|
The UK Bible Students Website History Corner
|
CHRISTIANITY IN ANCIENT BRITAIN
(Part 2)
Part 1 appeared here
To read texts not quoted, click on the citation.
Live as free
men, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil
(1 Peter 2:16)
Saint Patrick’s
Mission
Two letters of Patrick pre-date the
Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britain by ten or twenty years. Pirates raiding the
British coast took the teenage Patrick captive to Ireland. He served there as a
herdsman for six years before escaping abroad. While enduring the hardships of
captivity Patrick was reminded of the waywardness of his boyhood and in sorrow
he turned to God for help:
The Lord opened
up my awareness of my unbelief so that I might, however late, remember my faults
and turn with all my heart to the Lord my God who had regard for my lowly estate
and took pity on my youth and ignorance and watched over me before I knew Him
and before I learned sense or could distinguish between good and evil and who
protected me as a father might his son.[fn8]
Patrick came from a British family
of churchmen. His father was a deacon and his grandfather a priest. His bitter
experiences stung the faith of his childhood into life. It was during his
studies at Auxerre in France that Patrick resolved to return to Ireland and to
‘fish with the net of the gospel’.
From the start, he was convinced
God had chosen him for the work. A letter defending his mission points out God’s
preference for him above ‘clerical intellectuals . . . powerful in speaking and
all else’. Like St. Paul, whose message and preaching ‘were not with wise and
persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power’, Patrick
exemplified the character and manner of life that became the hallmark of Irish
missionaries in Britain and in Europe (1
Corinthians 2: 4). His rustic
simplicity earned the approval of the Irish, whom he laboured among until his
death in A.D. 459.
Ireland’s Golden Age of
Learning
In the century after Patrick,
Ireland was divided by dynastic disputes. The tribal feuds and broken leadership
present the historian with a paradox, for out of the anarchy Ireland’s golden
age of learning emerged. During the early sixth century, Christian zeal
established monasteries at Clonard, Bangor and Clonmacnois. Another ten could be
named in the years after. It is said that over 3000 counted Finnian as their
master, who taught in the open air at Clonard.[fn9]
These monasteries were simple
settlements and not the grand stone edifices of later centuries. Pupils gathered
around the home of their teacher, building their own dwellings. The community
was sustained by simple agriculture and all took their share in the daily round
of tasks. This life of labour and learning is epitomised by the sixth-century
monastery atop Skellig Michael, a jagged fortress of rock eight miles off the
coast of County Kerry. One must climb some 600 steps to reach the narrow terrace
of beehive huts where the monks studied, prayed and sung
Psalms.
The toil was a necessary
counterweight to sedentary learning. The labour invigorated the mind in
preparation for study, and inured the monks and nuns for a life of
self-reliance. Life in an Irish monastery blended hardiness and erudition,
making their graduates winning evangelists, independent of the rich, and no
burden upon the poor.
For the next five centuries
Christian scholars sailed from Ireland to Scotland, England and Europe. Many of
these missionaries resolved never to return until their work was done. Like
Abraham they forsook kin and country for a higher calling. Columban, Virgilius
and Fursa stand out among the founders of Irish monastic communities in Europe.
They were accompanied by others whose colourful handwritten gospels and Psalms
survive in the libraries of St. Petersburg, Stockholm, Paris, Basel and
Nuremberg.
St. Columba’s Mission to
Scotland
In A.D. 561 the fighting men of
Clan Neill defeated King Diarmait’s soldiers at the battle of Cul Dreimhne. A
controversy had arisen around an Irish priest of royal lineage named Columcille,
‘Dove of the Church’ (better known today as St. Columba). His cousins of Clan
Neill rallied to defend him and killed a large number of men. After the
bloodshed, Columcille was threatened with excommunication until the intervention
of his friend, Bishop Laisren, lessened the
punishment
to
exile.[fn10]
Columba took to sea with twelve
others and sailed north, looking for a place to live out his years. The land
Columba first reached, with Ireland no longer visible on the horizon, was Iona,
an island at the westernmost tip of the Isle of Mull. Columba and his companions
established a small monastery from which the Irish mission went forth into
Scotland, north of the Grampian mountains, a land of the Picts.
Adamnan in his biography of St.
Columba, attributes the conversion of the Picts to miraculous events worked by
the Saint in the court of King Brude Mac Maelcon. A more credible account is
given by Bede in his History of the English Church and People. Bede puts
the date of Columba’s Highland ministry at A.D. 565, when ‘he converted that
people to the Faith of Christ by his preaching and example’[fn11]
A
common faith kept the peace among the Irish Scots and Picts.
Anglo-Saxon England In
Turmoil
The skirmishes between the native
Britons and the Anglo-Saxon settlers inhibited a work like that of Columba in
England. The monastery of Bangor in Wales patriotically supported the British
armies by praying for their victory over the pagan invaders. Evidently the
hostility of the conquered Britons was a barrier to a missionary work towards
the English.
Rome had so far played no part in
the traffic of the gospel across the British Isles. Pope Gregory on hearing that
the English were still pagan, desired to send preachers to the Anglo-Saxons to
convert them to Christ. In A.D. 596 Gregory sent Augustine and forty companions
who arrived at the Isle of Thanet a year later.
King Ethelbert of Kent summoned
Augustine and his band for an audience. The Roman party, singing hymns and
carrying a tall silver cross impressed the King with their mission. Ethelbert
gave them the freedom and protection to preach in his
kingdom.[fn12]
From the
church of St.
Martin in Canterbury the Augustine mission spread to the Saxons as far as
London, and in the province of all the English to the Humber.[fn13]
In A.D. 625 King Edwin of the
Northumbrian English, requested the hand in marriage of Ethelberga, daughter of
King Ethelbert. The offer was turned down on religious grounds, for it was not
considered fitting for a Christian maiden to have a heathen husband. Edwin was
not easily rebuffed and gave assurance that Ethelberga and her household would
be given freedom to worship in accordance with her faith. Edwin’s submission won
her betrothal. The churchman Paulinus accompanied Ethelberga as chaplain to
Northumbria.
The Augustine Mission Goes
North
Paulinus conversed greatly with
Edwin on Christianity. King Edwin stayed the bishop’s invitation to be baptized
with a proviso that he first discuss it with his advisers and friends. Edwin
called a meeting and asked of his wise men their opinion of the new faith. The
outcome is summarised neatly by two of Edwin’s counsellors. Coifi, the high
priest, confessed that in spite of his zealous service of the pagan gods, other
men had received greater favour and honour than him. Another, in agreement,
compared this life to a sparrow’s flight through a hall in winter ‘man appears
on earth for a little while but what went before this life or of what follows we
know nothing’. The council renounced their pagan religion and followed the King
in his Christian conversion. Edwin was baptized in York at Easter, A.D.
627.
Rome’s mission courted the English
royalty such that the Christianity of the Anglo-Saxons rose and fell with the
faith of their kings. Though Rome disdained the Celtic churches as insular and
unenlightened, the two traditions lived alongside each other. There were
occasions when the liberty of conscience among the Celtic churches clashed with
Roman dogmatism.
The differences came to a head when
the King and Queen were seen to keep Easter at different times, so while one was
eating, the other was fasting.[fn14]
King Oswy of Northumbria had been instructed and baptized by Scots, while
Queen Eanfled observed the customs she had learned in Kent. Bishops from both
sides of the controversy agreed to settle matters at a synod held at
Whitby.
Colman of Lindesfarne, a monk of
Iona and Wilfrid, Rome’s champion both presented their cases. The debate ranged
over an array of issues, notably the computation of the date of Easter, and the
style of tonsure for the clergy. Neither side referred much to Scripture but
relied on the superiority of the authors of their
tradition.
Wilfrid trumped Colman’s argument
claiming St. Peter as the father of Rome’s tradition. King Oswy decided against
the Irish school. Defeated, but determined to maintain the practices held by
Columba, Bishop Colman left Lindesfarne and returned to
Ireland.
Conclusion
It is pitiful to see men contend
over trifles in the name of Him who died for a religion untroubled by ‘divers
washings and carnal ordinances’ (Hebrews 9: 10, KJV) . Christianity is a
religion of the ‘hidden man of the heart’. There had to be more at stake at
Whitby than haircuts and holy days, judging by the character of the men
involved.
If Colman had given way to Wilfrid,
the Lindesfarne community would have lost their independence. The Celtic
churches, though narrow in the discipline of a religious life, were broad in
their freedom to read and learn. The truths arising from independent study
threatened Rome. She enforced her claim as the one true church, visible among
men by purity of teaching. Whence came the title ‘catholic’, or universal, the
doctrine believed everywhere and by all.
Colman and his monks relinquished
the little honour and influence they had. No doubt they were despised for their
indifference to Rome’s majesty and favour. Yet their resolve stands as a
figurative tell of the spirit of Christianity preserved in the British Isles.
The enduring British love of liberty, made virtuous by accountability, has been
used by God to prosper His cause in these Islands since ever Britons were worthy
to bear the name of Christian.
__________
Notes
^[fn8] A.B.E. Hood and J. Morris, St. Patrick His Writings and
Muirchu’s Life, (Chichester: Phillimore & Co. Ltd, 1978
Confessio.2, p. 41.
^[fn9] Eleanor Hull, Early
Christian Ireland, (London: D. Nutt, 1905), p.
132.
^[fn10]
Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland by the Four
Masters, ed. by J. O’Donovan,
2nd edition,(Dublin: Hodges, Smith and Co., 1856) p.
192.
^[fn11] Bede, A History of the
English Church and People, ed. by Leo Shirley-Price, 2nd edition,
(Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1968) 3.4, p. 146.
^[fn12] Bede, A History of the
English Church and People, ed. by Leo Shirley-Price, 2nd edition,
(Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1968) 1.25, p. 69.
^[fn13] Bede, A History of the
English Church and People, ed. by Leo Shirley-Price, 2nd edition,
(Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1968) 2.3, p. 104.
^[fn14] Bede, A History of the
English Church and People, ed. by Leo Shirley-Price, 2nd
edition,
(Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1968) 3.25, p. 185.
________________
*
1654 Map of
Britain from
________________
Copyright March 2010 UK Bible Students. You are free to reproduce any or all of this article, but let us know if you do.