The Christian Church in These Islands before the Coming of Augustine / Three Lectures Delivered at St. Paul's in January 1894

by G. F. Browne

It is time to draw towards a conclusion of this hasty scramble over a full field.

If any one asks, where is the old Irish Church now? Dr. Todd, in his Life of St. Patrick (1864), gives in effect the following answer: ‘The Danish bishops of Waterford and Dublin in the eleventh century entirely ignored the Irish Church and the successors of St. Patrick; they received consecration from the see of Canterbury; and from that time there were two Churches in Ireland. Then, the Anglo-Norman settlers of the twelfth century ignored the native bishops, on very high authority. Pope Adrian the Fourth, who was himself an Englishman, claimed possession of Ireland under the supposed donation of Constantine, as being an island. He gave it to Henry the Second, charging him to convert to the true Christian faith the ignorant and uncivilised tribes who inhabited it, and to exterminate the nurseries of vices, and—with an eye to business—to pay to St. Peter a penny in every year for every house in the country. It is clear that there was to be no recognition of the old Irish Church. In 1367 the Irish Parliament at Kilkenny enacted the famous Statute of Kilkenny. It was made penal to present any Irishman to an ecclesiastical benefice, and penal for any religious house within the English pale to receive any Irishman to their profession. Three archbishops and five bishops were to excommunicate all who violated the act. These prelates were all appointed by papal provision; some were consecrated at Avignon; their names tell the old story, Galatian biting Galatian, Celt devouring Celt. There were among the excommunicators an O’Carroll, an O’Grada, and an O’Cormacan. And so it came that when the Anglo-Irish Church accepted the Reformation, the old Irish Church was extinct.’ My next sentence is quoted exactly from Dr. Todd. “Missionary bishops and priests, therefore, ordained abroad, were sent into Ireland to support the interests of Rome; and from them is derived a third Church, in close communion with the see of Rome, which has now assumed the forms and dimensions of a national established religion.”

If any one asks, where is the old Scottish Church now? Dr. Skene in his Celtic Scotland gives in effect the following answer. ‘The old Scottish Church was a monastic system. It worked well as long as the ecclesiastical character of the monasteries was preserved. But the assimilation to Rome introduced secular clergy, side by side with the monastic clergy, and this ended in the establishment of a parochial system and a diocesan episcopacy, which still further isolated the old church in its monasteries. Then the monasteries themselves fell into the hands of lay abbats, who held them as hereditary property, and they ceased to be ecclesiastical establishments. These changes occupied the earlier part of the twelfth century. About the middle of that century the Culdees, the sole remaining representatives of the old order of clergy, were absorbed into the cathedral chapters by being made regular canons; and thus the last remains of the old Scottish Church disappeared.’ This was chiefly done in David’s reign.

The old Cumbrian Church, that is, the Church of the Britons of Strathclyde, of which we have spoken under Ninian and Kentigern, had all but disappeared in the times of confusion and revolution which began with the Danish invasions. The same David who as king brought the old Scottish Church to an end, as earl had reconstituted Kentigern’s diocese. The Culdees who had once formed the chapter had quite disappeared, and absorption was unnecessary. Glasgow had given to it in 1147 the decanal constitution of Salisbury, by Bishop Herbert, consecrated by the Pope at Auxerre. About 1133 Whithorn was reconstituted a bishopric, as suffragan to York; and Carlisle was made a bishopric, as suffragan to York. Other parts had gone before. Thus all vestiges of the old British Church of Cumbria had entirely disappeared before 1150.

The old British Church in Cornwall and Devon came to an end in this way. In 884 King Alfred formed in Devonshire a West-Saxon see, and made Asser the Saxon Bishop. Cornwall was made to undergo several changes, and at last, in 1050, was merged in the see of Exeter. It is a matter of very great difficulty to approach to a determination as to where the British see of Cornwall, or of Cornwall and Devon, really was,—or the sees, if there were more than one. All record has perished.

If any one asks, where is the old British Church of what is now England? the answer is very different. The old Church is living still. The Bishops of the four dioceses of Wales rule it still. There is a curious irony in the historical contrast between 594 and 1894, in calling attention to which I make and mean no political remark. Political remarks in this place, on this occasion, from one who could not if he would, and would not if he could, dissociate himself from membership of a corporate body, with the reticence which that position sometimes enjoins, and who hopes that his audience is very far from being composed of persons of one set of political views only, political remarks would be merely offensive. The contrast is this. In 594, the Christian bishops of Britain had fled before the pagan English and established themselves in Wales, where they gradually gathered endowments for their holy purposes. In 1894, it is a question of the day whether the Christian English will disestablish them and assign their endowments to purposes less holy.

The old British Church of what is now Wales of course exists still in Wales, with a history quite unbroken from the earliest centuries. If we must specially localise it, St. David’s probably is its most direct representative. But it is not possible to draw any clear line between the representatives of the Church in Wales before the English occupation of Britain, and the present representatives of those who fled to Wales to escape from the pagan English.

Just one or two remarks on peculiarities of the Church in Britain.

I have spoken of the writings of Fastidius and Gildas, and have accepted as genuine the writings ascribed to St. Patrick. In all of these we find quotations from the Scripture, and they tell us what is very interesting about the version from which they quote. A hundred or a thousand years hence it will be quite easy for those who read—say—the sermon delivered at St. Paul’s last Sunday afternoon, to determine whether the preacher used the Authorised or the Revised Version. So we can tell with ease whether a writer about 430, or 470, or 570, used Jerome’s Vulgate Version, or the earlier and ruder Latin Version which preceded it. Of that ruder version there were many differing editions—so to call them. Jerome got a number of copies of it, before setting to work, and he found almost as many differing revisions as there were copies.

Now Fastidius, writing about 430, in the time when intercourse with Gaul and Italy was still full, affords clear evidence that he knew, and on occasion used, the Vulgate. But the Vulgate was very new then, and he much more frequently quoted from the older version. Patrick, fifty years later, has indications that he had some slight knowledge of the Vulgate, if indeed these indications be not due to copyists. Instead of advance in knowledge, Patrick’s writing shews isolation from the sources of new knowledge. Gildas, on the other hand, 100 years later, but while Britain was all under the heel of the pagan Saxon, and cut off from the Christian world, shews a very clear advance in the use of the newer version, as might be expected from one of the leading men in the great seminary of South Wales. It seems to me that this strengthens the belief that from and after the time of Martin of Tours, South Wales had means of access to continental scholarship by way of Britany, and not through Britain only.