and swept back upon the continent like a mighty tidal wave. The great pioneer in that movement was Columbanus. He was born in Leinster about 543 and received his monastic education at Bangor. At the age of forty he conceived the idea of preaching the Gospel to the pagan German tribes. With twelve young companions he crossed over to France where they remained several years, teaching the faith. Then they went to Burgundy where King Gontran persuaded them to build a monastery. For twenty years Columbanus laboured in the wild Vosges Mountains, planted the three famous monasteries of Anegray, Luxeuil, and Fontaines. Luxeuil virtually became the "monastic capital of France."[242:1] He gave his monks a stringent rule, borrowed from the rigid discipline of the Celtic monasteries, and he clung to the peculiar rites and usages of his mother Church. His influence was strongly felt and an army of disciples gathered around him. From his mountain home he sent forth reformatory waves that covered all Europe, and posed as sort of a spiritual dictator of the whole Church.
Another result of his influence was to incite the enmity of the Gallican clergy and the Burgundian court. In 602, he was arraigned before a Frankish synod, but he ably defended his life and his beliefs. This affront led him to appeal to Pope Gregory the Great in several interesting letters. At last, in 610, he was banished from the Burgundian kingdom never to return. He went to Tours, Nantes, Metz, up the Rhine valley, and into Switzerland where he remained three years engaged in active missionary work until forced to leave by Burgundian influence. Crossing the Alps into Lombardy he received an honourable welcome
from King Agilulf and was given a site for the celebrated monastery of Bobbio where, in 615, he passed away in peace. To him must be given the credit of opening up Europe to England and Ireland as an excellent field for foreign missions.[243:1]
Gallus,[243:2] an Irish companion of Columbanus, called the "Apostle of Switzerland," laboured among the Alemanni and Swabians. His monastery of St. Gall became one of the great centres of learning in the Middle Ages. He died in 645. Three other Irish monks of note worked in Germany. Fridolin founded a monastery on the Rhine near Basle. Trudbert went into the Black Forest and became a martyr to the cause. Kylian, the "Apostle of Franconia," went to Würzburg where he met with considerable success but lost his life.
The English were early drawn into this ardent missionary impulse. More missionaries were sent to Europe in the seventh and eighth centuries from England than go to-day to foreign fields.[243:3] Willibrord,[243:4] a native of Northumberland, educated in Ireland, embarked in 690 with seven assistants for Frisia at the mouth of the Rhine. The native prince was Radbod, an uncompromising pagan. Acting on the advice of Pepin of France he went to Rome and was invested with the bishopric of Utrecht. He then evangelised parts of Frankish Frisia, after which he visited Denmark. After a zealous career of half a century he died in 740. Other Englishmen followed in his wake. Adelbert laboured in the north of Holland,
Werenfrid near Elste, and Wiro among the natives of Guldres. The Ewald brothers were slain by the savage Saxons.[244:1] Wulfram, the Bishop of Sens, made excellent headway among Radbod's Frisians.[244:2] Indeed the zeal of these northern missionaries might have planted the Celtic Church firmly on the continent, had they not been so sadly deficient in capacity for organisation and had the Pope of Rome not been so zealously watchful.
Roman colonies on the Rhine in the third and fourth centuries first carried Christianity into Germany. In the Council of Arles (314) there were present a bishop and a deacon from Cologne, and a bishop from Treves. By the fifth century Christianity had been spread by Severinus,[244:3] an Italian monk, into Bavaria along the Danube.
It was really left to St. Boniface,[244:4] the "Apostle of Germany," to organise and unify the work already done, and to subject the Christian Church in Germany planted by his predecessors, to Rome. He was a most remarkable character and played an important part in the Christianisation of the Teutonic peoples. Born in 680 in Devonshire, England, of noble Saxon family, he early entered the monastery at Exeter, where he received an excellent education for that day. He soon evinced a longing for the life of a monk. His father gave his consent reluctantly, and he assumed monastic vows in a monastery near Winchester.
He became a famous preacher and expounder of Scripture, and at the age of thirty was ordained priest. He now felt called upon to carry the Gospel to the land of his ancestors. Consequently in 716, with two or three fellow-monks as companions, he crossed from London to Frisia to begin his missionary labours as the successor of Willibrord, whose successes had been largely reversed. Radbod, the baptised Frisian king, had backslid when he learned that his pagan forefathers were among the damned. He declared that he preferred "to be there with his ancestors rather than in heaven with a handful of beggars."[245:1] Hence he had devastated the Christian churches and monasteries, and was now at war with Charles Martel. King Radbod met Boniface, but refused to permit him to preach, so Boniface returned to England without having accomplished anything.
Notwithstanding the failure of this first enterprise, Boniface left England again in 718 and for ever; and now went through France to Rome to obtain papal sanction for his future missionary work. Pope Gregory II. formally commissioned him as missionary to the German tribes (719). Armed with that letter and many precious relics, he started north the following spring to his field of labour. First, he went to Thuringia and Bavaria, regions already partly Christianised, but at this time considerably disorganised, and demanded their submission to Rome; then, learning of King Radbod's death (719), he hastened to Frisia, where he laboured for three years with Willibrord, who had meantime returned to continue his