Part 55

§ 76.7. =The Ostrogoths= when they conquered Italy had already for a long time been Arians, but were free from that fanaticism which so often characterized German Arianism. Theodoric granted full liberty to Catholicism, spared, protected and prized Roman culture, in all which certainly his famous minister Cassiodorus (§ 47, 23) had no small share. This liberal-minded tolerance was indeed made easy to the king by the thirty-five years’ schism of that time (§ 52, 5), which prevented any suspicions of danger to the state from the combination of Roman and Byzantine Catholics. And in fact, when this schism was healed in A.D. 519, Theodoric began to interest himself more in Arianism and to give way to such suspicions. He died in A.D. 526. The confusions that followed his death were taken advantage of by the emperor Justinian for the reconquest of Italy. His general Narses annihilated the last remnants of the Ostrogoth power in A.D. 554. The Byzantine government again rose upon the ruins of the Goths, and in A.D. 567 established the exarchate with Ravenna as its capital. For the time being Arianism was completely destroyed in Italy.[205]

§ 76.8. =The Longobards in Italy.=--In A.D. 569 the Longobards under Alboin made a descent upon Italy from the lands of the Danube, and conquered what has been called Lombardy after them, with its capital Ticinum, now Pavia. His successors extended their conquests farther south, till at last only the farthest point of Italy, the duchies of Naples, Rome and Perugia, Ravenna with its subject cities and Venice, acknowledged Byzantine rule. Excited by desire of plunder and political jealousy, the Arian Longobards warred incessantly for twenty years with Roman culture and Roman Catholicism. But after this first outburst of persecution had been stilled, religious indolence won the upper hand and the Arian clergy were not roused from their indifference to spiritual things by the growing zeal for conversions which characterized the Catholic bishops. Pope Gregory the Great, A.D. 590-604, devoted himself unweariedly to the task, and was powerfully supported by a Bavarian princess, the zealous Catholic queen Theodelinde. The Longobards were so enamoured of this fair and amiable queen that, when her first husband Anthari was murdered in A.D. 590, one year after their marriage, they allowed her to choose for herself one of the dukes to be her husband and their king. Her choice fell on Agilulf, who indeed himself still continued an Arian, but did not prevent the spread of Catholicism among his people. Their daughter Gundiberge, married successively to two Longobard kings, Ariowald († A.D. 636) and Rothari († A.D. 652) was an equally zealous protectress of the Catholic church; and with Rothari’s successor Aribert, brother’s son of Theodelinde, who died in A.D. 663, begins the series of Catholic rulers of the Longobards.--Continuation, § 82, 1.

§ 76.9. =The Franks in Gaul.=--When the West Roman empire was overthrown by Odoacer in A.D. 476, the Roman authority was still for a long time maintained in Gaul by the proconsul Syagrius. But the Merovingian Clovis, A.D. 481-511, put an end to it by the battle of Soissons in A.D. 486. In A.D. 493 he married the Burgundian princess Clotilda, and she, a zealous Catholic, used every effort to convert her pagan husband. The national pride of the Frank resisted long, but she got permission to have her firstborn son baptized. The boy, however, died in his baptismal robes, and Clovis regarded this as a punishment from his gods. Nevertheless on the birth of his second son he was unable to resist the entreaties of his beloved wife. He too sickened after his baptism; but when contrary to expectation he recovered amid the fervent prayers of the mother, the heathen father confessed that prayer to the Christian’s God is more powerful than Woden’s vengeance. He remembered this when threatened in A.D. 496 at Tolbiac with loss of the battle, of his life and of his empire in the war with the Alemanni. Prayer to the national gods had proved fruitless. He now turned in prayer to the God of the Christians, promising to own allegiance to Him, if He should get the victory. The fortune of battle soon turned. The army and kingdom of the Alemanni were destroyed. At his baptism at Rheims on Christmas Eve, A.D. 496, Archbishop Remigius addressed him thus: “Bend thy neck, proud Sigamber; adore what thou hast burnt, burn what thou hast adored!” The later tradition, first reported by Hincmar of Rheims in the 9th century, relates that when the church officer with the anointing oil could not get forward because of the crowd, in answer to Remigius’ prayer a white dove brought an oil flask from heaven, out of which all the kings of the Franks from that day have been anointed. The conversion of Clovis, soon followed by that of the nobles and the people, seems really to have been a matter of conviction and genuine according to the measure of his knowledge of God. He made a bargain with the Christian’s God and fulfilled the obligations under which he had placed himself. Of an inner change of heart we can indeed find no trace. There was, however, no mention of that in his bargain. Just after his conversion he commits the most atrocious acts of faithlessness, treachery and secret murder. The Catholic clergy of the whole West nevertheless celebrated in him a second Constantine, called of God as avenger upon heathenism and Arian heresy, and asked of him nothing more, seeing in this the task which providence had assigned him. The conversion of Clovis was indeed in every respect an occurrence of the greatest moment. The rude Arianism of the Germans, incapable of culture, received here its deathblow. The civilization and remnants of culture of the ancient world found in the Catholic church its only suitable vehicle for introduction into the German world; and now the Franks were at the head of it and laid the foundation of a new universal empire which would for centuries form the central point of universal history. On the work of Friddin [Fridolin] and Columbanus in the land of the Franks, see § 77, 7.

§ 77. VICTORY OF THE ROMISH OVER THE OLD BRITISH CHURCH.[206]

According to an ancient but more than doubtful tradition a British king Lucius about the middle of the 2nd century is said to have asked Christian missionaries of the Roman bishop Eleutherus and by them to have been converted along with his people. This, however, is certain, that at the end of the 3rd century (§ 22, 6) Christianity had taken root in Roman Britain, probably through intercourse with the Romans. Down to the Anglo-Saxon invasion in A.D. 449, the British church certainly kept up regular communication with that of the continent, especially with Gaul. From that time, being driven back into North and South Wales, it was completely isolated from the continental church; but all the more successfully it spread itself out among its neighbours in the allied tribes of Ireland and Scotland, among the former through Patrick, the Apostle of the Irish, among the latter by Columba, the Apostle of the Scots, and followed a thoroughly independent course of development. When one hundred and fifty years later, in A.D. 596 the long interrupted intercourse with Rome was again renewed by a Romish mission to the Anglo-Saxons, several divergences from Roman practice were discovered among the Britons in respect of worship, constitution and discipline. Rome insisted that these should be corrected, but the Britons insisted on retaining them and repudiated the pretensions of the Romish hierarchy. The keen struggle which therefore arose, beginning amid circumstances that promised a brilliant success to the British church, ended with complete submission to Rome. The battle-field was then transferred to Germany, and there too in spite of the resolute resistance of their apostles the contest concluded with the same result (§ 78). The struggle was not merely one of highly tragic interest but of incomparable importance for the history of Europe. For had the result been, as for a time it seemed likely that it would be, in favour of the old British church, not only England but also all Germany would have taken up a decidedly anti-papal attitude, and not only the ecclesiastical but also the political history of the Middle Ages would have most likely been led into an altogether different course.

§ 77.1. =The Conversion of the Irish.=--Among the Celtic inhabitants of the island of Ireland there were some individual Christians from the beginning of the 5th century. The mission of a Roman deacon Palladius in A.D. 431 was without result. But in the following year, A.D. 432, the true apostle of the Irish, =Patrick=, with twenty-four companions, stept upon the shore of the island. The only reliable source of information about his life and work is an autobiography which he left behind him, _Confessiones_. According to it he was grandson of a presbyter and son of a deacon residing at Banava, probably in Britain, not likely in Gaul. In his sixteenth year he was taken to Ireland by Irish pirates and sold to an Irish chief whose flocks he tended for six years. After his escape by flight the love of Christ which glowed within his heart gave him no rest and his dreams urged him to bring the glorious liberty of the children of God to those who so long kept him bound under hard slavery. Familiar with the language and the customs of the country, he gathered the people by beat of drum into an open field and told them of the sufferings of Christ for man’s salvation. The Druids, priests of the Celts, withstood him vigorously, but his attractive and awe-inspiring personality gained the victory over them. Without a drop of martyr’s blood Ireland was converted in a few years, and was thickly strewn with churches and monasteries. Patrick himself had his residence at Macha, round which the town of Armagh, afterwards the ecclesiastical metropolis, sprang up. He died about A.D. 465, and left the island church in a flourishing condition. The numerous monasteries, in which calm piety flourished along with diligent study of Scripture and from which many teachers and missionaries went forth, won for the land the name of _Insula Sanctorum_. Only after the robber raids of the Danes in the 9th century did the glory of the Irish monasteries begin to fade.[207]

§ 77.2. =The Mission to Scotland.=--A Briton, Ninian, educated at Rome, wrought, about A.D. 430, among the Celtic =Picts= and =Scots= in Scotland or Caledonia. But those converted by him fell back into paganism after his death. The true Apostle of Scotland was the Irishman =Columba=. In A.D. 563 he settled with twelve disciples on the small Hebridean island Hy. Its common name, Iona, seems to have originated by a clerical error from Ioua, and was then regarded as the Hebrew equivalent of Columba, a dove. Icolmkill means Columba’s cell. Here he founded a monastery and a church, and converted from this centre all Caledonia. Although to the last only a presbyter and abbot of this monastery, he had all the authority of an apostle over the Scottish church and its bishops, a position that was maintained by successive abbots of Iona. He died in A.D. 597. The numerous monasteries founded by him vied with the Irish in learning, piety and missionary zeal. The original monastery of Iona flourished in a superlative degree.[208]

§ 77.3. =The Peculiarities of the Celtic Church.=--In the Anglo-Saxon struggle the following were the main points at issue.

1. On the part of Rome it was demanded that they should submit to the archiepiscopal jurisdiction instituted by the pope, which the British refused as an unrighteous assumption.

2. The British had an =Easter Canon= different from that of the Romish church. They were indeed nothing else than Quartodecimans, although they like these in ignorance referred to the Johannine tradition (§ 34, 2), but celebrated their Easter always on a Sunday, the settling of which they decided according to an 84 years’ cycle of the moon, after Rome had adopted a cycle of 19 years (§ 56, 3).

3. The Celtic clergy had also a different =Tonsure= from the Roman _Tonsura Petri_ which seems to have been the Greek _Tonsura Pauli_ (§ 45, 1), although the zealous advocate of the Roman customs, Ceolfrid, abbot of Jarrow, in a letter to Naitan, king of the Picts, derives it from Simon Magus.

4. Besides this there was also the question of the Marriage of Priests, which indeed the popish Anglo-Saxon Archbishop Augustine declared himself at first willing to allow to the British, which, however, was subsequently so passionately denounced by Boniface as _fornicatio_ and _adulterium_.

5. If, further, according to Bede’s statement, besides their divergent views about Easter, the British _et alia plurima imitati ecclesiasticæ contraria faciebant_, this certainly cannot be understood of doctrinal divergences, but only of different forms of constitution and worship, or ecclesiastical habits and customs, as might be well expected in churches that had been completely separated since A.D. 449. We need only think, _e.g._, of the progress made by the idea of the papal primacy (§ 46, 7-10), the consolidation and reconstruction of monasticism under Benedict (§ 85), the codification of Roman canon law by Dionysius Exiguus (§ 43, 3), the modification of the idea of penance since Leo the Great (§ 61, 1) and the development of the doctrine of the mass down to Gregory the Great (§ 58, 3; 59, 6). The most considerable peculiarity of constitution in the Celtic church seems to have been that above referred to in placing the abbots of the principal monasteries at the head of the hierarchy. Only in one passage (Bede, III. 19) is there mention of ecclesiastical doctrine: In A.D. 640 Pope John IV. addressed a conciliatory letter to the Scots in which he warns them against the Pelagian heresy, “_quam apud eos revivescere didicerat_.”

When then we turn our attention to the Celtic church planted on the continent at a later period, it is specially Columbanus’ view of Easter that is regarded in France as heretical. Often and loud as Boniface lifted up his voice against the horrible heresies of British, Irish and Scotch intruders, it is found at last that these consist in the same or similar divergences as those of the Anglo-Saxons. Not insisting upon the law of celibacy, opposition to the Roman primacy, the Romish tradition and the Romish canon law, especially the ever-increasing strictness of the Roman marriage laws (§ 61, 2), more simple modes of administering the sacraments and conducting public worship, even in unconsecrated places in forests and fields,--these and such like were the heresies complained of.--As concerns the _pro_ and _con._ of the evangelical purity of the ancient British Christianity, so highly praised by Ebrard, one occupying an impartial historical standpoint is justified in expecting that as all the good development so also all the bad development which had taken firm root in the common thought and feeling of the church down to the middle of the 5th century, would not have been uprooted from the church of Patrick and Columba, so also in the 7th century it would be still prevalent there. And this expectation is in general confirmed, so far as our information goes about all which was not expressly imported from Rome into the British church. If we deduct the by no means insignificant amount of unevangelical corruption which was first introduced into the Romish church during the period between Leo the Great and Gregory the Great, A.D. 440-604, partly by exaggerating and adorning elements previously there, partly by bringing in wholly new elements of ecclesiastical credulity, superstition and mistaken faith, there still remains for the Celtic church standing outside of this process of deterioration a relatively purer doctrine. Yet the Christianity that remains is by no means free of mixture from unevangelical elements as Jonas of Bobbio himself shows in his biography of his teacher Columbanus. But the more embittered the conflict between the British and the Romish churches became over matters of constitution and worship, the more did differences in faith and life, which had been overlooked at first, assume serious proportions, and supported by a careful study of Scripture, led to greater evangelical freedom and purity on the side of the British. This is thoroughly confirmed by Ebrard’s numerous quotations from the literature of that period.[209]

§ 77.4. =The Romish Mission to the Anglo-Saxons.=--To protect himself against the robber raids of the Picts and Scots, the British king Vortigern sought the aid of the Germans inhabiting the opposite shores. Two princes of the Jutes, Hengist and Horsa, driven from their home, led a horde of Angles and Saxons over to Britain in A.D. 449. New hordes kept following those that had gone before and after a hundred years the British were driven back into the western parts of the island. The incomers founded seven kingdoms; at the head of all stood the prince of one of the divisions who was called principal king, the Bretwalda. The Anglo-Saxons were heathens and the bitter feelings that prevailed between them and the ancient Britons prevented the latter from carrying on missionary operations among the former. The opportunity which the British missed was seized upon by Rome. The sight of Anglo-Saxon youths exposed as slaves in the Roman market inspired a pious monk, afterwards Pope Gregory I., with a desire to evangelize a people of such noble bodily appearance. He wished himself to take the work in hand, but was hindered by the call to the chair of Peter. He now bought Anglo-Saxon youths in order to train them as missionaries to their fellow-countrymen. But when soon thereafter the Bretwalda Ethelbert of Kent married the Frankish princess Bertha, Gregory sent the Roman abbot =Augustine= to England with forty monks in A.D. 596. Ethelbert gave them a residence and support in his own capital Dorovernum, now Canterbury. At Pentecost the following year he received baptism and 10,000 of his subjects followed his example. Augustine asked from Gregory further instructions about relics, books, etc. The pope sent him what he sought and besides the pallium with archiepiscopal rights over the whole Saxon and British church. Augustine now demanded of the Britons submission to his archiepiscopal authority and that they should work together with him for the conversion of the Saxons. But the British would do nothing of the sort. A personal interview with their chiefs under Augustine’s oak in A.D. 603 was without result. At a second conference everything was spoilt by Augustine’s prelatic pride in refusing to stand up on the arrival of the Britons. Inclined to compliance the Britons had just proposed this at the suggestion of a member as a sign. Augustine died in A.D. 605. The pope nominated as his successor his previous assistant Laurentius. Ethelbert’s heathen son and successor, Eadbald, oppressed the missionaries so much that they decided to withdraw from the field, in A.D. 616. Only Laurentius delayed his retreat in order to make a final attempt at the conversion of Eadbald. He was successful. Eadbald was baptized; the fugitives returned to their former posts. In the kingdom of Essex Augustine had already established Christianity, but a change of government had again restored paganism. The gospel, however, soon afterwards got entrance into Northumbria, the most powerful of the seven kingdoms. King Edwin, the founder of Edinburgh, won the hand of the Kentish princess Ethelberga, daughter of Bertha. With her, as spiritual adviser of the young queen, went the monk Paulinus, A.D. 625. These two persuaded the king and he again persuaded his nobles and the priests to embrace Christianity. At a popular assembly Paulinus proved the truth of Christianity, and the chief priest Coisi, setting at defiance the gods of his fathers, flung with his own hand a spear into the nearest idol temple. The people thought him mad and looked for Woden’s vengeance. When it came not, they obeyed the command of Coisi and burnt down the temple, A.D. 627. Paulinus was made bishop of Eboracum, now York, which pope Honorius on sending a pallium raised to a second metropolitanate. Edwin, however, fell in battle in A.D. 633 fighting against Penda, the pagan king of Mercia; Paulinus had to flee and the church of Northumbria was almost entirely rooted up.[210]

§ 77.5. =Celtic Missions among the Anglo-Saxons.=--The saviour of Northumbria was Oswald, A.D. 635-642, the son of a former king who had been driven out by Edwin. He had found refuge as a fugitive in the monastery of Hy and was there converted to Christianity. To restore the church in Northumbria the monks sent him one of their number, the amiable Aidan. Oswald acted as his interpreter until he acquired the Saxon language. His success was unexampled. Oswald founded a religious establishment for him on the island of Lindisfarne, and supported by new missionaries from Hy, Aidan converted the whole of the northern lands to Christianity. Oswald fell in battle against Penda. He was succeeded as king and also as Bretwalda by his brother Oswy. Irish missionaries joined the missionary monks of Hy, rivalling them in their exertions, and by A.D. 660 all the kingdoms of the Heptarchy had been converted to Christianity, and down to this date all, with the exception of Kent, which alone still adhered to the Romish church, belonged to the ancient British communion.[211]

§ 77.6. =The Celtic Element Driven out of the Anglo-Saxon Church.=--Oswy perceived the political danger attending the continuance of such ecclesiastical disputes. He succeeded in convincing also his neighbour kings of the need of ecclesiastical uniformity. The only question was as to which of the two should be recognised. The choice fell upon the Romish. Oswy himself most decidedly preferred it. His wife Eanfled, Edwin’s daughter, was a zealous partisan of the Romish church, and on her side stood a man of extraordinary power, prudence and persistence, the abbot Wilfrid, a native Northumbrian, trained in the monastery of Lindisfarne. He had, however, visited Rome, and since then used all his eloquence and skill in intrigue in order to lay all England at the feet of the pope. The queen and the abbot wrought together upon the Bretwalda, and he in his turn upon the other princes. To these personal influences were added others of a more general kind: the preference for things foreign over those of home growth, the brilliancy and preponderating weight of the Romish church, and above all, the gulf, not yet by any means bridged over, between the Saxons and the British. When secret negociations toward the desired end had been carried out, Oswy called a general Synod at the nunnery of Streoneshalch, now Whitby, _Synodus Pharensis_, A.D. 664. Here all the civil and ecclesiastical notabilities of the Heptarchy were assembled. The chief speaker on the Roman side was Wilfrid, on the Celtic side bishop Colman of Lindisfarne. The observance of Easter was the first subject of discussion. Wilfrid referred to the Apostle Peter, to whom the Lord said: Thou art Peter, etc. Then Oswy asked Colman whether it was true that the Lord had said so to Peter. Colman could not deny it, and Oswy declared that he would follow him who had the power to open for them the gates of heaven. And so the question was settled. Oswy as Bretwalda carried out with energy the decisions of the Council, and within a few weeks the scissors had completed the conversion of the whole Heptarchy to the Roman tonsure and the Roman faith.[212]