Part 65 (1/2)
While the doctrinal system of the Church was being wrought out in the disputes and councils of Rome and the East, the foundations of the Germanic national churches were being laid in the West. In the British Isles the faith was extended from Britain to Ireland and thence to Scotland ( 96). Among the inmates of the monasteries of these countries were many monks who were moved to undertake missionary journeys to various parts of Western Europe, and among them St. Columba.n.u.s. But even more important for the future of Western Christendom was the conversion of the Franks from paganism to Catholic Christianity. At a time when the other Germanic rulers were still Arian, Clovis and the Franks became Catholics and, as a consequence, the champions of the Catholic faith. The Franks rapidly became the dominant power in the West, and soon other Germanic races either were conquered or followed the example of the Franks and became Catholics ( 97). The State churches that thus arose were more under the control of the local royal authority than the Catholic Church had previously been, and the rulers were little disposed to favor outside control of the ecclesiastical affairs of their kingdoms ( 98). Toward the end of the sixth century the greatest pontiff of the ancient Church, Gregory the Great, more than recovered the prestige and influence which had been lost under Vigilius. By his able administration he did much to unite the West, to heal the schism resulting from the Fifth Council, and to overcome the heresies which divided the Arians and the Catholics. At the same time he advanced the authority of the see of Rome in the East as well as in the West ( 99). Of the many statesman-like undertakings of Gregory none had more far-reaching consequences than the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons and the establishment in England of a church which would be in close and loyal dependence upon the Roman see, and in consequence of that close connection would be the heir of the best traditions of culture in the West ( 100).
96. The Celtic Church in the British Isles
Christianity was probably planted in the British Isles during the second century; as to its growth in the ante-Nicene period little is definitely known. Representatives of the British Church were at Arles in 314. The Church was in close connection with the Church on the Continent during the fourth century and in the fifth during the Pelagian controversy. The Christianity thus established was completely overthrown or driven into Wales by the invasion of the pagan Angles, Jutes, and Saxons _circa_ 449-500. (For the conversion of the newcomers, _v. infra_, 100.) Early in the fifth century the conversion of Ireland took place by missionaries from Britain. In this conversion St. Patrick traditionally plays an important part.
Additional source material: Bede, _Hist. Ec._, Eng. trans. by Giles, London, 1894; by A. M. Sellar, London, 1907 (for Latin text, _v. infra_, _a_); Ad.a.m.nani, _Vita S. Columb_, ed. J. T.
Fowler, 1894 (with valuable introduction and translation); St.
Patrick, _Genuine Writings_, ed. G. T. Stokes and C. H. H. Wright, Dublin, 1887; J. D. Newport White, _The Writings of St. Patrick_, 1904. For bibliography of sources, see Gross, _The Sources and Literature of English History_, 1900, pp. 221 _f._
(_a_) Bede, _Hist. Ec. Gentis Anglorum_, I, 13. (MSL, 95:40.)
The Venerable Bede (672 or 673-735), monk at Jarrow, the most learned theologian of the Anglo-Saxon Church, was also the first historian of England. For the earliest period he used what written sources were available. His work becomes of independent value with the account of the coming of Augustine of Canterbury, 597 (I, 23).
The history extends to A. D. 731. The best critical edition is that of C. Plummer, 1896, which has a valuable introduction, copious historical and critical notes, and careful discrimination of the sources. Wm. Brights _Chapters on Early English Church History_ is an elaborate commentary on Bedes work as far as 709, the death of Wilfrid. Translation of Bedes History by J. A.
Giles, may be found in Bohns _Antiquarian Library_, and better by A. M. Sellar, 1907.
In the following pa.s.sage we have the only reference made by Bede to the conversion of Ireland, and his failure to mention Patrick has given rise to much controversy, see J. B. Bury, _The Life of St. Patrick __ and his Place in History_, 1905. This pa.s.sage, referring to Palladius, is a quotation from the _Chronica_ of Prosper of Aquitaine (403-463) ann. 431 (MSL, 51, critical edition in MGH, _Auct. antiquiss_, 9:1); from Gildas, _De excidio Britanni liber querulus_ (MSL, 69:327, critical edition in MGH, _Auct. antiquiss_, 13. A translation by J. A. Giles in _Six Old English Chronicles_, in Bohns _Antiquarian Library_), is the reference to the letter written to the Romans; from the Chronica of Marcellinus Comes (MSL, 51:913; critical edition in MGH, _Auct.
antiquiss_, 11) is the reference to Blda and Attila.
In the year of the Lords incarnation, 423, Theodosius the younger received the empire after Honorius and, being the forty-fifth from Augustus, retained it twenty-six years. In the eighth year of his reign, Palladius was sent by Celestinus, the pontiff of the Roman Church, to the Scots(212) that believed in Christ to be their first bishop. In the twenty-third year of his reign (446), Atius, the ill.u.s.trious, who was also patrician, discharged his third consulate with Symmachus as his colleague. To him the wretched remnants of the Britons sent a letter beginning: To Atius, thrice consul, the groans of the Britons. And in the course of the letter they thus express their calamities: The barbarians drive us to the sea; the sea drives us back to the barbarians; between them there have arisen two sorts of death; we are either slain or drowned. Yet neither could all this procure any a.s.sistance from him, as he was then engaged in a most dangerous war with Blda and Attila, kings of the Huns. And though the year next before this, Blda had been murdered by the treachery of his brother Attila, yet Attila himself remained so intolerable an enemy to the republic that he ravaged almost all Europe, invading and destroying cities and castles.
(_b_) Patrick, _Confessio_, chs. 1, 10. (MSL, 53:801.)
The call of St. Patrick to be a missionary.
There is much dispute and uncertainty about the life and work of St. Patrick. Of the works of Patrick, two appear to be genuine, his _Confessio_ and his _Epistola ad Corotic.u.m_. The other works attributed to him are very probably spurious. The genuine works may be found in Haddan and Stubbs, _Councils and Ecclesiastical Doc.u.ments relating to Great Britain and Ireland_, vol. II, pt. ii, 296 _ff._
I, Patrick, a sinner, the most ignorant and least of all the faithful, and the most contemptible among many, had for my father Calp.o.r.nius the deacon, son of the presbyter Pot.i.tus, the son of Odissus, who was of the village of Bannavis Tabernia; he had near by a little estate where I was taken captive. I was then nearly sixteen years old. But I was ignorant of the true G.o.d(213) and I was taken into captivity unto Ireland, with so many thousand men, according to our deserts, because we had forsaken G.o.d and not kept His commandments and had not been obedient to our priests who warned us of our salvation. And the Lord brought upon us the fury of His wrath and scattered us among many nations, even to the end of the earth, where now my meanness appears to be among strangers. And there the Lord opened the senses of my unbelief, that I might remember my sin, and that I might be converted with my whole heart to my Lord G.o.d, who looked upon my humbleness and had mercy upon my youth and ignorance, and guarded me before I knew Him, and before I knew and distinguished between good and evil, and protected me and comforted me as a father a son.
And again after a few years(214) I was with my relatives in Britain, who received me as a son, and earnestly besought me that I should never leave them after having endured so many great tribulations. And there I saw in a vision by night a man coming to me as from Ireland, and his name was Victorinus, and he had innumerable epistles; and he gave me one of them and I read the beginning of the epistle as follows: The voice of the Irish. And while I was reading the epistle, I think that it was at the very moment, I heard the voice of those who were near the wood of Fochlad,(215) which is near the Western Sea. And thus they cried out with one voice: We beseech thee, holy youth, to come here and dwell among us.
And I was greatly smitten in heart, and could read no further and so I awoke. Thanks be to G.o.d, because after many years the Lord granted them according to their cry.
(_c_) Bede, _Hist. Ec._, III, 4. (MSL, 95:121.)
St. Ninian and St. Columba in Scotland.
In the year of our Lord 565, when Justin the younger, the successor of Justinian, took the government of the Roman Empire, there came into Britain a priest and abbot, distinguished in habit and monastic life, Columba by name, to preach the word of G.o.d to the provinces of the northern Picts, that is, to those who are separated from the southern parts by steep and rugged mountains. For the southern Picts, who had their homes within those mountains, had long before, as is reported, forsaken the error of idolatry, and embraced the true faith, by the preaching of the word to them by Ninian,(216) a most reverend bishop and holy man of the British nation, who had been regularly instructed at Rome in the faith and mysteries of the truth, whose episcopal see was named after St.
Martin, the bishop, and was famous for its church, wherein he and many other saints rest in the body, and which the English nation still possesses. The place belongs to the province of Bernicia, and is commonly called Candida Casa,(217) because he there built a church of stone, which was not usual among the Britons.