the heathen aster. Six years after the Northumbrian witan had accepted the creed of Christ, Eadwine was slain at Hatfield by Penda, Penda and the heathen king of the Mercians. Upon Eadwin's fall Pau- reaction. linus fled with Ethelburh and her two younger children back to Kent; and with their flight the effort of the Kentish church to Christianize the north came to an end. Its imperfect work soon disappeared before the heathen reaction which at once set in. Latin Christianity had so far accomplished nothing permanent outside of Kent. The spiritual conquest of the north was yet to be achieved by preachers who were to come from a missionary outpost of the Celtic church. 2 of Ireland. During the Roman occupation of Britain, Ireland escaped Celtic invasion; it was never drawn within the limits of the em- and its conChristianity pire. Agricola expressed the opinion that a single legion quests. with a band of auxiliaries would be sufficient to reduce it to subjection, but his opinion was never put to the test of a practical experiment. And so the primitive tribal life which Tribal life the Celts of Ireland had brought with them from the cradle of the Aryan race went on untouched by the influence either of Roman law or Roman municipal institutions. The Irish nation consisted of groups of tribes, connected by the ties of kinship, and loosely bound together under a graduated system of tribal government. Traces of anything like a permanent national sovereignty are of the faintest kind. The church which Patrick founded in the midst of this primitive St. Patrick. tribal society naturally moulded its organization upon the peculiar forms of social and political life about it.5 In those Elsewhere countries in which Roman law and municipal institutions had the church preceded its coming the church, modelling its organization national and episcoupon the basis of the civil divisions, assumed a form at once pal; national and episcopal. Through the same process the Irish in Ireland church became tribal and monastic. But what the Irish tribal and church lacked in compact organization it made up in a fiery monastic. missionary zeal which made it famous throughout the world. In the last half of the sixth century the Irish missionary Columba established in the Isle of Hii or Iona, off the west 1 E. Chron., a. 633; Bæda, Hist. Eccl., ii. 20. 2 Green, Making of Eng., pp. 265, 269· Tac., Agric., 24. See Maine, Early Hist. of Inst., pp. Todd, Life of St. Patrick, Introd.; became it became astery at Hii. coast of Scotland, one of those monastic and tribal communities peculiar to the Celtic church as a mission station for Celtic mon- the conversion of the northern Picts. In this monastery at Hii the children of Ethelfrith found a shelter in the dark days which followed their father's fall. Eadwine, who succeeded Æthelfrith upon the throne of Northumbria, after a reign of fifteen years, fell before Penda at Hatfield in 633; and upon his fall the realm of Northumbria was for a time broken up. After two years of confusion had passed by, Oswald, the second son of Ethelfrith, returned from Hii, and, placing himself at the head of his people, reëstablished the kingdom under the sway of his own royal house. soon as Oswald was secure upon the throne, he was followed Missiona- by missionaries from Hii who came full of zeal for the conHii convert version of his realm. In 635 Aidan fixed his bishop's stool Northum in the Isle of Lindisfarne, on the coast of Northumbria, Oswald. ries from bria. of the West Saxons. As where a famous monastery was soon established. Through the efforts of the Irish missionaries Northumbria became permanently Christian. And in the very year in which the Conversion Celtic Aidan fixed his see at Lindisfarne the conversion of the West Saxons was brought about by the preaching of Birinus, a missionary who had found his way into Wessex from Northern Italy. When, in 642, Oswald was slain in the battle of the Maserfeld by Penda, his brother Oswiu came from Hii to succeed him upon the throne, and to unite the two states of Northumbria in a union that was never afterwards to be broken up. Ten years after the accession of Oswiu the Christian house of Northumbria became allied with the Pagan house of Mercia by the marriage of Penda's son Peada to Oswiu's daughter. Peada was at once baptized by Aidan's successor, and the priests who returned with him preached, not only among his own people, but, by Penda's Conversion permission, among the Mercians themselves.8 In the following year the East Saxons, who had thrown off Christianity in the days of Mellitus, received the faith anew through the cians and East Saxons. 1 Adamnan, Life of Columba, ed. 8 E. Chron., a. 633; Bæda, Hist. 4 Bæda, Hist. Eccl., iii. 3. 5 Green, Making of Eng., p. 269. 6 Bæda, Hist. Eccl., iii. 7. 7 Ibid., iii. 14. 8 Ibid., iii. 21. the Win breaks the power of heathenism preaching of Cedd, a missionary sent among them from Oswiu at the request of their king Sigeberht.1 At the battle of the Battle of Winwæd in 655, between the forces of Mercia and Northum- wæd (655) bria, Penda was slain,2 and his kingdom for a time broken up. By the result of that battle Oswiu became supreme in Brit- English ain as no English king had been since the days of Eadwine; and with that event the broken power of English heathenism passed forever away. The worship of Woden and Thunder was now everywhere extinct, except in the petty and isolated kingdom of the South Saxons, who accepted the faith some years afterwards at the hands of Wilfrid.4 With the completion of the work of the conversion, the Synod of Whitby, serious question at once arose whether the English nation, as 664. a whole, should accept Christianity in its Celtic or its Latin. form. Should the infant church throw itself into a state of isolation by an alliance with the Celtic communions, which in certain particulars were considered heretical, or should it bring itself into relations with the rest of Western Christendom by an acceptance of the thoughts and forms of Rome? In the Synod of Whitby called by Oswiu in 664 for the set- English tlement of this controversy, it was determined that the nas- cepts Chriscent English church should not attempt by opposing Rome its Latin to fight against the world.5 church ac form. tion of English Theodore. Although each one of the heptarchic kingdoms was Chris- Organizatianized from a distinct source, the general aspects of the the missionary work were everywhere the same. The conver- church by sion of the king generally preceded the acceptance of the faith upon the part of his people, whereupon the missionary bishop became the royal chaplain and the kingdom itself his diocese. In this way the heptarchic divisions of the country reappeared in the earliest forms of organization which the church assumed. But it was no part of the plan of Rome to 1 Bæda, Hist. Eccl., iii. 22. 2 Ibid., ii. 24; E. Chron., a. 655.. 8 "The battle of the Winwad had proved a delusive triumph for Northumbria; but it was a decisive victory for the cross. With it all active resistance on the part of the older heathendom came to an end.". Green, Making of Eng., p. 301. Bæda, Hist. Eccl., iv. 13. - 6 "Accordingly the conversion of a king was generally followed by the establishment of a see, the princes being apparently desirous of attaching a Christian prelate to their comitatus, in place of the Pagan high-priest who had probably occupied a similar posi tion." -Saxons in England, vol. ii. p. 360. 7 "It might have seemed by the 6 Ibid., iii. 25, 26; Green, Making of middle of the century that the hepEng., p. 313. tarchic divisions were to be reproduced in Kent in 669. "He was permit the bishoprics thus established to remain long in a He arrives state of isolation. In 669 Theodore of Tarsus, appointed by Pope Vitalian to the vacant see of Canterbury, arrived in Kent with the specific purpose of organizing the English church so that it could be brought into definite relations with the see of Rome. At the coming of Augustine, seventy-two years before, the division of the heathen English into the three kingdoms of Northern, Central, and Southern Britain was already clearly defined. Theodore upon his arrival found the political condition of the country substantially unchanged. But spiritually a great change had taken place, - the heathen English had become Christian. It was possible, therefore, for Theodore, as primate, to deal with the English nation as a whole. The first three years which followed his coming he passed in visiting all parts of the island, and he was everywhere received with welcome and reverence. "He was the first of the archbishops whom the whole English church conarchbishops sented to obey."2 After settling all personal disputes among whole Eng- the bishops, Theodore assembled them, together with their consented leading clergy, in a council which was held at Hertford in 673.3 By the decrees of this council each bishop with his clergy was restricted to his own diocese, and, what was far more important, it was ordained that the episcopate should meet annually in council at Clovesho. Soon after the meetClovesho. ing of the council of Hertford, Theodore entered upon the execution of his plans for the permanent organization of the church, which involved an increase in the episcopate, and a breaking up of the great dioceses into smaller sees. The last part of the work was carried out by a falling back upon the older tribal boundaries which the English settlers were so careful to preserve. The see of East Anglia was broken up into the dioceses of the North-folk and the South-folk,6 while Mercia and Northumbria were divided in the same the first of the whom the lish church to obey." Annual councils at Theodore breaks up the great dioceses. in the ecclesiastical ones."-Stubbs, 1 Bæda, Hist. Eccl., iv. 1. 2 "Isque primus erat in archiepiscopis, cui omnis Anglorum Ecclesia manus dare consentiret." Bæda, Hist. Eccl., iv. 2. Kemble, Saxons in England, vol. ii. p. 364. -- 8 Bæda, Hist. Eccl., iv. 5. iii. pp. 118-122; Stubbs, Const. Hist., vol. i. p. 218. 5 "It was characteristic of the care with which Theodore sought an historical foundation for his work that even in their division he only fell back on the tribal demarcations which lay within the limits of each kingdom." -Green, Making of England, p. 332. 6 Bæda, Hist. Eccl., iv. 5. way.1 Wessex alone of the larger kingdoms resisted; but a few years after Theodore's death it yielded, and the whole nation was then grouped in sixteen sees subject to the met- Primacy of Canterbury. ropolitan primacy of Canterbury. Within a short time afterwards, this arrangement was so modified as to allow to York the position of an archbishopric, with three suffragan York. sees. By the final subdivision of Wessex, under Eadward Theodore's the Elder, the plan of Theodore was at last carried out, pleted and the territorial organization of the dioceses as then fixed under Eadhas remained, with a few minor changes, to the present Elder. day.2 work com ward the of the shadows A the unity of the po- state. Through the results of the work of Theodore the disunited The unity English people found it possible, for the first time, to draw church foretogether in obedience to a recognized central authority. people who had never yet been able to realize a sense of litical unity under the sway of a single overlord were now able to realize a sense of ecclesiastical unity under the metropolitan primacy of a truly national church. Representative men from every part of the English nation had never yet assembled in a single witenagemot for the purpose of political legislation. But the existence of such an assembly was now clearly foreshadowed in the annual meetings of the episcopate for the purpose of ecclesiastical legislation. The early councils of the church were the first national gather- The church ings in which the English nation was ever represented as a the first whole. The infant church thus became the of a nanursery tional spirit which finally ripened into a complete sense of national consciousness. The unity of the church led the way to the unity of the state, as the national councils of the church led the way to national witenagemotes.3 5. After the heptarchic states had grouped themselves in the three great kingdoms of Northern, Central, and Southern Britain, each kingdom attempted in turn to work out the problem of national unity by so extending its supremacy 1 As to the division of Mercia, see Haddan and Stubbs, Councils, vol. iii. Pp. 127-130. As to the work in Northumbria, see Eddi, Life of Wilfrid, c. 24; Green, Making of England, pp. 333, 347, 366. 219. Stubbs, Const. Hist., vol. i. p. 218, 8 "The unity of the church in England was the pattern of the unity of the state; the cohesion of the church was for ages the substitute for the cohesion which the divided nation was unable otherwise to realize.". Stubbs, Const. Hist., vol. i. p. 245. See, also, Green, Making of England, p. 371. councils national gatherings. |