The greatest story in the world, period 2 (of 3)

by Horace G. Hutchinson

St. Augustine

You see what the effect, of that was—to bring England and the Continent of Europe together, into close relations with each other. They had been thus close together under the Romans, but the intercourse had been severed by the barbarians. Now it was resumed; and the Pope of Rome took advantage of it at once. The Franks were Christians. The Frank king's daughter, whom the Jute king of East Anglia had married, was a Christian. The Pope sent St. Augustine into Kent to preach Christianity; and he was so successful, as a missionary, that Christianity was admitted by the East Anglian king and by his people generally. Thence it made its way again info Northumbria.

So that seems entirely to contradict what I told you at the end of the last chapter, about Christianity being brought back into England, and so to some of the northern parts of Europe, not from Rome, but from Ireland.

The explanation of that apparent contradiction is that this conversion which was brought about by St. Augustine was not lasting. The Mercians, who had been tributary, that is had paid tribute, to the Northumbrian king, allied themselves with the Britons of Wales and claimed independence. Their king Penda was the last of the great champions in England of the heathen gods, and his long reign was a continuous struggle against the new religion. By 650 he had defeated all his rivals except the Northumbrians. Northumbria still held out against him, but St. Augustine's envoy, who had brought Christianity again to Northumbria, had departed after a victory gained by Penda over the Northumbrian king. Even in the south people relapsed in numbers into heathenism. The zeal for Christianity was kept alive in the north by influences that had come in through Ireland.

From the Irish churches, untroubled by the incursion of barbarians, missionaries had come westward. A famous monastery had been established on the island of Iona, off the west coast of Scotland. Thence the missionary monks had passed on into Scotland, still, at that time, called Caledonia and inhabited by the people called Picts. They had passed, too, across the northern part of England and had settled on the island which even now is called Holy Island, off the east coast of Northumberland. That was the centre from which the new King of Northumbria and his people were inspired with a zeal for the Christian religion which made them continue the struggle against the Mercian king whose lordship was at this time acknowledged over most of the rest of Britain. Oswi, the Northumbrian king, had received some of his education at the monastery of Iona. In 655 he met and utterly defeated the Mercian forces, under the aged king Penda, near the modern town of Leeds.

Synod of Whitby

That battle gave heathenism in England its death-blow, and the inspiration for that blow had come from the Irish Church. But then, England being thus again united to Rome by religion, and its intercourse with Gaul renewed, the envoys of Rome reappeared, and pleaded for the supremacy of the Pope of Rome over the English. The Irish Church differed in opinion from the Pope of Rome, as we are told, about the date at which Easter should be kept and about the fashion in which the priests' heads should be shaved. The English Christians had to adopt the one opinion or the other, and Oswi, the Christian champion, summoned a great meeting, called a Synod, at Whitby, to settle which of the two England should follow. The envoys of the two claimant Churches, the Romish and the Irish, pleaded the case before him, and it is asserted that he gave his decision in favour of Rome on being told that St. Peter was both the founder of the Romish Church and also that he held the key of the gate of Heaven. Oswi feared that he might offend St. Peter if he declared for Ireland rather than for Rome, and that St. Peter in consequence might not admit him through the heavenly gate. Thus England passed again under the spiritual rule of the Pope, and the Irish monks left their monastery on the Holy Island. But, both before and after this, some of them travelled into Northern Europe and preached Christianity among the German tribes, even so far north and west as the southern shores of the Baltic where the most numerous and most powerful people were the Frisians.

They do not enter very importantly into the making of the great story, but they were a great force along that Baltic coast. Very occasionally we find the name Frisians used for all those who were much more commonly called Saxons, and it is possible that they were of the same original stock; but that is a question which we need not try to settle.

In this manner, then, it was determined for England that she should be Christian, and no longer heathen; and it was determined also that she should follow the Romish way, in strict obedience to the Pope of Rome, rather than the Irish. But though all the English kingdoms became Christian, that religion common to them all did not for very long bring them at peace together. For the whole length of another century they were fighting among themselves, now one and now the other having the advantage, but never so decisively that any one of them could call himself king of all the English, or of England.

All this while the Frank kings were very powerful in Gaul, and though they never seem to have had any idea of attempting the conquest of Britain, they kept their eyes attentively fixed on what went on there; and their purpose seems to have been to keep the country in a state of division and disturbance. This they did by helping, or at least by promising to help, the one that was the weakest.