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Chapter
Four: The Christian Tradition
The coming of Christianity overshadows the political
achievements of the age. In most of lowland Britain, Latin had become the
language of administration and education, especially since Celtic writing was
virtually unknown. Latin was also the language of the Church in Rome. The old Celtic
gods gave way to the new ones such as Mithras, introduced by the Roman
mercenaries; these in turn were replaced when missionaries from Gaul introduced Christianity to the islands.
By 3l4, an organized Christian Church seems to have been
established in most of Britain,
for in that year British bishops were summoned to the Council of Arles. By
the end of the fourth century, a diocesan structure had been set up, many
districts having come under the pastoral care of a bishop. In the meantime,
however, missionaries of the Gospel had been active in the south and east of
the land that later became known as Scotland
(it was not until the late tenth Century that the name Scotia ceased to be
applied to Ireland and
become transferred to southwestern Scotland). The first of these was
Ninian who probably built his first church (Candida Casa: White House) at
Whithorn in Galloway, ministering from there
as a traveling bishop and being buried there after his death in 397 A.D. For
many centuries his tomb remained a place of pilgrimage, including visits from
kings and queens of Scotland.
It was during the time of the Saxon invasions, in that
relatively unscathed western peninsular that later took the name Wales, that the first monasteries were
established (the words Wales
and Welsh were used by the Germanic invaders to refer to Romanized Britons).
They spread rapidly to Ireland
from where missionaries returned to those parts of Britain
that were not under the Roman Bishops' jurisdiction, mainly the Northwest (in
present day Scotland).
The island of Iona is just off the western coast of Argyll. It is been called the "Isle of
Dreams" or "Isle of Druids." Columba (Columcille "Dove of
the Church") with his small band of Irish monks landed here in 563 A.D.
to spread the faith. The missionary saint inaugurated Aidan as king of the
new territory of Dalriata (previously settled by men from Columba's
own Ulster, in northern Ireland).
Iona was quickly to become the ecclesiastical head of the Celtic Church
in the whole of Britain
as well as a major political center. The honor later went to Lindisfarne, for
after the monastic settlement at Iona gave sanctuary to the exiled Oswald
early in the seventh century, the king invited the monks to come to his
restored kingdom
of Northumbria. It was
thus that Aidan, with his twelve disciples, came to Lindisfarne, destined with
Iona to become one of the great cultural
centers of the early Christian world.
In this period, the 5th and 6th Centuries, many Celtic
saints were adopted by the rapidly-expanding Church. At the Synod of Whitby
in 664, however, the Celtic
Church, by majority
opinion of the British bishops accepted the rule of St. Peter, introduced by
Augustine, rather than of St. Columba. It was thus forced to abandon its own
ideas about the consecration of its Bishops, tonsure of its monks, dates for
the celebration of Easter and other differences with Rome. Whitby
settled matters once and for all as far as the future direction of the Church
in England
was concerned. From this date on, we can no longer speak of a Celtic Church
as distinct from that of Rome.
St Augustine had been sent in 597 to convert
the pagan English, by Pope Gregory, anxious to spread the Gospel, but also to
enhance papal prestige by reclaiming former territories of Rome. Augustine received a favorable
reception in the kingdom
of Ethelbert, who had married
Bertha, daughter of the Merovingian King and a practicing Christian.
Augustine's success in effecting a large number of converts led to his
consecration as bishop by the end of the year.
Pope Gregory had a detailed plan for the administration
of the Church in England.
There were to be two archbishops: London
and York (each to have l2 bishops). As the city of London
was not under the control of Ethelbert, however, a new see was chosen at Canterbury, in Kent. It was there that
Augustine, now promoted to archbishop, laid down the beginnings of the
ecclesiastical organization of the Church in Britain. It was Gregory's guiding
hand, however, that influenced all Augustine's decisions; both Pope and
Bishop seemed to know little of the Celtic Church,
and made no accommodations with it.
The establishment of the Church at York was not possible
until 625; the immense task of converting and then organizing the converted
was mostly beyond the limited powers of Augustine, apparently well-trained in
monastic rule, but little trained in law and administration. Edwin of
Northumbria's wife chose Paulinus as Bishop, and the see of York was established. Later attacks from
the Pagan king Penda of Mercia, however, meant that only a limited kind of
Christian worship took place in the North until around the middle of the 8th
Century.
In 668, when a vacancy arose at Canterbury, the monk Theodore of Tarsus was
appointed as archbishop. His background as a Greek scholar meant that he had
to take new vows and be ordained in custom with the Church in the West. He
then worked diligently to set up the basis of diocesan organization
throughout England, ably
assisted by another Greek scholar Hadrian (who was familiar with the Western Church)
and carrying out decisions made at Whitby.
When Theodore arrived at Canterbury, there was
one bishop south of the River Humber and two in the North: Cedda, a Celtic
bishop: and Wilfred of Ripon, who had argued so successfully for the adoption
of the Roman Church at Whitby.
Theodore consecrated new bishops at Dulwich, Winchester,
and Rochester; and set up the sees of Worcester, Hereford, Oxford and Leicester.
At first, Wilfred of Ripon reigned supreme in Northumbria as the exponent of
ecclesiastical authority, but when he quarreled with King Ecgfrith, he was
sent into exile. Theodore seized his opportunity to break up the North into
smaller and more controllable dioceses. Over the next twenty years bishoprics
were established at York, Hexham, Ripon, and Lindsey. Theodore also
re-established the system of ecclesiastical synods that disregarded any
political boundaries.
One of Theodore's great accomplishments was to create the machinery through
which the wealth of the Celtic Church was transferred to the Anglo-Saxon Church.
This wealth was particularly responsible for the late 7th Century flowering
of culture in Northumbria,
which benefited from both Celtic and Roman influences.
In that northern outpost of the Catholic Church, a
tradition of scholarship began that was to have a profound influence on the
literature of Western Europe. It constituted
a remarkable outbreak with equally remarkable consequences. At this time, the
English Church had an enormous influence on
the Continent, where rulers such as Charles Martel and Pepin lll were
pursuing aggressive policies against the Germanic tribes. Missionaries from
the highly advanced English
Church were extensively
recruited. Wilfred of Ripon found a new calling after his expulsion from Northumbria, and he and others such as
Willibrod carried out their conversions with approval from Rome. The greatest of the missionaries was
Boniface, who established many German sees from his new archbishopric at Mainz. From York came Alcuin, one
of the period's greatest scholars. All in all, we can say that the Anglo-Saxon Church provided an important impetus
for the civilizing of much of the Continent. In particular, it provided the
agent for the fusing of Celtic and Roman ideas, and its work in Europe produced events that had repercussions of
profound importance.
The scholastic tradition went hand in hand with the religious conversion of
the English. It began with a Northumbrian nobleman, Benedict Biscop, who
founded two monasteries Wearmouth (674) and Jarrow (68l) that were to play
important parts in this culturalexplosion. Biscop made six journeys to Rome, acquiring many valuable manuscripts and beginning
what can be termed a golden age in Northumbria. Its greatest scholar
was Bede. A theologian as well as an historian, Bede (672-735) spent his life
in his monastery at Jarrow. His intense hostility made him a partisan witness
when he wrote of the British people, for many of them had retained a form of
Roman Christianity which was anathema to him. He called members of the Celtic Church "barbarians," and
"a rustic, perfidious race," and is thus regarded by many modern
historians (but especially Welsh writers) as a "fancy monger." At
the same time, however, we are indebted to the historian for his account of
the events that were rapidly changing the political face of Anglo-Saxon
England
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Originally published at http://www.picturesofengland.com/history/#
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