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Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain
Rome And Iona
by Allen, Grant (B.A.)
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It was not the Roman mission which finally succeeded in converting the
North and the Midlands. That success was due to the Scottish and Pictish
Church. At the end of the sixth century, Columba, an Irish missionary,
crossed over to the solitary rock of Iona, where he established an abbey
on the Irish model, and quickly evangelised the northern Picts. From
Iona, some generations later, went forth the devoted missionaries who
finally converted the northern half of England.
The native churches of the west, cut off from direct intercourse with
the main body of Latin Christendom, had retained certain habits which
were now regarded by Rome as schismatical. Chief among these were the
date of celebrating Easter, and the uncanonical method of cutting the
tonsure in a crescent instead of a circle. Augustine, shortly after his
arrival, endeavoured to obtain unity between the two churches on these
matters of discipline, to which great importance was attached as tests
of submission to the Latin rule. He obtained from Æthelberht a
safe-conduct through the heathen West-Saxon territories as far as what
is now Worcestershire; and there, "on the borders of the Huiccii and
the West-Saxons," says Bæda, "he convened to a colloquy the bishops and
doctors of the nearest province of the Britons, in the place which, to
the present day, is called in the English language, Augustine's Oak."
Such open-air meetings by sacred trees or stones were universal in
England both before and after its conversion. "He began to admonish them
with a brotherly admonition to embrace with him the Catholic faith, and
to undertake the common task of evangelising the pagans. For they did
not observe Easter at the proper period: moreover, they did many other
things contrary to the unity of the Church." But the Welsh were jealous
of the intruders, and refused to abandon their old customs. Thereupon,
Augustine declared that if they would not help him against the heathen,
they would perish by the heathen. A few years later, after Augustine's
death, this prediction was verified by Æthelfrith of Northumbria, whose
massacre of the monks of Bangor has already been noticed.
It was in return for the destruction of Chester and the slaughter of the
monks that Cadwalla joined the heathen Penda against his fellow
Christian Eadwine. But the death of Eadwine left the throne open for the
house of Æthelfrith, whose place Eadwine had taken. After a year of
renewed heathendom, however, during part of which the Welsh Cadwalla
reigned over Northumbria, Oswald, son of Æthelfrith, again united Deira
and Bernicia under his own rule. Oswald was a Christian, but he had
learnt his Christianity from the Scots, amongst whom he had spent his
exile, and he favoured the introduction of Pictish and Scottish
missionaries into Northumbria. The Italian monks who had accompanied
Augustine were men of foreign speech and manners, representatives of an
alien civilisation, and they attempted to convert whole kingdoms en
bloc by the previous conversion of their rulers. Their method was
political and systematic. But the Pictish and Irish preachers were men
of more Britannic feelings, and they went to work with true missionary
earnestness to convert the half Celtic people of Northumbria, man by
man, in their own homes. Aidan, the apostle of the north, carried the
Pictish faith into the Lothians and Northumberland. He placed his
bishop-stool not far from the royal town of Bamborough, at Lindisfarne,
the Holy Island of the Northumbrian coast. Other Celtic missionaries
penetrated further south, even into the heathen realm of Penda and his
tributary princes. Ceadda or Chad, the patron saint of Lichfield,
carried Christianity to the Mercians. Diuma preached to the Middle
English of Leicester with much success, Peada, their ealdorman, son of
Penda, having himself already embraced the new faith. Penda had slain
Oswald in a great battle at Maserfeld in 641; but the martyr only
brought increased glory to the Christians: and Oswiu, who succeeded him,
after an interval of anarchy, as king of Deira (for Bernicia now chose a
king of its own), was also a zealous adherent of the Celtic
missionaries. Thus the heterodox Church made rapid strides throughout
the whole of the north.
Meanwhile, in the south the Latin missionaries, urged to activity,
perhaps, by the Pictish successes, had been making fresh progress. In
the very year when Oswald was chosen king by the Northumbrians, Birinus,
a priest from northern Italy, went by command of the pope to the West
Saxons: and after twelve months he was able to baptise their king,
Cynegils, at his capital of Dorchester, on the Thames, his sponsor being
Oswald of Northumbria. A year later, Felix, a Burgundian, "preached the
faith of Christ to the East Anglians," who had indeed been converted by
the Augustinian missionaries, but afterwards relapsed. Only Sussex and
Mercia still remained heathen. But, in 655, Penda made a last attempt
against Northumbria, which he had harried year after year, and was met
by Oswiu at Winwidfield, near Leeds; the Christians were successful, and
Penda was slain, together with thirty royal persons—petty princes of
the tributary Mercian states, no doubt. His son, Peada, the Christian
ealdorman of the Middle English, succeeded him, and the Mercians became
Christians of the Pictish or Irish type. "Their first bishop," says
Bæda, "was Diuma, who died and was buried among the Middle English. The
second was Cellach, who abandoned his bishopric, and returned during his
lifetime to Scotland (perhaps Ireland, but more probably the Scottish
kingdom in Argyllshire). Both of these were by birth Irishmen. The third
was Trumhere, by race an Englishman, but educated and ordained by the
Irish." Thus Roman Christianity spread over the whole of England south
of the Wash (save only heathen Sussex): while the Irish Church had made
its way over all the north, from the Wash to the Firth of Forth. The
Roman influence may be partly traced by the Roman alphabet superseding
the old English runes. Runic inscriptions are rare in the south, where
they were regarded as heathenish relics, and so destroyed: but they are
comparatively common in the north. Runics appear on the coins of the
first Christian kings of Mercia, Peada and Æthelred, but soon die out
under their successors.
Heathendom was now fairly vanquished. It survived only in Sussex, cut
off from the rest of England by the forest belt of the Weald. The next
trial of strength must clearly lie between Rome and Iona.
The northern bishops and abbots traced their succession, not to
Augustine, but to Columba. Cuthberht, the English apostle of the north,
who really converted the people of Northumbria, as earlier
missionaries had converted its kings, derived his orders from Iona.
Rome or Ireland, was now the practical question of the English Church.
As might be expected, Rome conquered. To allay the discord, King Oswiu
summoned a synod at Streoneshalch (now known by its later Danish name of
Whitby) in 664, to settle the vexed question as to the date of Easter.
The Irish priests claimed the authority of St. John for their crescent
tonsure; the Romans, headed by Wilfrith, a most vigorous priest,
appealed to the authority of St. Peter for the canonical circle. "I will
never offend the saint who holds the keys of heaven," said Oswiu, with
the frank, half-heathendom of a recent convert; and the meeting shortly
decided as the king would have it. The Irish party acquiesced or else
returned to Scotland; and thenceforth the new English Church remained in
close communion with Rome and the Continent. Whatever may be our
ecclesiastical judgment of this decision, there can be little doubt that
its material effects were most excellent. By bringing England into
connection with Rome, it brought her into connection with the centre of
all then-existing civilisation, and endowed her with arts and
manufactures which she could never otherwise have attained. The
connection with Ireland and the north would have been as fatal, from a
purely secular point of view, to early English culture as was the later
connection with half-barbaric Scandinavia. Rome gave England the Roman
letters, arts, and organisation: Ireland could only have given her a
more insular form of Celtic civilisation.
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