General History for Colleges and High Schools

by P. V. N. Myers

What happened to the Goths happened also to most of the barbarian tribes that participated in the overthrow of the Roman empire in the West. By the time of the fall of Rome, the Goths, the Vandals, the Suevi, the Burgundians, had all become proselytes to Christianity. The greater part of them, however, professed the Arian creed, which had been condemned by the great council of the church held at Nicæa during the reign of Constantine the Great (see p. 332). Hence they were regarded as heretics by the Roman Church, and all had to be reconverted to the orthodox creed, which was gradually effected.

The remaining Teutonic tribes of whose conversion we shall speak,—the
Franks, the Anglo Saxons, the Scandinavians, and the chief tribes of
Germany,—embraced at the outset the Catholic faith.

CONVERSION OF THE FRANKS.—The Franks, when they entered the empire, like the Angles and Saxons when they landed in Britain, were still pagans. Christianity gained way very slowly among them until a supposed interposition by the Christian God in their behalf led the king and nation to adopt the new religion in place of their old faith. The circumstances were these. In the year 496 of our era, the Alemanni crossed the Rhine and fell upon the Franks. A desperate battle ensued. In the midst of it, Clovis, falling upon his knees, called upon the God of the Christians, and solemnly vowed that if He would give victory to his arms, he would become his faithful follower. The battle turned in favor of the Franks, and Clovis, faithful to his vow, was baptized, and with him several thousand of his warriors. This incident illustrates how the very superstitions of the barbarians, their belief in omens and divine interpositions, contributed to their conversion.

AUGUSTINE'S MISSION TO THE ANGLES AND SAXONS IN BRITAIN.—In the year 596 Pope Gregory I. sent the monk Augustine with a band of forty companions to teach the Christian faith in Britain. Gregory had become interested in the inhabitants of that remote region in the following way. One day, some years before his elevation to the papal chair, he was passing through the slave-market at Rome, and noticed there some English captives, whose fair features awakened his curiosity respecting them. Inquiring of what nation they were, he was told that they were called Angles. "Right," said he, "for they have an angelic face, and it becomes such to become co-heirs with the angels in heaven." A little while afterwards he was elected Pope, and still mindful of the incident of the slave-market, he sent to the Angles the embassy to which we have alluded.

The monks were favorably received by the English, who listened attentively to the story the strangers had come to tell them, and being persuaded that the tidings were true, they burned the temples of Woden and Thor, and were in large numbers baptized in the Christian faith.

THE CELTIC CHURCH.—It here becomes necessary for us to say a word respecting the Celtic Church. Christianity, it must be borne in mind, held its place among the Celts whom the Saxons crowded slowly westward. Now, during the very period that England was being wrested from the Celtic warriors, the Celtic missionaries were effecting the spiritual conquest of Ireland. Among these messengers of the Cross, was a zealous priest named Patricius, better known as Saint Patrick, the patron saint of the Irish.

Never did any race receive the Gospel with more ardent enthusiasm. The Irish Church sent out its devoted missionaries into the Pictish Highlands, into the forests of Germany, and among the wilds of Alps and Apennines. "For a time it seemed," says the historian Green, "that the course of the world's history was to be changed; as if the older Celtic race that Roman and German had driven before them had turned to the moral conquest of their conquerors; as if Celtic, and not Latin, Christianity was to mould the destinies of the churches of the West."

Among the numerous religious houses founded by the Celtic missionaries was the famous monastery established about A.D. 564 by the Irish monk Saint Columba, on the little isle of Iona, just off the Pictish coast. Iona became a most renowned centre of Christian learning and missionary zeal, and for almost two centuries was the point from which radiated light through the darkness of the surrounding heathenism. Fitly has it been called the Nursery of Saints and the Oracle of the West.

RIVALRY BETWEEN THE ROMAN AND THE CELTIC CHURCH.—Now, from the very moment that Augustine touched the shores of Britain and summoned the Welsh clergy to acknowledge the discipline of the Roman Church, there had been a growing jealousy between the Latin and the Celtic Church, which by this time had risen into the bitterest rivalry and strife. So long had the Celtic Church been cut off from all relations with Rome, that it had come to differ somewhat from it in the matter of certain ceremonies and observances, such as the time of keeping Easter and the form of the tonsure. Furthermore, it was inclined to look upon St. John rather than upon St. Peter as the apostle of pre-eminence.

THE COUNCIL OF WHITBY (A.D. 664).—With a view to settling the quarrel Oswy, king of Northumbria, called a synod composed of representatives of both parties, at the monastery of Whitby. The chief question of debate, which was argued before the king by the ablest advocates of both Churches, was the proper time for the observance of Easter. Finally Wilfred, the speaker for the Roman party, happening to quote the words of Christ to Peter, "To thee will I give the keys of the kingdom of heaven," the king asked the Celtic monks if these words were really spoken by Christ to that apostle, and upon their admitting that they were, Oswy said, "He being the door-keeper,… I will in all things obey his decrees, lest when I come to the gates of the kingdom of heaven, there should be none to open them." [Footnote: Bede's Eccl. Hist. III. 25.]