxford): Chapters on Early English Church History Oxford, 1878 (460 pages).
John Pryce: History of the Ancient British Church. Oxford, 1878.
Edward L. Cutts: Turning Points of English Church-History. London, 1878.
Dugald MacColl: Early British Church. The Arthurian Legends. In "The Catholic Presbyterian," London and New York, for 1880, No. 3, pp. 176 sqq.
(b) The Christianization of Ireland, Wales, and Scotland.
Dr. Lanigan (R.C.): Ecclesiastical History of Ireland. Dublin, 1829.
William G. Todd (Episc., Trinity Coll., Dublin): The Church of St. Patrick: An Historical Inquiry into the Independence of the Ancient Church of Ireland. London, 1844. By the same: A History of the Ancient Church of Ireland. London, 1845. By the same: Book of Hymns of the Ancient Church of Ireland. Dublin, 1855.
Ferdinand Walter: Das alte Wales. Bonn, 1859.
John Cunningham (Presbyterian): The Church History of Scotland from the Commencement of the Christian Era to the Present Day. Edinburgh, 1859, 2 vols. (Vol. I., chs. 1–6).
C. Innes: Sketches of Early Scotch History, and Social Progress. Edinb., 1861. (Refers to the history of local churches, the university and home-life in the mediaeval period.)
Thomas McLauchan (Presbyt.): The Early Scottish Church: the Ecclesiastical History of Scotland from the First to the Twelfth Century. Edinburgh, 1865.
*DR. J. H. A. Ebrard: Die iroschottische Missionskirche des 6, 7 und 8 ten Jahrh., und ihre Verbreitung auf dem Festland. Gütersloh, 1873.
Comp. Ebrard’s articles Die culdeische Kirche des 6, 7 und 8ten Jahrh., in Niedner’s "Zeitschrift für Hist. Theologie" for 1862 and 1863.
Ebrard and McLauchan are the ablest advocates of the anti-Romish and alleged semi-Protestant character of the old Keltic church of Ireland and Scotland; but they present it in a more favorable light than the facts warrant.
*Dr. W. D. Killen (Presbyt.): The Ecclesiastical History of Ireland from the Earliest Period to the Present Times. London, 1875, 2 vols.
*Alex. Penrose Forbes (Bishop of Brechin, d. 1875): Kalendars of Scottish Saints. With Personal Notices of those of Alba, Laudonia and Stratchclyde. Edinburgh (Edmonston & Douglas), 1872. By the same: Lives of S. Ninian and S. Kentigern. Compiled in the twelfth century. Ed. from the best MSS. Edinburgh, 1874.
*William Reeves (Canon of Armagh): Life of St. Columba, Founder of Hy. Written by Adamnan, ninth Abbot of that monastery. Edinburgh, 1874.
*William F. Skene: Keltic Scotland. Edinburgh, 2 vols., 1876, 1877.
*F. E. Warren (Fellow of St. John’s Coll., Oxford): The Liturgy and Ritual of the Celtic Church. Oxford 1881 (291 pp.).
F. Loofs: Antiquae Britonum Scotorumque ecclesiae moves, ratio credendi, vivendi, etc. Lips., 1882.
Comp. also the relevant sections in the Histories Of England, Scotland, and Ireland, by Hume, (Ch. I-III.), Lingard (Ch. I. VIII.), Lappenberg (Vol. I.), Green (Vol. I.), Hill Burton (Hist. of Scotland, Vol. I.); Milman’s Latin Christianity (Book IV., Ch. 3–5); Maclear’s Apostles of Mediaeval Europe (Lond. 1869), Thomas Smith’s Mediaeval Missions (Edinb. 1880).
§ 8. The Britons.
Literature: The works of Bede, Gildas, Nennius, Ussher, Bright, Pryce, quoted in § 7.
Britain made its first appearance in secular history half a century before the Christian era, when Julius Caesar, the conqueror of Gaul, sailed with a Roman army from Calais across the channel, and added the British island to the dominion of the eternal city, though it was not fully subdued till the reign of Claudius (a.d. 41–54). It figures in ecclesiastical history from the conversion of the Britons in the second century. Its missionary history is divided into two periods, the Keltic and the Anglo-Saxon, both catholic in doctrine, as far as developed at that time, slightly differing in discipline, yet bitterly hostile under the influence of the antagonism of race, which was ultimately overcome in England and Scotland but is still burning in Ireland, the proper home of the Kelts. The Norman conquest made both races better Romanists than they were before.
The oldest inhabitants of Britain, like the Irish, the Scots, and the Gauls, were of Keltic origin, half naked and painted barbarians, quarrelsome, rapacious, revengeful, torn by intestine factions, which facilitated their conquest. They had adopted, under different appellations, the gods of the Greeks and Romans, and worshipped a multitude of local deities, the genii of the woods, rivers, and mountains; they paid special homage to the oak, the king of the forest. They offered the fruits of the earth, the spoils of the enemy, and, in the hour of danger, human lives. Their priests, called druids,7 dwelt in huts or caverns, amid the silence and gloom of the forest, were in possession of all education and spiritual power, professed to know the secrets of nature, medicine and astrology, and practised the arts of divination. They taught, as the three principles of wisdom: "obedience to the laws of God, concern for the good of man, and fortitude under the accidents of life." They also taught the immortality of the soul and the fiction of metempsychosis. One class of the druids, who delivered their instructions in verse, were distinguished by the title of bards, who as poets and musicians accompanied the chieftain to the battle-field, and enlivened the feasts of peace by the sound of the harp. There are still remains of druidical temples—the most remarkable at Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain, and at Stennis in the Orkney Islands—that is, circles of huge stones standing in some cases twenty feet above the earth, and near them large mounds supposed to be ancient burial-places; for men desire to be buried near a place of worship.
The first introduction of Christianity into Britain is involved in obscurity. The legendary history ascribes it at least to ten different agencies, namely, 1) Bran, a British prince, and his son Caradog, who is said to have become acquainted with St. Paul in Rome, a.d. 51 to 58, and to have introduced the gospel into his native country on his return. 2) St. Paul. 3) St. Peter. 4) St. Simon Zelotes. 5) St. Philip. 6) St. James the Great. 7) St. John. 8) Aristobulus (Rom. xvi. 10). 9) Joseph of Arimathaea, who figures largely in the post-Norman legends of Glastonbury Abbey, and is said to have brought the holy Graal—the vessel or platter of the Lord’s Supper—containing the blood of Christ, to England. 10) Missionaries of Pope Eleutherus from Rome to King Lucius of Britain.8
But these legends cannot be traced beyond the sixth century, and are therefore destitute of all historic value. A visit of St. Paul to Britain between a.d. 63 and 67 is indeed in itself not impossible (on the assumption of a second Roman captivity), and has been advocated even by such scholars as Ussher and Stillingfleet, but is intrinsically improbable, and destitute of all evidence.9
The conversion of King Lucius in the second century through correspondence with the Roman bishop Eleutherus (176 to 190), is related by Bede, in connection with several errors, and is a legend rather than an established fact.10 Irenaeus of Lyons, who enumerates all the churches one by one, knows of none in Britain. Yet the connection of Britain with Rome and with Gaul must have brought it early into contact with Christianity. About a.d. 208 Tertullian exultingly declared "that places in Britain not yet visited by Romans were subject to Christ."11 St. Alban, probably a Roman soldier, died as the British proto-martyr in the Diocletian persecution (303), and left the impress of his name on English history.12 Constantine, the first Christian emperor, was born in Britain, and his mother, St. Helena, was probably a native of the country. In the Council of Arles, a.d. 314, which condemned the Donatists, we meet with three British bishops, Eborius of York (Eboracum), Restitutus of London (Londinum), and Adelfius of Lincoln (Colonia Londinensium), or Caerleon in Wales, besides a presbyter and deacon.13 In the Arian controversy the British churches sided with Athanasius and the Nicene Creed, though hesitating about the term homoousios.14 A notorious heretic, Pelagius (Morgan), was from the same island; his abler, though less influential associate, Celestius, was probably an Irishman; but their doctrines were condemned (429), and the Catholic faith reëstablished with the assistance of two Gallic bishops.15
Monumental remains of the British church during the Roman period are recorded or still exist at Canterbury (St. Martin’s), Caerleon, Bangor, Glastonbury, Dover, Richborough (Kent), Reculver, Lyminge, Brixworth, and other places.16
The Roman dominion in Britain ceased about a.d. 410; the troops were withdrawn, and the country left to govern itself. The result was a partial relapse into barbarism and a demoralization of the church. The intercourse with the Continent was cut off, and the barbarians of the North pressed heavily upon the Britons. For a century and a half we hear nothing of the British churches till the silence is broken by the querulous voice of Gildas, who informs us of the degeneracy of the clergy, the decay of religion, the introduction and suppression of the Pelagian heresy, and the mission of Palladius to the Scots in Ireland. This long isolation accounts in part for the trifling differences and the bitter antagonism between the remnant of the old British church and the new church imported from Rome among the hated Anglo-Saxons.
The difference was not doctrinal, but ritualistic and disciplinary. The British as well as the Irish and Scotch Christians of the sixth and seventh centuries kept Easter on the very day of the full moon in March when it was Sunday, or on the next Sunday following. They adhered to the older cycle of eighty-four years in opposition to the later Dionysian cycle of ninety-five years, which came into use on the Continent since the middle of the sixth century.17 They shaved the fore-part of their head from ear to ear in the form of a crescent, allowing the hair to grow behind, in imitation of the aureola, instead of shaving, like the Romans, the crown of the head in a circular form, and leaving a circle of hair, which was to represent the Saviour’s crown of thorns. They had, moreover—and this was the most important and most irritating difference—become practically independent of Rome, and transacted their business in councils without referring to the pope, who began to be regarded on the Continent as the righteous ruler and judge of all Christendom.
From these facts some historians have inferred the Eastern or Greek origin of the old British church. But there is no evidence whatever of any such connection, unless it be perhaps through the medium of the neighboring church of Gaul, which was partly planted or moulded by Irenaeus of Lyons, a pupil of St. Polycarp of Smyrna, and which always maintained a sort of independence of Rome.
But in the points of dispute just mentioned, the Gallican church at that time agreed with Rome. Consequently, the peculiarities of the British Christians must be traced to their insular isolation and long separation from Rome. The Western church on the Continent passed through some changes in the development of the authority of the papal see, and in the mode of calculating Easter, until the computation was finally fixed through Dionysius Exiguus in 525. The British, unacquainted with these changes, adhered to the older independence and to the older customs. They continued to keep Easter from the 14th of the moon to the 20th. This difference involved a difference in all the moveable festivals, and created great confusion in England after the conversion of the Saxons to the Roman rite.
§ 9. The Anglo-Saxons.
Literature.
I. The sources for the planting of Roman Christianity among the Anglo-Saxons are several Letters of Pope Gregory I. (Epp., Lib. VI. 7, 51, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59; IX. 11, 108; XI. 28, 29, 64, 65, 66, 76; in Migne’s ed. of Gregory’s Opera, Vol. III.; also in Haddan and Stubbs, III. 5 sqq.); the first and second books of Bede’s Eccles. Hist.; Goscelin’s Life of St. Augustin, written in the 11th century, and contained in the Acta Sanctorum of May 26th; and Thorne’s Chronicles of St. Augustine’s Abbey. See also Haddan and Stubbs, Councils, etc., the 3d vol., which comes down to a.d. 840.
II. Of modern lives of St. Augustin, we mention Montalembert, Monks of the West, Vol. III.; Dean Hook, Archbishops of Canterbury, Vol. I., and Dean Stanley, Memorials of Canterbury, 1st ed., 1855, 9th ed. 1880. Comp. Lit. in Sec. 7.
British Christianity was always a feeble plant, and suffered greatly, from the Anglo-Saxon conquest and the devastating wars which followed it. With the decline of the Roman power, the Britons, weakened by the vices of Roman civilization, and unable to resist the aggressions of the wild Picts and Scots from the North, called Hengist and Horsa, two brother-princes and reputed descendants of Wodan, the god of war, from Germany to their aid, a.d. 449.18
From this time begins the emigration of Saxons, Angles or Anglians, Jutes, and Frisians to Britain. They gave to it a new nationality and a new language, the Anglo-Saxon, which forms the base and trunk of the present people and language of England (Angle-land). They belonged to the great Teutonic race, and came from the Western and Northern parts of Germany, from the districts North of the Elbe, the Weser, and the Eyder, especially from Holstein, Schleswig, and Jutland. They could never be subdued by the Romans, and the emperor Julian pronounced them the most formidable of all the nations that dwelt beyond the Rhine on the shores of the Western ocean. They were tall and handsome, with blue eyes and fair skin, strong and enduring, given to pillage by land, and piracy by sea, leaving the cultivation of the soil, with the care of their flocks, to women and slaves. They were the fiercest among the Germans. They sacrificed a tenth of their chief captives on the altars of their gods. They used the spear, the sword, and the battle-axe with terrible effect. "We have not," says Sidonius, bishop of Clermont,19 "a more cruel and more dangerous enemy than the Saxons. They overcome all who have the courage to oppose them .... When they pursue, they infallibly overtake; when they are pursued, their escape is certain. They despise danger; they are inured to shipwreck; they are eager to purchase booty with the peril of their lives. Tempests, which to others are so dreadful, to them are subjects of joy. The storm is their protection when they are pressed by the enemy, and a cover for their operations when they meditate an attack." Like the Bedouins in the East, and the Indians of America, they were divided in tribes, each with a chieftain. In times of danger, they selected a supreme commander under the name of Konyng or King, but only for a period.
These strangers from the Continent successfully repelled the Northern invaders; but being well pleased with the fertility and climate of the country, and reinforced by frequent accessions from their countrymen, they turned upon the confederate Britons, drove them to the mountains of Wales and the borders of Scotland, or reduced them to slavery, and within a century and a half they made themselves masters of England. From invaders they became settlers, and established an octarchy or eight independent kingdoms, Kent, Sussex, Wessex, Essex, Northumbria, Mercia, Bernicia, and Deira. The last two were often united under the same head; hence we generally speak of but seven kingdoms or the Anglo-Saxon heptarchy.
From this period of the conflict between the two races dates the Keltic form of the Arthurian legends, which afterwards underwent a radical telescopic transformation in France. They have no historical value except in connection with the romantic poetry of mediaeval religion.20
§ 10. The Mission of Gregory and Augustin. Conversion of Kent, a.d. 595–604.
With the conquest of the Anglo-Saxons, who were heathen barbarians, Christianity was nearly extirpated in Britain. Priests were cruelly massacred, churches and monasteries were destroyed, together with the vestiges of a weak Roman civilization. The hatred and weakness of the Britons prevented them from offering the gospel to the conquerors, who in turn would have rejected it from contempt of the conquered.21
But fortunately Christianity was re-introduced from a remote country, and by persons who had nothing to do with the quarrels of the two races. To Rome, aided by the influence of France, belongs the credit of reclaiming England to Christianity and civilization. In England the first, and, we may say, the only purely national church in the West was founded, but in close union with the papacy. "The English church," says Freeman, "reverencing Rome, but not slavishly bowing down to her, grew up with a distinctly national character, and gradually infused its influence into all the feelings and habits of the English people. By the end of the seventh century, the independent, insular, Teutonic church had become one of the brightest lights of the Christian firmament. In short, the introduction of Christianity completely changed the position of the English nation, both within its own island and towards the rest of the world."22
The origin of the Anglo-Saxon mission reads like a beautiful romance. Pope Gregory I., when abbot of a Benedictine convent, saw in the slave-market of Rome three Anglo-Saxon boys offered for sale. He was impressed with their fine appearance, fair complexion, sweet faces and light flaxen hair; and learning, to his grief, that they were idolaters, he asked the name of their nation, their country, and their king. When he heard that they were Angles, he said: "Right, for they have angelic faces, and are worthy to be fellow-heirs with angels in heaven." They were from the province Deira. "Truly," he replied, "are they De-ira-ns, that is, plucked from the ire of God, and called to the mercy of Christ." He asked the name of their king, which was AElla or Ella (who reigned from 559 to 588). "Hallelujah," he exclaimed, "the praise of God the Creator must be sung in those parts." He proceeded at once from the slave market to the pope, and entreated him to send missionaries to England, offering himself for this noble work. He actually started for the spiritual conquest of the distant island. But the Romans would not part with him, called him back, and shortly afterwards elected him pope (590). What he could not do in person, he carried out through others.23
In the year 596, Gregory, remembering his interview with the sweet-faced and fair-haired Anglo-Saxon slave-boys, and hearing of a favorable opportunity for a mission, sent the Benedictine abbot Augustin (Austin), thirty other monks, and a priest, Laurentius, with instructions, letters of recommendation to the Frank kings and several bishops of Gaul, and a few books, to England.24 The missionaries, accompanied by some interpreters from France, landed on the isle of Thanet in Kent, near the mouth of the Thames.25 King Ethelbert, by his marriage to Bertha, a Christian princess from Paris, who had brought a bishop with her, was already prepared for a change of religion. He went to meet the strangers and received them in the open air; being afraid of some magic if he were to see them under roof. They bore a silver cross for their banner, and the image of Christ painted on a board; and after singing the litany and offering prayers for themselves and the people whom they had come to convert, they preached the gospel through their Frank interpreters. The king was pleased with the ritualistic and oratorical display of the new religion from distant, mighty Rome, and said: "Your words and promises are very fair; but as they are new to us and of uncertain import, I cannot forsake the religion I have so long followed with the whole English nation. Yet as you are come from far, and are desirous to benefit us, I will supply you with the necessary sustenance, and not forbid you to preach and to convert as many as you can to your religion."26 Accordingly, he allowed them to reside in the City of Canterbury (Dorovern, Durovernum), which was the metropolis of his kingdom, and was soon to become the metropolis of the Church of England. They preached and led a severe monastic life. Several believed and were baptized, "admiring," as Bede says, "the simplicity of their innocent life, and the sweetness of their heavenly doctrine." He also mentions miracles. Gregory warned Augustin not to be puffed up by miracles, but to rejoice with fear, and to tremble in rejoicing, remembering what the Lord said to his disciples when they boasted that even the devils were subject to them. For not all the elect work miracles, and yet the names of all are written in heaven.27
King Ethelbert was converted and baptized (probably June 2, 597), and drew gradually his whole nation after him, though he was taught by the missionaries not to use compulsion, since the service of Christ ought to be voluntary.
Augustin, by order of pope Gregory, was ordained archbishop of the English nation by Vergilius,28 archbishop of Arles, Nov. 16, 597, and became the first primate of England, with a long line of successors even to this day. On his return, at Christmas, he baptized more than ten thousand English. His talents and character did not rise above mediocrity, and he bears no comparison whatever with his great namesake, the theologian and bishop of Hippo; but he was, upon the whole, well fitted for his missionary work, and his permanent success lends to his name the halo of a borrowed greatness. He built a church and monastery at Canterbury, the mother-church of Anglo-Saxon Christendom. He sent the priest Laurentius to Rome to inform the pope of his progress and to ask an answer to a number of questions concerning the conduct of bishops towards their clergy, the ritualistic differences between the Roman and the Gallican churches, the marriage of two brothers to two sisters, the marriage of relations, whether a bishop may be ordained without other bishops being present, whether a woman with child ought to be baptized, how long after the birth of an infant carnal intercourse of married people should be delayed, etc. Gregory answered these questions very fully in the legalistic and ascetic spirit of the age, yet, upon the whole, with much good sense and pastoral wisdom.29
It is remarkable that this pope, unlike his successors, did not insist on absolute conformity to the Roman church, but advises Augustin, who thought that the different customs of the Gallican church were inconsistent with the unity of faith, "to choose from every church those things that are pious, religious and upright;" for "things are not to be loved for the sake of places, but places for the sake of good things."30 In other respects, the advice falls in with the papal system and practice. He directs the missionaries not to destroy the heathen temples, but to convert them into Christian churches, to substitute the worship of relics for the worship of idols, and to allow the new converts, on the day of dedication and other festivities, to kill cattle according to their ancient custom, yet no more to the devils, but to the praise of God; for it is impossible, he thought, to efface everything at once from their obdurate minds; and he who endeavors to ascend to the highest place, must rise by degrees or steps, and not by leaps.31 This method was faithfully followed by his missionaries. It no doubt facilitated the nominal conversion of England, but swept a vast amount of heathenism into the Christian church, which it took centuries to eradicate.
Gregory sent to Augustin, June 22, 601, the metropolitan pall (pallium), several priests (Mellitus, Justus, Paulinus, and others), many books, sacred vessels and vestments, and relics of apostles and martyrs. He directed him to ordain twelve bishops in the archiepiscopal diocese of Canterbury, and to appoint an archbishop for York, who was also to ordain twelve bishops, if the country adjoining should receive the word of God. Mellitus was consecrated the first bishop of London; Justus, bishop of Rochester, both in 604 by Augustin (without assistants); Paulinus, the first archbishop of York, 625, after the death of Gregory and Augustin.32 The pope sent also letters and presents to king Ethelbert, "his most excellent son," exhorting him to persevere in the faith, to commend it by good works among his subjects, to suppress the worship of idols, and to follow the instructions of Augustin.
§ 11. Antagonism of the Saxon and British Clergy.
Bede, II. 2; Haddan and Stubbs, III. 38–41.
Augustin, with the aid of king Ethelbert, arranged (in 602 or 603) a conference with the British bishops, at a place in Sussex near the banks of the Severn under an oak, called "Augustin’s Oak."33 He admonished them to conform to the Roman ceremonial in the observance of Easter Sunday, and the mode of administering baptism, and to unite with their Saxon brethren in converting the Gentiles. Augustin had neither wisdom nor charity enough to sacrifice even the most trifling ceremonies on the altar of peace. He was a pedantic and contracted churchman. He met the Britons, who represented at all events an older and native Christianity, with the haughty spirit of Rome, which is willing to compromise with heathen customs, but demands absolute submission from all other forms of Christianity, and hates independence as the worst of heresies.
The Britons preferred their own traditions. After much useless contention, Augustin proposed, and the Britons reluctantly accepted, an appeal to the miraculous interposition of God. A blind man of the Saxon race was brought forward and restored to sight by his prayer. The Britons still refused to give up their ancient customs without the consent of their people, and demanded a second and larger synod.
At the second Conference, seven bishops of the Britons, with a number of learned men from the Convent of Bangor, appeared, and were advised by a venerated hermit to submit the Saxon archbishop to the moral test of meekness and humility as required by Christ from his followers. If Augustin, at the meeting, shall rise before them, they should hear him submissively; but if he shall not rise, they should despise him as a proud man. As they drew near, the Roman dignitary remained seated in his chair. He demanded of them three things, viz. compliance with the Roman observance of the time of Easter, the Roman form of baptism, and aid in efforts to convert the English nation; and then he would readily tolerate their other peculiarities. They refused, reasoning among themselves, if he will not rise up before us now, how much more will he despise us when we shall be subject to his authority? Augustin indignantly rebuked them and threatened the divine vengeance by the arms of the Saxons. "All which," adds Bede, "through the dispensation of the divine judgment, fell out exactly as he had predicted." For, a few years afterwards (613), Ethelfrith the Wild, the pagan King of Northumbria, attacked the Britons at Chester, and destroyed not only their army, but slaughtered several hundred34 priests and monks, who accompanied the soldiers to aid them with their prayers. The massacre was followed by the destruction of the flourishing monastery of Bangor, where more than two thousand monks lived by the labor of their hands.
This is a sad picture of the fierce animosity of the two races and rival forms of Christianity. Unhappily, it continues to the present day, but with a remarkable difference: the Keltic Irish who, like the Britons, once represented a more independent type of Catholicism, have, since the Norman conquest, and still more since the Reformation, become intense Romanists; while the English, once the dutiful subjects of Rome, have broken with that foreign power altogether, and have vainly endeavored to force Protestantism upon the conquered race. The Irish problem will not be solved until the double curse of national and religious antagonism is removed.
§ 12. Conversion of the Other Kingdoms of the Heptarchy.
Augustin, the apostle of the Anglo-Saxons, died a.d. 604, and lies buried, with many of his successors, in the venerable cathedral of Canterbury. On his tomb was written this epitaph: "Here rests the Lord Augustin, first archbishop of Canterbury, who being formerly sent hither by the blessed Gregory, bishop of the city of Rome, and by God’s assistance supported with miracles, reduced king Ethelbert and his nation from the worship of idols to the faith of Christ, and having ended the days of his office in peace, died on the 26th day of May, in the reign of the same king."35
He was not a great man; but he did a great work in laying the foundations of English Christianity and civilization.
Laurentius (604–619), and afterwards Mellitus (619–624) succeeded him in his office.
Other priests and monks were sent from Italy, and brought with them books and such culture as remained after the irruption of the barbarians. The first archbishops of Canterbury and York, and the bishops of most of the Southern sees were foreigners, if not consecrated, at least commissioned by the pope, and kept up a constant correspondence with Rome. Gradually a native clergy arose in England.
The work of Christianization went on among the other kingdom of the heptarchy, and was aided by the marriage of kings with Christian wives, but was more than once interrupted by relapse into heathenism. Northumbria was converted chiefly through the labors of the sainted Aidan (d. Aug. 31, 651), a monk from the island Iona or Hii, and the first bishop of Lindisfarne, who is even lauded by Bede for his zeal, piety and good works, although he differed from him on the Easter question.36 Sussex was the last part of the Heptarchy which renounced paganism. It took nearly a hundred years before England was nominally converted to the Christian religion.37
To this conversion England owes her national unity and the best elements of her civilization.38
The Anglo-Saxon Christianity was and continued to be till the Reformation, the Christianity of Rome, with its excellences and faults. It included the Latin mass, the worship of saints, images and relics, monastic virtues and vices, pilgrimages to the holy city, and much credulity and superstition. Even kings abdicated their crown to show their profound reverence for the supreme pontiff and to secure from him a passport to heaven. Chapels, churches and cathedrals were erected in the towns; convents founded in the country by the bank of the river or under the shelter of a hill, and became rich by pious donations of land. The lofty cathedrals and ivy-clad ruins of old abbeys and cloisters in England and Scotland still remain to testify in solemn silence to the power of mediaeval Catholicism.
§ 13. Conformity to Row Established. Wilfrid, Theodore, Bede.
The dispute between the Anglo-Saxon or Roman, and the British ritual was renewed in the middle of the seventh century, but ended with the triumph of the former in England proper. The spirit of independence had to take refuge in Ireland and Scotland till the time of the Norman conquest, which crushed it out also in Ireland.
Wilfrid, afterwards bishop of York, the first distinguished native prelate who combined clerical habits with haughty magnificence, acquired celebrity by expelling "the quartodeciman heresy and schism," as it was improperly called, from Northumbria, where the Scots had introduced it through St. Aidan. The controversy was decided in a Synod held at Whitby in 664 in the presence of King Oswy or Oswio and his son Alfrid. Colman, the second success or of Aidan, defended the Scottish observance of Easter by the authority of St. Columba and the apostle John. Wilfrid rested the Roman observance on the authority of Peter, who had introduced it in Rome, and on the universal custom of Christendom. When he mentioned, that to Peter were intrusted the keys of the kingdom of heaven, the king said: "I will not contradict the door-keeper, lest when I come to the gates of the kingdom of heaven, there should be none to open them." By this irresistible argument the opposition was broken, and conformity to the Roman observance established. The Scottish semi-circular tonsure also, which was ascribed to Simon Magus, gave way to the circular, which was derived from St. Peter. Colman, being worsted, returned with his sympathizers to Scotland, where he built two monasteries. Tuda was made bishop in his place.39
Soon afterwards, a dreadful pestilence raged through England and Ireland, while Caledonia was saved, as the pious inhabitants believed, by the intercession of St. Columba.
The fusion of English Christians was completed in the age of Theodorus, archbishop of Canterbury (669 to 690), and Beda Venerabilis ( b. 673, d. 735), presbyter and monk of Wearmouth. About the same time Anglo-Saxon literature was born, and laid the foundation for the development of the national genius which ultimately broke loose from Rome.
Theodore was a native of Tarsus, where Paul was born, educated in Athens, and, of course, acquainted with Greek and Latin learning. He received his appointment and consecration to the primacy of England from Pope Vitalian. He arrived at Canterbury May 27, 669, visited the whole of England, established the Roman rule of Easter, and settled bishops in all the sees except London. He unjustly deposed bishop Wilfrid of York, who was equally devoted to Rome, but in his later years became involved in sacerdotal jealousies and strifes. He introduced order into the distracted church and some degree of education among the clergy. He was a man of autocratic temper, great executive ability, and, having been directly sent from Rome, he carried with him double authority. "He was the first archbishop," says Bede, "to whom the whole church of England submitted." During his administration the first Anglo-Saxon mission to the mother-country of the Saxons and Friesians was attempted by Egbert, Victberet, and Willibrord (689 to 692). His chief work is a "Penitential" with minute directions for a moral and religious life, and punishments for drunkenness, licentiousness, and other prevalent vices.40
The Venerable Bede was the first native English scholar, the father of English theology and church history. He spent his humble and peaceful life in the acquisition and cultivation of ecclesiastical and secular learning, wrote Latin in prose and verse, and translated portions of the Bible into Anglo-Saxon. His chief work is his—the only reliable—Church History of old England. He guides us with a gentle hand and in truly Christian spirit, though colored by Roman views, from court to court, from monastery to monastery, and bishopric to bishopric, through the missionary labyrinth of the miniature kingdoms of his native island. He takes the Roman side in the controversies with the British churches.41
Before Bede cultivated Saxon prose, Caedmon (about 680), first a swine-herd, then a monk at Whitby, sung, as by inspiration, the wonders of creation and redemption, and became the father of Saxon (and Christian German) poetry. His poetry brought the Bible history home to the imagination of the Saxon people, and was a faint prophecy of the "Divina Comedia" and the "Paradise Lost."42 We have a remarkable parallel to this association of Bede and Caedmon in the association of Wiclif, the first translator of the whole Bible into English (1380), and the contemporary of Chaucer, the father of English poetry, both forerunners of the British Reformation, and sustaining a relation to Protestant England somewhat similar to the relation which Bede and Caedmon sustain to mediaeval Catholic England.
The conversion of England was nominal and ritual, rather than intellectual and moral. Education was confined to the clergy and monks, and consisted in the knowledge of the Decalogue, the Creed and the Pater Noster, a little Latin without any Greek or Hebrew. The Anglo-Saxon clergy were only less ignorant than the British. The ultimate triumph of the Roman church was due chiefly to her superior organization, her direct apostolic descent, and the prestige of the Roman empire. It made the Christianity of England independent of politics and court-intrigues, and kept it in close contact with the Christianity of the Continent. The advantages of this connection were greater than the dangers and evils of insular isolation. Among all the subjects of Teutonic tribes, the English became the most devoted to the Pope. They sent more pilgrims to Rome and more money into the papal treasury than any other nation. They invented the Peter’s Pence. At least thirty of their kings and queens, and an innumerable army of nobles ended their days in cloistral retreats. Nearly all of the public lands were deeded to churches and monasteries. But the exuberance of monasticism weakened the military and physical forces of the nation
Danish and the Norman conquests. The power and riches of the church secularized the clergy, and necessitated in due time a reformation. Wealth always tends to vice, and vice to decay. The Norman conquest did not change the ecclesiastical relations of England, but infused new blood and vigor into the Saxon race, which is all the better for its mixed character.
We add a list of the early archbishops and bishops of the four principal English sees, in the order of their foundation:43
Canterbury
London
Rochester.
York
Augustin
597
Mellitus
604
Justus
604
Paulinus
625
Laurentius
604
[Cedd in Essex
654]
Romanus
624
Chad
665
Mellitus
619
Wini
666
Paulinus
633
Wilfrid, consecrated 665, in possession
669
Justus
624
Erconwald
675
Ithamar
644
Honorius
627
Waldhere
693
Damian
655
669
Deusdedit
655
Ingwald
704
Putta
669
Bosa
678
Theodore
668
Cwichelm
676
Wilfrid again
686
Brihtwald
693
Gebmund
678
Bosa again
691
Tatwin
731
Tobias
693
John
706
§ 14. The Conversion of Ireland. St. Patrick and St. Bridget.
Literature.
I. The writings of St. Patrick are printed in the Vitae Sanctorum of the Bollandists, sub March 17th; in Patricii Opuscula, ed. Warsaeus (Sir James Ware, Lond., 1656); in Migne’s Patrolog., Tom. LIII. 790–839, and with critical notes in Haddan and Stubbs, Councils, etc., Vol. II, Part II, (1878), pp. 296–323.
II. The Life of St. Patrick in the Acta Sanctorum, Mart., Tom. II. 517 sqq.
Tillemont: Mémoires, Tom. XVI. 452, 781.
Ussher: Brit. Eccl. Antiqu.
J. H. Todd: St. Patrick, Apostle of Ireland. Dublin, 1864.
C. Joh. Greith (R.C.): Geschichte der altirischen Kirche und ihrer Verbindung mit Rom., Gallien und Alemannien, als Einleitung in die Geschichte des Stifts St. Gallen. Freiburg i. B. 1867.
Daniel de Vinné: History Of the Irish Primitive Church, together with the Life of St. Patrick. N. York, 1870
J. Francis Sherman (R.C.): Loca Patriciana: an Identification of Localities, chiefly in Leinster, visited by St. Patrick. Dublin, 1879.
F. E. Warren (Episc.): The Manuscript Irish Missal at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. London, 1879. Ritual of the Celtic Church. Oxf. 1881.
Comp. also the works of Todd, McLauchan, Ebrard, Killen, and Skene, quoted in § 7, and Forbes, Kalendars of Scottish Saints, p. 431.
The church-history of Ireland is peculiar. It began with an independent catholicity (or a sort of semi-Protestantism), and ended with Romanism, while other Western countries passed through the reverse order. Lying outside of the bounds of the Roman empire, and never invaded by Roman legions,44 that virgin island was Christianized without bloodshed and independently of Rome and of the canons of the oecumenical synods. The early Irish church differed from the Continental churches in minor points of polity and worship, and yet excelled them all during the sixth and seventh centuries in spiritual purity and missionary zeal. After the Norman conquest, it became closely allied to Rome. In the sixteenth century the light of the Reformation did not penetrate into the native population; but Queen Elizabeth and the Stuarts set up by force a Protestant state-religion in antagonism to the prevailing faith of the people. Hence, by the law of re-action, the Keltic portion of Ireland became more intensely Roman Catholic being filled with double hatred of England on the ground of difference of race and religion. This glaring anomaly of a Protestant state church in a Roman Catholic country has been removed at last after three centuries of oppression and misrule, by the Irish Church Disestablishment Act in 1869 under the ministry of Gladstone.
The early history of Ireland (Hibernia) is buried in obscurity. The ancient Hibernians were a mixed race, but prevailingly Keltic. They were ruled by petty tyrants, proud, rapacious and warlike, who kept the country in perpetual strife. They were devoted to their religion of Druidism. Their island, even before the introduction of Christianity, was called the Sacred Island. It was also called Scotia or Scotland down to the eleventh century.45 The Romans made no attempt at subjugation, as they did not succeed in establishing their authority in Caledonia.
The first traces of Irish Christianity are found at the end of the fourth or the beginning of the fifth century.
As Pelagius, the father of the famous heresy, which bears his name, was a Briton, so Coelestius, his chief ally and champion, was a Hibernian; but we do not know whether he was a Christian before be left Ireland. Mansuetus, first bishop of Toul, was an Irish Scot (a.d. 350). Pope Caelestine, in 431, ordained and sent Palladius, a Roman deacon, and probably a native Briton, "to the Scots believing in Christ," as their first bishop.46 This notice by Prosper of France implies the previous existence of Christianity in Ireland. But Palladius was so discouraged that he soon abandoned the field, with his assistants for North Britain, where he died among the Picts.47 For nearly two centuries after this date, we have no authentic record of papal intercourse with Ireland; and yet during that period it took its place among the Christian countries. It was converted by two humble individuals, who probably never saw Rome, St. Patrick, once a slave, and St. Bridget, the daughter of a slave-mother.48 The Roman tradition that St. Patrick was sent by Pope Caelestine is too late to have any claim upon our acceptance, and is set aside by the entire silence of St. Patrick himself in his genuine works. It arose from confounding Patrick with Palladius. The Roman mission of Palladius failed; the independent mission of Patrick succeeded. He is the true Apostle of Ireland, and has impressed his memory in indelible characters upon the Irish race at home and abroad.
St. Patrick or Patricius (died March 17, 465 or 493) was the son of a deacon, and grandson of a priest, as he confesses himself without an intimation of the unlawfulness of clerical marriages.49 He was in his youth carried captive into Ireland, with many others, and served his master six years as a shepherd. While tending his flock in the lonesome fields, the teachings of his childhood awakened to new life in his heart without any particular external agency. He escaped to France or Britain, was again enslaved for a short period, and had a remarkable dream, which decided his calling. He saw a man, Victoricius, who handed him innumerable letters from Ireland, begging him to come over and help them. He obeyed the divine monition, and devoted the remainder of his life to the conversion of Ireland (from a.d. 440 to 493).50
"I am," he says, "greatly a debtor to God, who has bestowed his grace so largely upon me, that multitudes were born again to God through me. The Irish, who never had the knowledge of God and worshipped only idols and unclean things, have lately become the people of the Lord, and are called sons of God." He speaks of having baptized many thousands of men. Armagh seems to have been for some time the centre of his missionary operations, and is to this day the seat of the primacy of Ireland, both Roman Catholic and Protestant. He died in peace, and was buried in Downpatrick (or Gabhul), where he began his mission, gained his first converts and spent his declining years.51
His Roman Catholic biographers have surrounded his life with marvelous achievements, while some modern Protestant hypercritics have questioned even his existence, as there is no certain mention of his name before 634; unless it be "the Hymn of St. Sechnall (Secundinus) in praise of St. Patrick, which is assigned to 448. But if we accept his own writings, "there can be no reasonable doubt" (we say with a Presbyterian historian of Ireland) "that he preached the gospel in Hibernia in the fifth century; that he was a most zealous and efficient evangelist, and that he is eminently entitled to the honorable designation of the Apostle of Ireland."52
The Christianity of Patrick was substantially that of Gaul and old Britain, i.e. Catholic, orthodox, monastic, ascetic, but independent of the Pope, and differing from Rome in the age of Gregory I. in minor matters of polity and ritual. In his Confession he never mentions Rome or the Pope; he never appeals to tradition, and seems to recognize the Scriptures (including the Apocrypha) as the only authority in matters of faith. He quotes from the canonical Scriptures twenty-five times; three times from the Apocrypha. It has been conjectured that the failure and withdrawal of Palladius was due to Patrick, who had already monopolized this mission-field; but, according to the more probable chronology, the mission of Patrick began about nine years after that of Palladius. From the end of the seventh century, the two persons were confounded, and a part of the history of Palladius, especially his connection with Pope Caelestine, was transferred to Patrick.53
With St. Patrick there is inseparably connected the most renowned female saint of Ireland, St. Bridget (or Brigid, Brigida, Bride), who prepared his winding sheet and survived him many years. She died Feb. 1, 523 (or 525). She is "the Mary of Ireland," and gave her name to innumerable Irish daughters, churches, and convents. She is not to be confounded with her name-sake, the widow-saint of Sweden. Her life is surrounded even by a still thicker cloud of legendary fiction than that of St. Patrick, so that it is impossible to separate the facts from the accretions of a credulous posterity. She was an illegitimate child of a chieftain or bard, and a slave-mother, received holy orders, became deformed in answer to her own prayer, founded the famous nunnery of Kildare (i.e. the Church of the Oak),54 foretold the birth of Columba, and performed all sorts of signs and wonders.
Upon her tomb in Kildare arose the inextinguishable flame called "the Light of St. Bridget," which her nuns (like the Vestal Virgins of Rome) kept
"Through long ages of darkness and storm" (Moore).
Six lives of her were published by Colgan in his Trias Thaumaturgus, and five by the Bollandists in the Acta Sanctorum.
Critical Note on St. Patrick.
We have only one or two genuine documents from Patrick, both written in semi-barbarous (early Irish) Latin, but breathing an humble, devout and fervent missionary spirit without anything specifically Roman, viz. his autobiographical Confession (in 25 chapters), written shortly before his death (493?), and his Letter of remonstrance to Coroticus (or Ceredig), a British chieftain (nominally Christian), probably of Ceredigion or Cardigan, who had made a raid into Ireland, and sold several of Patrick’s converts into slavery (10 chapters). The Confession, as contained in the "Book of Armagh," is alleged to have been transcribed before a.d. 807 from Patrick’s original autograph, which was then partly illegible. There are four other MSS. of the eleventh century, with sundry additions towards the close, which seem to be independent copies of the same original. See Haddan & Stubbs, note on p. 296. The Epistle to Coroticus is much shorter, and not so generally accepted. Both documents were first printed in 1656, then in 1668 in the Acta Sanctorum, also in Migne’s Patrologia (Vol. 53), in Miss Cusack’s Life of St. Patrick, in the work of Ebrard (l.c. 482 sqq.), and in Haddan & Stubbs, Councils (Vol. II., P. II., 296 sqq.).
There is a difference of opinion about Patrick’s nationality, whether he was of Scotch, or British, or French extraction. He begins his Confession: "I, Patrick, a sinner, the rudest and the least of all the faithful, and the most contemptible with the multitude (Ego Patricius, peccator, rusticissimus et minimus omnium fidelium et contemptibilissimus apud plurimos, or, according to another reading, contemptibilis sum apud plurimos), had for my father Calpornus (or Calphurnius), a deacon (diaconum, or diaconem), the son of Potitus (al. Photius), a presbyter (filium quondam Potiti presbyteri), who lived in the village of Bannavem (or Banaven) of Tabernia; for he had a cottage in the neighborhood where I was captured. I was then about sixteen years old; but I was ignorant of the true God, and was led away into captivity to Hibernia." Bannavem of Tabernia is, perhaps Banavie in Lochaber in Scotland (McLauchlan); others fix the place of his birth in Kilpatrick (i.e. the cell or church of Patrick), near Dunbarton on the Clyde (Ussher, Butler, Maclear); others, somewhere in Britain, and thus explain his epithet "Brito" or "Briton" (Joceline and Skene); still others seek it in Armoric Gaul, in Boulogne (from Bononia), and derive Brito from Brittany (Lanigan, Moore, Killen, De Vinné).
He does not state the instrumentality of his conversion. Being the son of a clergyman, he must have received some Christian instruction; but he neglected it till he was made to feel the power of religion in communion with God while in slavery. "After I arrived in Ireland," he says (ch. 6), "every day I fed cattle, and frequently during the day I prayed; more and more the love and fear of God burned, and my faith and my spirit were strengthened, so that in one day I said as many as a hundred prayers, and nearly as many in the night." He represents his call and commission as coming directly from God through a vision, and alludes to no intervening ecclesiastical authority or episcopal consecration. In one of the oldest Irish MSS., the Book of Durrow, he is styled a presbyter. In the Epistle to Coroticus, he appears more churchly and invested with episcopal power and jurisdiction. It begins: "Patricius, peccator indoctus, Hiberione (or Hyberione) constitutus episcopus, certissime reor, a Deo accepi id quod sum: inter barbaras utique gentes proselytus et profuga, ob amorem Dei." (So according to the text of Haddan & Stubbs, p. 314; somewhat different in Migne, Patrol. LIII. 814; and in Ebrard, p. 505.) But the letter does not state where or by whom he was consecrated.
The "Book of Armagh "contains also an Irish hymn (the oldest monument of the Irish Keltic language), called S. Patricii Canticum Scotticum, which Patrick is said to have written when he was about to convert the chief monarch of the island (Laoghaire or Loegaire).55 The hymn is a prayer for the special aid of Almighty God for so important a work; it contains the principal doctrines of orthodox Christianity, with a dread of magical influences of aged women and blacksmiths, such as still prevails in some parts of Ireland, but without an invocation of Mary and the saints, such as we might expect from the Patrick of tradition and in a composition intended as a breast-plate or corselet against spiritual foes. The following is the principal portion:
"5. I bind to myself to-day,—
The Power of God to guide me,
The Might of God to uphold me,
The Wisdom of God to teach me,
The Eye of God to watch over me,
The Ear of God to hear me,
The Word of God to give me speech.
The Hand of God to protect me,
The Way of God to go before me,
The Shield of God to shelter me,
The Host of God to
defend me,
Against the snares of demons,
Against the temptations of vices,
Against the lusts of nature,
Against every man who meditates injury to me.
Whether far or near,
With few or with many.
6. I have set around me all these powers,
Against every hostile savage power,
Directed against my body and my soul,
Against the incantations of false prophets,
Against the black laws of heathenism,
Against the false laws of heresy,
Against the deceits of idolatry,
Against the spells of women, and smiths, and druids,
Against all knowledge which blinds the soul of man.
7. Christ protect me to-day
Against poison, against burning,
Against drowning, against wound,
That I may receive abundant reward.
8. Christ with me, Christ before me,
Christ behind me, Christ within me,
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ at my right, Christ at my left,
Christ in the fort [i.e. at home],
Christ in the chariot-seat [travelling by land],
Christ in the poop [travelling by water].
9. Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks to me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.
10. I bind to myself to-day
The strong power of an invocation of the Trinity,
The faith of the Trinity in Unity,
The Creator of [the elements].
11. Salvation is of the Lord,
Salvation is of the Lord,
Salvation is of Christ;
May thy salvation, O Lord, be ever with us."
The fourth and last document which has been claimed as authentic and contemporary, is a Latin "Hymn in praise of St. Patrick" (Hymnus Sancti Patricii, Episcopi Scotorum) by St. Sechnall (Secundinus) which begins thus:
"Audite, omnes amantes Deum, sancta merita
Viri in Christo beati Patrici Episcopi:
Quomodo bonum ob actum simulatur angelis,
Perfectamque propter uitam aequatur Apostolis."
The poem is given in full by Haddan & Stubbs, 324–327, and assigned to "before a.d. 448 (?)," in which year Sechnall died. But how could he anticipate the work of Patrick, when his mission, according to the same writers, began only eight years earlier (440), and lasted till 493? The hymn is first mentioned by Tyrechanus in the "Book of Armagh."
The next oldest document is the Irish hymn of St. Fiacc on St. Patrick, which is assigned to the latter part of the sixth century, (l.c. 356–361). The Senchus Mor is attributed to the age of St. Patrick; but it is a code of Irish laws, derived from Pagan times, and gradually modified by Christian ecclesiastics in favor of the church. The Canons attributed to St. Patrick are of later date (Haddan & Stubbs, 328 sqq.).
It is strange that St. Patrick is not mentioned by Bede in his Church History, although he often refers to Hibernia and its church, and is barely named as a presbyter in his Martyrology. He is also ignored by Columba and by the Roman Catholic writers, until his mediaeval biographers from the eighth to the twelfth century Romanized him, appealing not to his genuine Confession, but to spurious documents and vague traditions. He is said to have converted all the Irish chieftains and bards, even Ossian, the blind Homer of Scotland, who sang to him his long epic of Keltic heroes and battles. He founded 365 or, according to others, 700 churches, and consecrated as many bishops, and 3,000 priests (when the whole island had probably not more than two or three hundred thousand inhabitants; for even in the reign of Elizabeth it did not exceed 600,000).56 He changed the laws of the kingdom, healed the blind, raised nine persons from death to life, and expelled all the snakes and frogs from Ireland.57 His memory is celebrated March 17, and is a day of great public processions with the Irish Catholics in all parts of the world. His death is variously put in the year 455 (Tillemont), 464 or 465 (Butler, Killen), 493 (Ussher, Skene, Forbes, Haddan & Stubbs). Forbes (Kalendars, p. 433) and Skene (Keltic Scotland, II. 427 sqq.) come to the conclusion that the legend of St. Patrick in its present shape is not older than the ninth century, and dissolves into three personages: Sen-Patrick, whose day in the Kalendar is the 24th of August; Palladius, "qui est Patricius," to whom the mission in 431 properly belongs, and Patricius, whose day is the 17th of March, and who died in 493. "From the acts of these three saints, the subsequent legend of the great Apostle of Ireland was compiled, and an arbitrary chronology applied to it."
§ 15. The Irish Church after St. Patrick.
The Missionary Period.
The labors of St. Patrick were carried on by his pupils and by many British priests and monks who were driven from England by the Anglo-Saxon invasion in the 5th and 6th centuries.58 There was an intimate intercourse between Ireland and Wales, where British Christianity sought refuge, and between Ireland and Scotland, where the seed of Christianity, had been planted by Ninian and Kentigern. In less than a century, after St. Patrick’s death Ireland was covered with churches and convents for men and women. The monastic institutions were training schools of clergymen and missionaries, and workshops for transscribing sacred books. Prominent among these are the monasteries of Armagh, Banchor or Bangor (558), Clonard (500), Clonmacnois (528), Derry (555), Glendolough (618).
During the sixth and seventh centuries Ireland excelled all other countries in Christian piety, and acquired the name of "the Island of Saints." We must understand this in a comparative sense, and remember that at that time England was just beginning to emerge from Anglo-Saxon heathenism, Germany was nearly all heathen, and the French kings—the eldest sons of the Church—were "monsters of iniquity." Ireland itself was distracted by civil wars between the petty kings and chieftains; and the monks and clergy, even the women, marched to the conflict. Adamnan with difficulty secured a law exempting women from warfare, and it was not till the ninth century that the clergy in Ireland were exempted from "expeditions and hostings" (battles). The slave-trade was in full vigor between Ireland and England in the tenth century, with the port of Bristol for its centre. The Irish piety was largely based on childish superstition. But the missionary zeal of that country is nevertheless most praiseworthy. Ireland dreamed the dream of converting heathen Europe. Its apostles went forth to Scotland, North Britain, France, Germany, Switzerland, and North Italy. "They covered the land and seas of the West. Unwearied navigators, they landed on the most desert islands; they overflowed the Continent with their successive immigrations. They saw in incessant visions a world known and unknown to be conquered for Christ. The poem of the Pilgrimage of St. Brandan, that monkish Odyssey so celebrated in the middle ages, that popular prelude of the Divina Commedia, shows us the Irish monks in close contact with all the dreams and wonders of the Keltic ideal."59
The missionaries left Ireland usually in companies of twelve, with a thirteenth as their leader. This duodecimal economy was to represent Christ and the twelve apostles. The following are the most prominent of these missionary bands:60
St. Columba, with twelve brethren, to Hy in Scotland, a.d. 563.
St. Mohonna (or Macarius, Mauricius), sent by Columba, with twelve companions, to the Picts.
St. Columbanus, with twelve brethren, whose names are on record, to France and Germany, a.d. 612.
St. Kilian, with twelve, to Franconia and Würzburg, a.d. 680.
St. Eloquius, with twelve, to Belgium, a.d. 680.
St. Rudbert or Rupert, with twelve, to Bavaria, a.d. 700.
St. Willibrord (who studied twelve years in Ireland), with twelve, to Friesland, a.d. 692.
St. Forannan, with twelve, to the Belgian frontier, a.d. 970.
It is remarkable that this missionary activity of the Irish Church is confined to the period of her independence of the Church of Rome. We hear no more of it after the Norman conquest.
The Irish Church during this missionary period of the sixth and seventh centuries had a peculiar character, which we learn chiefly from two documents of the eighth century, namely, the Catalogue of the Saints of Ireland,61 and the Litany of Angus the Culdee.62
The Catalogue distinguishes three periods and three orders of saints: secular, monastic, and eremitical.
The saints of the time of St. Patrick were all bishops full of the Holy Ghost, three hundred and fifty in number, founders of churches; they had one head, Christ, and one leader, Patrick, observed one mass and one tonsure from ear to ear, and kept Easter on the fourteenth moon after the vernal equinox; they excluded neither laymen nor women; because, founded on the Rock of Christ, they feared not the blast of temptation. They sprung from the Romans, Franks, Britons and Scots. This order of saints continued for four reigns, from about a.d. 440 till 543.
The second order, likewise of four reigns, till a.d. 599, was of Catholic Presbyters, three hundred in number, with few bishops; they had one head, Christ, one Easter, one tonsure, as before; but different and different rules, and they refused the services of women, separating them from the monasteries.
The third order of saints consisted of one hundred holy presbyters and a few bishops, living in desert places on herbs and water and the alms of the faithful; they had different tonsures and Easters, some celebrating the resurrection on the 14th, some on the 16th moon; they continued through four reigns till 665.
The first period may be called episcopal, though in a rather non-episcopal or undiocesan sense. Angus, in his Litany, invokes "seven times fifty [350] holy cleric bishops," whom "the saint [Patrick] ordained," and "three hundred pure presbyters, upon whom he conferred orders." In Nennius the number of presbyters is increased to three thousand, and in the tripartite Life of Patrick to five thousand. These bishops, even if we greatly reduce the number as we must, had no higher rank than the ancient chorepiscopi or country-bishops in the Eastern Church, of whom there were once in Asia Minor alone upwards of four hundred. Angus the Culdee gives us even one hundred and fifty-three groups of seven bishops, each group serving in the same church. Patrick, regarding himself as the chief bishop of the whole Irish people, planted a church wherever he made a few converts and could obtain a grant from the chief of a clan, and placed a bishop ordained by himself over it. "It was a congregational and tribal episcopacy, united by a federal rather than a territorial tie under regular jurisdiction. During Patrick’s life, he no doubt exercised a superintendence over the whole; but we do not see any trace of the metropolitan jurisdiction of the church of Armagh over the rest."63
The second period was monastic and missionary. All the presbyters and deacons were monks. Monastic life was congenial to the soil, and had its antecedents in the brotherhoods and sisterhoods of the Druids.64 It was imported into Ireland probably from France, either directly through Patrick, or from the monastery of St. Ninian at Galloway, who himself derives it from St. Martin of Tours.65 Prominent among these presbyter-monks are the twelve apostles of Ireland headed by St. Columba, who carried Christianity to Scotland in 563, and the twelve companions of Columbanus, who departed from Ireland to the Continent about 612. The most famous monastery was that of Bennchar, or Bangor, founded a.d. 558 by Comgall in the county of Down, on the south side of Belfast Lough. Comgall had four thousand monks under his care.66 From Bangor proceeded Columbanus and other evangelists.
By a primitive Keltic monastery we must not understand an elaborate stone structure, but a rude village of wooden huts or bothies (botha) on a river, with a church (ecclais), a common eating-hall, a mill, a hospice, the whole surrounded by a wall of earth or stone. The senior monks gave themselves entirely to devotion and the transcribing of the Scriptures. The younger were occupied in the field and in mechanical labor, or the training of the rising generation. These monastic communities formed a federal union, with Christ as their invisible head. They were training schools of the clergy. They attracted converts from the surrounding heathen population, and offered them a refuge from danger and violence. They were resorted to by English noblemen, who, according to Bede, were hospitably received, furnished with books, and instructed. Some Irish clergymen could read the Greek Testament at a time when Pope Gregory J. was ignorant of Greek. There are traces of an original Latin version of the Scriptures differing from the Itala and Vulgate, especially in Patrick’s writings.67 But "there is no trace anywhere of any Keltic version of the Bible or any part of it. St. Chrysostom’s words have been misunderstood to support such a supposition, but without ground."68 If there had been such a translation, it would have been of little use, as the people could not read it, and depended for their scanty knowledge of the word of God on the public lessons in the church.
The "Book of Armagh," compiled by Ferdomnach, a scribe or learned monk of Armagh, in 807, gives us some idea of the literary state of the Irish Church at that time.69 It contains the oldest extant memoirs of St. Patrick, the Confession of St. Patrick, the Preface of Jerome to the New Testament, the Gospels, Epistles, Apocalypse and Acts, with some prefaces chiefly taken from the works of Pelagius, and the Life of St. Martin of Tours by Sulpicius Severus, with a short litany on behalf of the writer.
In the ninth century John Scotus Erigena, who died in France, 874, startled the Church with his rare, but eccentric, genius and pantheistic speculations. He had that power of quick repartee for which Irishmen are distinguished to this day. When asked by Charles the Bald at the dinner-table, what was the difference between a Scot and a Sot (quid distat inter Scottum et Sottum?), John replied: "Nothing at all but the table, please your Majesty."
§ 16. Subjection of Ireland to English and Roman Rule.
The success of the Roman mission of Augustin among the Anglo-Saxons encouraged attempts to bring the Irish Church under the papal jurisdiction and to force upon it the ritual observances of Rome. England owes a good deal of her Christianity to independent Irish and Scotch missionaries from Bangor and Iona; but Ireland (as well as Germany) owes her Romanism, in great measure, to England. Pope Honorius (who was afterwards condemned by the sixth oecumenical council for holding the Monothelite heresy) addressed to the Irish clergy in 629 an exhortation—not, however, in the tone of authoritative dictation, but of superior wisdom and experience—to conform to the Roman mode of keeping Easter. This is the first known papal encyclical addressed to that country. A Synod was held at Magh-Lene, and a deputation sent to the Pope (and the three Eastern patriarchs) to ascertain the foreign usages on Easter. The deputation was treated with distinguished consideration in Rome, and, after three years’ absence, reported in favor of the Roman cycle, which indeed rested on a better system of calculation. It was accordingly adopted in the South of Ireland, under the influence of the learned Irish ecclesiastic Cummian, who devoted a whole year to the study of the controversy. A few years afterwards Thomian, archbishop and abbot of Armagh (from 623 to 661), and the best Irish scholar of his age, introduced, after correspondence with the Pope, the Roman custom in the North, and thereby promoted his authority in opposition to the power of the abbot of Iona, which extended over a portion of Ireland, and strongly favored the old custom. But at last Abbot Adamnan likewise yielded to the Roman practice before his death (704).
The Norman conquest under William I., with the sanction of the Pope, united the Irish Church still more closely to Rome (1066). Gregory VII., in an encyclical letter to the king, clergy and laity of Ireland (1084)., boldly, challenged their obedience to the Vicar of the blessed Peter, and invited them to appeal to him in all matters requiring arbitration.
The archbishops of Canterbury, Lanfranc and Anselm, claimed and exercised a sort of supervision over the three most important sea-ports, Dublin, Waterford, and Limerick, on the ground that the Norman settlers applied to them for bishops and priests. Their influence was exerted in favor of conformity to Rome. Clerical celibacy was more generally introduced, uniformity in ritual established, and the large number of bishoprics reduced to twenty-three under two archbishops, Armagh for the North and Cashel for the South; while the bishop of Dublin was permitted to remain under the care of the archbishop of Canterbury. This reorganization of the polity in the interest of the aggrandizement of the hierarchy was effected about 1112 at the synod of Rathbreasail, which was attended by 58 bishops, 317 priests, a large number of monks, and King Murtogh O’Brien with his nobles.70
At last Ireland was invaded and conquered by England under Henry II., with the effectual aid of Pope Adrian IV.—the only Englishman that sat on the papal throne. In a curious bull of 1155, he justified and encouraged the intended invasion in the interest of the papacy, and sent the king the ring of investiture as Lord of Ireland calling upon that licentious monarch to "extirpate the nurseries of vice" in Ireland, to "enlarge the borders of the (Roman) Church," and to secure to St. Peter from each house "the annual pension of one penny" (equal in value in the twelfth century to at least two or three shillings of our present currency).71 Henry carried out his design in 1171, and with a strong military force easily subdued the whole Irish nation, weakened and distracted by civil wars, to British rule, which has been maintained ever since. A Synod at Armagh regarded the subjugation as a righteous judgment for the sins of the people, and especially for the slave trade. The bishops were the first to acknowledge Henry, hoping to derive benefit from a foreign régime, which freed them from petty tyrants at home. A Synod of Cashel in 1172, among other regulations, ordered that all offices of the church should hereafter in all parts of Ireland be conformed to the observances of the Church of England. A papal legate henceforward was constantly residing in Ireland. Pope Alexander III. was extremely gratified with this extension of his dominion, and in September, 1172, in the same tone of sanctimonious arrogance) issued a brief confirming the bull of Adrian, and expressing a hope that "the barbarous nation" would attain under the government of Henry "to some decency of manners;" he also wrote three epistles—one to Henry II., one to the kings and nobles of Ireland, and one to its hierarchy—enjoining obedience of Ireland to England, and of both to the see of St. Peter.72
§ 17. The Conversion of Scotland. St. Ninian and St. Kentigern.
See the works of Skene (the second vol.), Reeves, McLauchan, Ebrard, Cunningham, mentioned in § 7.
Also Dr. Reeves: The Culdees of the British Islands as they appear in History, 1864.
Dr. Jos. Robertson: Statuta Ecclesiae Scoticanae, 1866, 2 vols.
Bishop Forbes: The Kalendars of Scottish Saints, Edinb., 1872; Lives of S. Ninian and S. Kentigern, compiled in the 12th century, Edinb., 1874.
Haddan & Stubbs: Councils and Ecclesiast. Docum., Vol. II, Part I. (Oxf., 1873), pp. 103 sqq.
Scotland (Scotia) before the tenth century was comprised in the general appellation of Britain (Britannia), as distinct from Ireland (Hibernia). It was known to the Romans as Caledonia,73 to the Kelts as Alban; but the name of Scotia was exclusively appropriated to Ireland till the tenth century. The independent history of Scotland begins with the establishment of the Scottish monarchy in the ninth century. At first it was a purely Keltic kingdom; but in the course of time the Saxon race and feudal institutions spread over the country, and the Keltic tribes retreated to the mountains and western islands. The names of Scot and Scotch passed over to the English-speaking people and their language; while the Keltic language, formerly known as Scotch, became known as Irish.
The Keltic history of Scotland is full of fable, and a battlefield of Romanists and Protestants, Episcopalians and Presbyterians, who have claimed it for their respective systems of doctrine and church-polity. It must be disentangled from the sectarian issues of the Culdean controversy. The historian is neither a polemic nor an apologist, and should aim at nothing but the truth.
Tertullian says, that certain places in Britain which the Romans could not conquer were made subject to Christ. It is quite likely that the first knowledge of Christianity reached the Scots and Picts from England; but the constant wars between them and the Britons and the decline of the Roman power were unfavorable to any mission work.
The mission of Palladius to Scotland by Pope Caelestius is as vague and uncertain as his mission to Ireland by the same Pope, and is strongly mixed up with the mission of Patrick. An Irish colony from the North-Eastern part of Ulster, which had been Christianized by Patrick, settled in Scotland towards the close of the fifth century, and continued to spread along the coasts of Argyle and as far as the islands of Mull and Iona, until its progress was checked by the Northern Picts.
The first distinct fact in the church history of Scotland is the apostolate of St. Ninian at the close of the fourth century, during the reign of Theodosius in the East. We have little reliable information of him. The son of a British king, he devoted himself early to the ministry of Christ. He spent some time in Rome, where the Pope commissioned him to the apostolate among the heathen in Caledonia, and in Gaul with Bishop Martin of Tours, who deserves special praise for his protest against the capital punishment of heretics in the case of the Priscillianists. He began the evangelization of the Southern Picts in the Eastern districts of modern Scotland. He built a white stone church called "Candida Casa," at Whittern (Quhithern, Witerna) in Galloway, on the South-Westem border of Scotland by the sea side, and dedicated it to the memory of St. Martin, who had died in that year (397).74 This was the beginning of "the Great Monastery" ("Magnum Monasterium") or monastery of Rosnat, which exerted a civilizing and humanizing influence on the surrounding country, and annually attracted pilgrims from England and Scotland to the shrine of St. Ninian. His life has been romanized and embellished with legends. He made a newborn infant indicate its true father, and vindicate the innocence of a presbyter who had been charged by the mother with the crime of violation; he caused leeks and herbs to grow in the garden before their season; he subdued with his staff the winds and the waves of the sea; and even his relics cured the sick, cleansed the lepers, and terrified the wicked, "by all which things," says Ailred, his biographer, "the faith of believers is confirmed to the praise and glory of Christ."
St. Kentigern (d. Nov. 13, 603), also called St. Mungo (the gracious one),75 the first bishop of Glasgow, labored in the sixth century for the conversion of the people in Cumberland, Wales, and on the Clyde, and re-converted the Picts, who had apostatized from the faith. He was the grandson of a heathen king in Cumbria or Strathclyde, the son of a Christian, though unbaptized mother. He founded a college of Culdees or secular monks, and several churches. He wore a hair shirt and garment of goat-skin, lived on bread and vegetables, slept on a rocky couch and a stony pillow, like Jacob, rose in the night to sing psalms, recited in the morning the whole psalter in a cold stream, retired to desert places during Lent, living on roots, was con-crucified with Christ on Good Friday, watched before the tomb, and spent Easter in hilarity and joy. He converted more by his silence than his speech, caused a wolf and a stag to drag the plough, raised grain from a field sown with sand, kept the rain from wetting his garments, and performed other marvels which prove the faith or superstition of his biographers in the twelfth century. Jocelyn relates also, that Kentigern went seven times to Rome, and received sundry privileges and copies of the Bible from the Pope. There is, however, no trace of such visits in the works of Gregory I., who was more interested in the Saxon mission than the Scotch. Kentigern first established his episcopal chair in Holdelm (now Hoddam), afterwards in Glasghu (Glasgow). He met St. Columba, and exchanged with him his pastoral stave.76 He attained to the age of one hundred and eighty-five years, and died between a.d. 601 and 612 (probably 603).77 He is buried in the crypt of the cathedral of St. Mungo in Glasgow, the best preserved of mediaeval cathedrals in Scotland.
St. Cuthbert (d. March 20, 687), whose life has been written by Bede, prior of the famous monastery of Mailros (Melrose), afterwards bishop of Lindisfarne, and last a hermit, is another legendary saint of Scotland, and a number of churches are traced to him or bear his name.78
§ 18. St. Columba and the Monastery of Iona.
John Jamieson (D. D.): An Historical Account of the Ancient Culdees of Iona, and of their Settlements in Scotland, England, and Ireland. Edinb., 1811 (p. 417).
Montalembert: La Moines d’ Occident, Vol. III., pp. 99–332 (Paris, 1868).
The Duke of Argyll: Iona. Second ed., London, 1871 (149 p
*Adamnan: Life of St. Columba, Founder of Hy, ed. by William Reeves (Canon of Armagh), Edinburgh, 1874. (Originally printed for the Irish Archaeolog. Society and for the Bannatyne Club, Dublin, 1856).
Skene: Celtic Scotland, II. 52 sqq. (Edinb., 1877). Comp. the Lit. in § 7.
Saint Columba or Columbcille, (died June 9, 597) is the real apostle of Scotland. He is better known to us than Ninian and Kentigern. The account of Adamnan (624–704), the ninth abbot of Hy, was written a century after Columba’s death from authentic records and oral traditions, although it is a panegyric rather than a history. Later biographers have romanized him like St. Patrick. He was descended from one of the reigning families of Ireland and British Dalriada, and was born at, Gartan in the county of Donegal about a.d. 521. He received in baptism the symbolical name Colum, or in Latin Columba (Dove, as the symbol of the Holy Ghost), to which was afterwards added cille (or kill, i.e. "of the church," or "the dove of the cells," on account of his frequent attendance at public worship, or, more probably, for his being the founder of many churches.79 He entered the monastic seminary of Clonard, founded by St. Finnian, and afterwards another monastery near Dublin, and was ordained a priest. He planted the church at Derry in 545, the monastery of Darrow in 553, and other churches. He seems to have fondly clung all his life to his native Ireland, and to the convent of Derry. In one of his elegies, which were probably retouched by the patriotism of some later Irish bard, he sings:
"Were all the tributes of Scotia [i.e. Ireland] mine,
From its midland to its borders,
I would give all for one little cell
In my beautiful Derry.
For its peace and for its purity,
For the white angels that go
In crowds from one end to the other,
I love my beautiful Derry.
For its quietness and purity,
For heaven’s angels that come and go
Under every leaf of the oaks,
I love my beautiful Derry.
My Derry, my fair oak grove,
My dear little cell and dwelling,
O God, in the heavens above I
Let him who profanes it be cursed.
Beloved are Durrow and Derry,
Beloved is Raphoe the pure,
Beloved the fertile Drumhome,
Beloved are Sords and Kells!
But sweeter and fairer to me
The salt sea where the sea-gulls cry
When I come to Derry from far,
It is sweeter and
dearer to me —
Sweeter to me."80
In 563, the forty-second year of his age, Columba prompted by a passion for travelling and a zeal for the spread of Christianity,81 sailed with twelve fellow-apostles to the West of Scotland, possibly on invitation of the provincial king, to whom he was related by blood. He was presented with the island of Hy, commonly called Iona,82 near the Western coast of Scotland about fifty miles West from Oban. It is an inhospitable island, three miles and a half long and a mile and a half broad, partly cultivated, partly covered with hill pasture, retired dells, morass and rocks, now in possession of the Duke of Argyll, numbering about three hundred Protestant inhabitants, an Established Presbyterian Church, and a Free Church. The neighboring island of Staffa, though smaller and uninhabited, is more interesting to the ordinary tourist, and its Fingal’s Cave is one of the most wonderful specimens of the architectural skill of nature; it looks like a Gothic cathedral, 66 feet high, 42 feet broad, and 227 feet long, consisting of majestic basalt columns, an arched roof, and an open portal towards the ocean, which dashes in and out in a constant succession of waves, sounding solemn anthems in this unique temple of nature. Columba and his fellow-monks must have passed it on their missionary wanderings; but they were too much taken up with heaven to look upon the wonders of the earth, and the cave remained comparatively unknown to the world till 1772. Those islands wore the same aspect in the sixth century as now, with the exception of the woods, which have disappeared. Walter Scott (in the "Lord of the Isles") has thrown the charm of his poetry over the Hebridean archipelago, from which proceeded the Christianization of Scotland.83
By the labors of Columba and his successors, Iona has become one of the most venerable and interesting spots in the history of Christian missions. It was a light-house in the darkness of heathenism. We can form no adequate conception of the self-denying zeal of those heroic missionaries of the extreme North, who, in a forbidding climate and exposed to robbers and wild beasts, devoted their lives to the conversion of savages. Columba and his friends left no monuments of stone and wood; nothing is shown but the spot on the South of the island where he landed, and the empty stone coffin where his body was laid together with that of his servant; his bones were removed afterwards to Dunkeld. The old convent was destroyed and the monks were killed by the wild Danes and Norsemen in the tenth century. The remaining ruins of Iona—a cathedral, a chapel, a nunnery, a graveyard with the tombstones of a number of Scottish and Norwegian and Irish kings, and three remarkable carved crosses, which were left of three hundred and sixty that (according to a vague tradition) were thrown into the sea by the iconoclastic zeal of the Reformation—are all of the Roman Catholic period which succeeded the original Keltic Christianity, and which lived on its fame. During the middle ages Iona was a sort of Jerusalem of the North, where pilgrims loved to worship, and kings and noblemen desired to be buried. When the celebrated Dr. Johnson, in his Tour to the Hebrides, approached Iona, he felt his piety grow warmer. No friend of missions can visit that lonely spot, shrouded in almost perpetual fog, without catching new inspiration and hope for the ultimate triumph of the gospel over all obstacles.84
The arrival of Columba at Iona was the beginning of the Keltic church in Scotland. The island was at that time on the confines of the Pictic and Scotic jurisdiction, and formed a convenient base for missionary labors among the Scots, who were already Christian in name, but needed confirmation, and among the Picts, who were still pagan, and had their name from painting their bodies and fighting naked. Columba directed his zeal first to the Picts; he visited King Brude in his fortress, and won his esteem and co-operation in planting Christianity among his people. "He converted them by example as well as by word" (Bede). He founded a large number of churches and monasteries in Ireland and Scotland directly or through his disciples.85 He was involved in the wars so frequent in those days, when even women were required to aid in battle, and he availed himself of military force for the overthrow of paganism. He used excommunication very freely, and once pursued a plunderer with maledictions into the sea until the water reached to his knees. But these rough usages did not interfere with the veneration for his name. He was only a fair type of his countrymen. "He had," says Montalembert, "the vagabond inclination, the ardent, agitated, even quarrelsome character of the race." He had the "perfervidum ingenium Scotorum." He was manly, tall and handsome, incessantly active, and had a sonorous and far-reaching voice, rolling forth the Psalms of David, every syllable distinctly uttered. He could discern the signs of the weather. Adamnan ascribes to him an angelic countenance, a prophetic fore-knowledge and miracles as great as those performed by Christ, such as changing water into wine for the celebration of the eucharist, when no wine could be obtained, changing bitter fruit into sweet, drawing water from a rock, calming the storm at sea, and curing many diseases. His biography instead of giving solid facts, teems with fabulous legends, which are told with childlike credulity. O’Donnell’s biography goes still further. Even the pastoral staff of Columba, left accidentally upon the shore of Iona, was transported across the sea by his prayers to meet its disconsolate owner when he landed somewhere in Ireland.86
Columba died beside the altar in the church while engaged in his midnight devotions. Several poems are ascribed to him—one in praise of the natural beauties of his chosen island, and a monastic rule similar to that of St. Benedict; but the "regula ac praecepta" of Columba, of which Wilfrid spoke at the synod of Whitby, probably mean discipline or observance rather than a written rule.87
The church establishment of Columba at Iona belongs to the second or monastic period of the Irish church, of which it formed an integral part. It consisted of one hundred and fifty persons under the monastic rule. At the head of it stood a presbyter-abbot, who ruled over the whole province, and even the bishops, although the episcopal function of ordination was recognized.88 The monks were a family of brethren living in common. They were divided into three classes: the seniors, who attended to the religious services, instruction, and the transcribing of the Scriptures; the middle-aged, who were the working brethren, devoted to agriculture, the tending of the cattle, and domestic labor; and the youth, who were alumni under instruction. The dress consisted of a white tunica or under garment, and a camilla or outer garment and hood made of wool. Their food was bread, milk, eggs, fish, and on Sundays and festivals mutton or beef. The doctrinal views and ecclesiastical customs as to the observance of Easter and the tonsure were the same as among the Britons and the Irish in distinction from the Roman system introduced by Augustin among the Saxons.89
The monastery of Iona, says Bede, held for a long time the pre-eminence over the monasteries and churches of the Picts and Northern Scots. Columba’s successors, he adds, were distinguished for their continency, their love of God, and strict attention to their rules of discipline, although they followed "uncertain cycles in their computation of the great festival (Easter), because they were so far away from the rest of the world, and had none to supply them with the synodical decrees on the paschal observance; wherefore they only practised such works of piety and chastity as they could learn from the prophetical, evangelical, and apostolical writings. This manner of keeping Easter continued among them for a hundred and fifty years, till the year of our Lord’s incarnation 715."90
Adamnan (d. 704), the ninth successor of Columba, in consequence of a visit to the Saxons, conformed his observance of Easter to the Roman Church; but his brethren refused to follow him in this change. After his death, the co