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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