Chapter X: The Church in the Western Isles

[Sidenote: Christianity in Britain.]

When Gregory the Great sent Augustine and his brother monks to preach to the Teutonic tribes which had made Britain their home, there were already two Churches in the island. There was the Church of the Brythons, gradually separated by the advance of the Saxons into the Churches of Cumbria or Strathclyde, Wales, and West Wales or Cornwall. These stood apart from the English for a long time, were late in accepting the Catholic customs of the West, and had no influence on the progress of English Christianity. And there was the Church founded in North Britain by Celtic missionaries from Ireland. In Ireland there seems little doubt that Christianity was known by the end of the fourth century. In the fifth century the progress was extraordinarily rapid. S. Patrick "organised the Christianity which already existed; he converted kingdoms which were still pagan, especially in the west; and he brought Ireland into connection with the Church of the Empire, and made it formally part of Universal Christendom." [1]

The subsequent history of the Church in Ireland forms a fit introduction to that of the Church in {114} England, in spite of the separation between them. Irish Christianity did not long preserve its close union with Western Europe. The popes, as well as the emperors, were too weak to interfere in the distant islands. The Irish relapsed into the use of what is called the Celtic Easter, and to other practices which were usual before Patrick's day and which served to cut them off from the newly-converted Teutons, as well as from the Latin world in general. [Sidenote: Death of S. Patrick, 461.] Patrick died in 461. In 563 Columba, trained in the great schools which had sprung up in the Irish monasteries, crossed to what is now called Scotland to confirm the faith of the Irish settlers and to convert the heathen Picts. The organisation of the Church to which he belonged was essentially tribal and monastic. [Sidenote: The Celtic Church.] Though S. Patrick had probably consecrated diocesan bishops in large numbers, the Church soon became "predominantly monastic." Tribal feeling was so strong that the Church, too, assimilated itself to the tribal idea, and the Church's monasteries were her tribes. In a land where there were no cities monasteries took their place, and the bishops naturally came to dwell in them, and so to seem less prominent in their episcopal than in their monastic aspect. The monks became the chief power in Christian Ireland; and in the sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries there were many bishops without dioceses, and it seems probable that their rank, though not their function, was less important than that of the abbats, the heads of the tribal monasticism.

In the seventh century again the Irish Church came back into closer association with the Church throughout {115} Europe. This union was due very largely to the influence of learning, and still more to the influence of missionary zeal. "From Iceland to the Danube or the Apennines, among Frank or Burgundian or Lombard, the Irish energy seemed omnipotent and inexhaustible." [2] Into Ireland it would seem that classical culture was introduced by the first Christian teachers, and that from the first it was intended to serve as a preparation for religious teaching.[3] It would seem that it was from Brittany that it spread to Ireland. [Sidenote: The influences outside Ireland] The schools of Ireland became famous. Books as diverse as the Antiphonary of Bangor and Adamnan's Life of Columba show that the teaching in its different ways was a sound and a liberal one.

In England the Irish tradition and influence spread. If the Celtic school of Bangor perished in the stress of the bitter wars between English and Welsh, Malmesbury, which trained S. Aldhelm, showed that the Irish love of letters was capable of transplantation into a land now most prominently Teutonic. But the Roman influence and the influence of the East were still more effective. [Sidenote: in learning,] Benedict Biscop brought back with him to Northumbria the traditions and rules of Italian art and learning, and Theodore of Tarsus brought a wider influence, which was Greek as well as Latin. He himself founded a school at Canterbury, and taught it; and in distant times Dunstan, at Glastonbury and at Canterbury, was his worthy successor. In the north Bede was at {116} Jarrow a writer of great power and wide scope, and the school of York was a nursery of classic studies which produced the great scholar Alcuin. Thus the community of scholarship brings the Churches together.

[Sidenote: in missionary work.]

More prominent was the zeal for the conversion of the heathen. The work of Columban and of S. Gall had its origin in the Irish schools, and there was no more fruitful influence on the Europe of the Dark Age. The work of Columba and his followers was to begin in the north of Britain what Roman missionaries undertook in the south. For more than thirty years Columba, who landed in Iona in 563, taught the Picts and Scots. His Life by his disciple Adamnan is one of the most beautiful memorials of medieval saintliness that we possess. The monastery which he founded lasted till the eighth century. His school did a famous work in North Britain in the seventh; King Oswald of Northumbria was trained there, and S. Aidan, his fellow-helper, the typical saint of Northumbria. From the same source came Melrose, the great Scottish monastery, and S. Chad, the apostle of the Middle English.

[Sidenote: Scotland.]

A century of intermittent strife swept over the northern lands. Scotland became Christian slowly and with little connection with the south. Heathen onslaughts ravaged the Christian lands, and yet, in spite of all, monasteries for men and women sprang up in the north. The influence of S. Aidan (died 651) was continued by S. Cuthbert and S. Hilda, typical parents of monks and nuns. In 664 (Synod of Whitby) at last came union with the Church of the English, who appealed to the authority of Rome and {117} of S. Peter in favour of their customs, and the Northumbrian king, Oswin, ratified the union of the Celtic and the English Churches. Early in the eighth century other Celtic Churches came into the agreement; only Cornwall held out for two centuries more.

[Sidenote: The mission of St. Augustine, 597.]

The English Church, which thus came to represent the Christianity of the whole island, was founded from Rome by S. Augustine in Kent in 597. It was from the first an active missionary body. It gradually won its way over the whole island, conquering and assimilating the alien influences which were at first opposed to it. So when a storm of heathen persecution swept over England and Scotland at the end of the eighth century, when "the ravaging of heathen men lamentably destroyed God's church at Lindisfarne," when the monks of Iona were given to martyrdom, when English prelates and kings gave their lives to hold the land for Christ, the Church still endured, with material loss but with, for the time at least, enhanced glory and virtue. Three names stand out conspicuously from the seventh and ninth centuries. [Sidenote: Theodore of Tarsus, 668.] Theodore of Tarsus, Archbishop of Canterbury from 668 to 693, was the great organiser of the English Church. A scholar, a teacher, a statesman, he knit the different tribes of English, Saxon, Jute, together in the unity of faith and discipline. Church councils sprang up under him to rule, and Church laws to guide men in the way. He kept up a close connection with the Western Church, but he did not surrender independence to a papal supremacy. Wilfrith of Ripon, his contemporary, was great also as a teacher and as a missionary beyond the seas, {118} and among the Saxons of South Britain. The seventh century was the age in which the foundations of the English Church were laid on firm bases.

[Sidenote: Bede.]

Hardly less important, though in a different way, was the work of the monk Baeda, the father of English history. He was a man who knew the history and the theology of the Western Church, and who taught by his writings and his life. His influence on the development of the Church in the north, both by his great history, his religious treatises, and his influence on Egbert, Archbishop of York, is incalculable.

[Sidenote: Alfred.]

The age of Alfred, who died in 899, was equally important. It witnessed a more distinct union with the Church of Wales, whose glories go back to the time of S. David in the fifth century. It confirmed a strong union between Church and State in England, and it witnessed a revival of Christian learning in which Alfred himself and a Welshman, Asser, whom he made bishop of an English see, were the leaders. Alfred was a bright example of what Christianity could do for mankind. Warrior, scholar, saint, pattern king whose heart was given to his people, he bore himself nobly before the world as one who loved and worshipped the Master Christ. Under his sway the Church rose again to instruct and guide the people, and when he died he left the English land a united Christian nation. The Danes, who after years of predatory invasion were become settlers over a large part of England, were brought into the Church; and the British Church in Cornwall was brought nearer to unity with the English, a union which was complete from 931.

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[Sidenote: Conversion of the north.]

While in the extreme north, Ross, Cromarty, Sutherland, and Caithness, the Church remained missionary rather than parochial, in the Scotland of the south monasticism became prominent again under a new order called, in Goidelic, "Culdees" (servants of God). In the midlands years of disturbance caused much of the organisation of the Church to disappear, bishoprics to cease, monasteries to be destroyed. After the Danish wars the work of reconstruction was an urgent need, and a great prelate came to lead it.

[Sidenote: Dunstan, 924-88.]

Dunstan (924-88) was a West Saxon who was taught at Glastonbury by Irish priests, and who rose, through his friendship with leaders in Church and State, by the holiness of his life, and by the experience that he won when in exile in Flanders, to be head of the English Church. As archbishop he was "a true shepherd." He gave up all the preferments he had before enjoyed, only visiting Glastonbury occasionally for a time of repose. His friends, Aethelwold, Bishop of Winchester, and Oswald, Bishop of Worcester, with King Eadgar's help, did their utmost to introduce the strict rule of S. Benedict into the monasteries, replacing the clergy of the cathedral churches (secular canons) by monks. Dunstan sympathised, but he did not actively support their action. Abroad there was strong feeling against clerical marriage, and there were many canons passed against it. The danger of the Church falling into the hands of an hereditary class of officials was a real one; but it does not seem to have been much felt in England. Dunstan paid far more heed to the clergy's books than their wives.

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[Sidenote: His work as archbishop and reformer.]

He made rules, and encouraged schools for the training of priests. He ordered priests to learn handicrafts that they might teach them to others. He ordered that a sermon should be preached in each church every Sunday. His zeal for moral reform was seen in many canons passed against the abuses of the age, and he did not hesitate to enforce them against the highest in the land. When the pope ordered him to absolve a great lord whom he had excommunicated for an unlawful marriage, he refused to obey.

Early in the tenth century an illustration of the position occupied by the English Church in relation to Rome, and of the learning of its clergy and their style of preaching, is afforded by the writings of Aelfric, who described himself in his early years as "a monk and a mass-priest," and was later on abbat of Eynsham. Of his work, besides educational treatises, eighty sermons, chiefly translated from the Latin, remain. In them he shows clearly that the claims of the papacy with regard to S. Peter were not accepted by all in England, and he taught the spiritual, not corporal, presence of the Lord's Body in the Holy Communion. The English Church differed also from Rome in the fact that many of the clergy were married, and though this was not regarded as lawful, they were not separated from their wives. But in all essential matters the English Church remained in union with the foreign Churches and retained her ancient reputation for unbroken orthodoxy. This reputation was increased by the fame of S. Dunstan, whose sojourn abroad had served to link English churchmen again to their brothers over sea.

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The last years of the great archbishop were given to prayer and study, and to the arts of music and handicraft which he had practised in his youth. He set himself to train the young, to succour the needy, and to make peace among all men. He died on May 19th, 988, and with him the new energy he had infused into the Church seemed to pass away. [Sidenote: The Danish invasions.] New Danish invasions turned men's thoughts other ways, but still monasteries made progress. The Benedictine rule was accepted over Southern England, and in the north the see of Durham rose replacing the older northern see, when it became the resting-place of the bones of the great missionary, S. Cuthbert. The Danish invasions were not so barbarous now as in earlier days. Some of the Danes were Christians, and it was at Andover that Olaf Trigvason, King of Norway, was confirmed by Bishop Aelfeah, calling King Aethelred father. He went back to Norway a Christian devoted to the conversion of his people.[4]

The English Church at the beginning of the eleventh century was in full communion with the Western Church, but was practically to a large extent apart from papal influence. Church and State walked hand in hand, and the relations between sovereign and archbishop resembled those of the New rather than the Old Rome. The missionary energy which had in former years sent forth Wilfrith and Winfrith was now for the time exhausted. England needed a new religious revival. It came later, at the time of a political conquest.

Meanwhile the Irish Church was regaining its learning and its missionary zeal: both were expressed in {122} the _consuetudo peregrinandi_ with which the Irish monks were credited in the ninth century. But from the time of the Danish invasions the Irish Church, and the Welsh also, suffered severely. Heathen settlements in Ireland were only gradually converted, as that of Dublin in 943. The disturbed state of their home encouraged Irish monks to cross the seas. Action and reaction led Ireland more close than ever to the Roman papacy.

[1] Bury, _Life of S. Patrick_, pp. 212-13.

[2] R. L. Poole, _Illustrations of the History of Medieval Thought_, p. 10.

[3] Cf. Roger, _L'Enseignement des lettres classiques_, p. 236.

[4] See ch. xi.

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