The Christian Church in These Islands before the Coming of Augustine Part 2

With Pelagius himself we have but little to do. He spent his life far from his native sh.o.r.es; he propounded his views in Rome and Carthage and Palestine, not in London and York and Bangor. But the history of what happened to him and his views in those distant parts is so curious--if one may say so, so comical--and the evidence it affords of the importance of the controversy is so great, that I must say a little about it. We shall find in it, I think, an explanation of the course taken by the British Church.

At Rome Pelagius met Coelestius, a Scot--that is, a native of Ireland--and Coelestius became a devoted champion of his views, publis.h.i.+ng them in a more definite form than Pelagius himself adopted. These views were condemned at a Council held at Carthage in 412. A Council at Jerusalem in 415 heard the explanations of Pelagius and did not condemn him. A Council at Lydda in the same year fully accepted his explanations, to the great wrath of Jerome. Carthage then took the matter up again, and requested that Pelagius should be summoned to return to Rome, and the whole matter be fully inquired into there, the controversy being one affecting the West and not the East. To enable the Bishop to form an opinion on the views of Pelagius, they sent him a copy of one of his books, with the worst pa.s.sages marked. Innocent, the Bishop of Rome, gladly received this request, treating it as a request for his authoritative verdict, which it was not. He replied in three letters dated January 27, 417. He began each with a strong a.s.sertion of the supreme authority of his see, and many expressions of his satisfaction that the controversy had been referred to him for final decision. The Bishop was clearly not to the manner born.

These were not the sayings of unconscious dignity, of unquestionable authority. He did protest too much. The book of Pelagius forwarded to him he p.r.o.nounced unhesitatingly to be blasphemous and dangerous; and he gave his judgement that Pelagius, Coelestius, and all abettors of their views, ought to be excommunicated.

Nothing could be more clear. But, unfortunately for the consistency of official infallibility, Innocent died six weeks after writing these letters, and Zosimus succeeded him. Coelestius and Pelagius between them were too much for Zosimus. Coelestius came to Rome. He argued with Zosimus that the points in dispute lay outside the limits of necessary articles of faith, and declared his adherence to the Catholic faith in all points.

Pelagius did not come, but he wrote to Zosimus. Zosimus declared the letter and creed of Pelagius to be thoroughly Catholic, and free from all ambiguity; and the Pelagians to be men of unimpeachable faith, who had been wrongly defamed. Augustine appears to imply that in his opinion Zosimus had allowed himself to be deceived by the specious and subtle admissions of the heretics.

Zosimus did not rest satisfied with that. He wrote to the African bishops, vehemently upbraiding them with their readiness to condemn, and declaring that Pelagius and his followers had never really been estranged from Catholic truth. Far from accepting his decision or his rebukes, the Africans, who enjoyed a successful tussle with a Pope, sent a subdeacon with a long reply. Zosimus, in acknowledging their letter, wrote in extravagant terms of the dignity of his own position as the supreme judge of religious appeals, and, quaintly enough, hinted at the possibility of reconsidering his decision. The Africans did not wait. They met in synod, 214 bishops or more, and pa.s.sed nine canons, anathematizing the Pelagian views. The Emperors Honorius and Theodosius banished Pelagius and Coelestius from Rome. What was Pope Zosimus to do, under these singularly trying circ.u.mstances? These men, thus banished from Rome, he had declared to be men of unimpeachable faith, wrongly defamed, never estranged from Catholic truth. He dealt with the matter in this way. He wrote a circular letter, declaring that the Popes inherit from St. Peter a divine authority equal to that of St. Peter, derived from the power which our Lord bestowed on him; so that no one can question the Pope's decision. He then proceeded to censure, as contrary to the Catholic faith, the tenets of Pelagius and Coelestius, specially censuring some of Pelagius's comments on St. Paul which had been laid before him since his former decision. He ordered all bishops, in the churches acknowledging his authority, to subscribe to the terms of his letter on pain of deprivation. In Italy itself, Rome's own Italy, eighteen bishops protested against this change of front, and were deprived of their sees under the authority of the civil power.

Of course all men, however exalted their position, are liable to these sudden changes, whether pressed by external circ.u.mstances or impelled by inward conviction. And men who have themselves known what it is to be tried in any such way, on however humble a scale, are inclined rather to feel with them than sharply to condemn them; especially when, as in this case, their second thoughts are best. But if they are to be treated thus, with kindly judgement not unmixed with sympathy, they must not herald their change of view with statements that they have a divine authority, equal to that of St. Peter, and that no one can question their contradictory decisions.

To come nearer home after this long digression, which yet is not really a digression from the British point of view. The views of Pelagius had considerable success in Gaul, and gave a good deal of trouble there. In Britain their success was alarmingly great. The bishops and clergy were unable to make head against the wave of heresy. Whether there was anything, in the independence of the position claimed by Pelagius for man, which specially appealed to the nature of the Britons and their Celtic congeners; anything in the claim of each individual to be good enough in himself, if he pleases to be good enough; which harmonised with the opinion those races had--dare I say have?--of themselves; these are questions to which I cannot venture to give an answer. There the fact remains, that Pelagianism did appeal very strongly to the temperament of those who then dwelt in our land. And coupled with this is the fact, that, however orthodox the clergy and bishops might be, and however well versed in the great controversy in which in the previous century they had played their part, the subtleties of this new controversy, initiated as it was by one of their own or kindred race, springing up from their own nature and appealing to the nature of their people, were too much for them--as indeed they had been for Pope Zosimus. Agricola was the name of the man who acted as the apostle of the Pelagians in the home regions, the son, we are told, of a bishop of Pelagian views.

What our predecessors may have lacked in subtlety, they more than made up in practical common sense. If they could not grapple with the heresy themselves, they sent for those who could. They applied to their nearest ecclesiastical neighbour, the Church of Gaul, to which no doubt they looked partly as their mother and partly as their elder sister. The account of their application and the response it met with comes to us from a life of Germa.n.u.s, Bishop of Auxerre, the person chiefly concerned, written by special request forty years after his death by an eminent person, and published on the request of the then Bishop of Auxerre. When the application reached the heads of the Gallican Church, a numerous synod was called together, and Germa.n.u.s, Bishop of Auxerre, and Lupus, Bishop of Troyes, were appointed to visit Britain. The manner of treating the heresy had been forced upon the attention of the Gallican prelates by their own experiences. At that very time semi-Pelagianism was rife in the south of Gaul, about Ma.r.s.eilles, and it continued in force there for a long time, another fellow-countryman of ours, Faustus the Briton, imbuing even the famous monastery of Lerins with this modified form of the heresy. To concert measures for dealing with the south of Gaul, Prosper of Aquitaine, a monk and probably a layman, afterwards secretary to Pope Leo the Great, went to Rome about two years after this to consult the Pope, and from Celestine he no doubt heard what he repeated or embellished twenty-five years later. He tells us that the Pope took pains to keep the "Roman island" Catholic, referring of course to the long occupation of Britain by the Roman troops, at this time abandoned. In another pa.s.sage, whose genuineness has been questioned, Prosper says that Celestine sent Germa.n.u.s in his own stead to Britain. Prosper was certainly in a position to receive from the best-informed source an account of what was done; but the Gallican Church appears to have known nothing of this sending of Germa.n.u.s by Celestine. Prosper's inclination to magnify the importance of the Popes has been referred to already[29]; and we may take it as certain that if such an unparalleled step as going himself or sending some one in his stead, a forecast of Gregory's action, had been attempted or taken by the Pope, we should have heard of it in the records of Gaul or in the life of Germa.n.u.s. The successor of Germa.n.u.s would have known of it. That Celestine had known at the time what was going on, and that he felt and probably expressed warm approval, we may regard as certain too. I must defer, to an opportunity in my third lecture, remarks which I wish to make on what may seem an ungenerous questioning of these a.s.sertions of benefits conferred by Rome.

In 429, then, the Gallican prelates came to Britain. They had a very rough crossing, and a story, rejected with scorn by quite modern writers, is told of a miracle wrought by Germa.n.u.s. He stilled the storm by pouring oil upon the sea in the name of the Trinity. We now know that if they had oil on board, and knew how to use it, the stilling of the waves was done; without miracle, but with not the less earnest trust in the watchful care of G.o.d[30].

It was on this journey to Britain that Germa.n.u.s and Lupus saw at Nanterre a little girl aged seven, and prophesied great things of her. Her name was Genofeva, and she became the famous Ste. Genevieve. In these days when people coquet with the principles of revolution and shut their eyes to its realities, it may be well to add that her coffin of silver and gold was sold in 1793, and her body burned on the Place de Greve, by public decree.

When they got to work in Britain, they proceeded on a definite plan. Some sixty or seventy years before, Hilary, the Bishop of Poitiers, dealing in Gaul with the great heresy which preceded this, had found it of great service to go about from place to place and collect in different parts small a.s.semblies of the bishops, for free discussion and mutual explanation. He found that misunderstandings were in this way, better than in any other, got rid of, and differences of opinion were reduced to a minimum. Germa.n.u.s and Lupus dealt with the people of Britain as their predecessor had dealt with the bishops of Gaul. They went all over, discussing the great question with the people whom they found. They preached in the churches, they addressed the people on the highroads, they sought for them in the fields, and followed them up bypaths. It is clear that the visitors from Gaul could speak to the people, both in town and in country, in their own tongue, or in a tongue well understood by them. No doubt the native speech of Gaul and that of Britain were still so closely akin that no serious difficulty was felt in this respect. They met with success so great that the leaders on the other side were forced to take action. They felt, so the biographer tells us, not that his is likely to be convincing evidence as to their feelings, that they must run the risk of defeat rather than seem by silence to give up the cause. They undertook to dispute with the Gallicans in public. The biographer is not an impartial chronicler. The Pelagians came to the disputation with many outward signs of pomp and wealth, richly dressed, and attended by a crowd of supporters. Why should the biographer thus indicate that the Pelagian heresy was specially rife among great and wealthy and popular people?

Perhaps it may be the case, that, with imperfectly civilised people, a position of wealth and distinction tends to make men less humble in their view of the need of the grace of G.o.d. Besides the princ.i.p.als, we are told that immense numbers of people came to hear the dispute, bringing with them their wives and children; coming, in the important phrase of the biographer, to play the part of spectator and judge. That is the first note we have of the function of the laity in religious disputes in this land of ours. It is a pregnant hint. The disputants were now face to face.

On one side divine authority, on the other human presumption; on one side faith, on the other perfidy; on one side Christ, on the other Pelagius.

The description is Constantius's, not mine. The bishops set the Pelagians to begin, and a weary business the Pelagians made of it. Then their turn came. They poured forth torrents of eloquence, apostolical and evangelical thunders. They quoted the scriptures. The opponents had nothing to say.

The people, to whose arbitration it was put, scarce could keep their hands off them; the decision was given by acclamation, against the Pelagians.

Where did this take place? Certainly not far from Verulam, for Constantius goes on to say that the bishops hastened to the shrine of St. Alban, which at the request of Germa.n.u.s was opened, that he might deposit there some relics which he had brought with him. He took away, in exchange, some earth from the actual spot of the martyrdom. Presumably the disputation took place somewhere near London, on the road to St. Albans; perhaps at Verulam itself.

The British Church was thus saved from enemies within; but enemies without soon had it by the throat. There were no Roman troops to guard the northern wall, to guard the Saxon sh.o.r.e. The Roman troops had gone, and with them the flower of the British youth[31]. From north and east the barbarians poured in upon the Britons, pell mell. Gildas, crying bitter tears, and using bitter ink, in his Welsh monastery, tells us of the weakness and the follies of the British and their kings, of the cruelties of the barbarous folk. We see in his pages the smoke of burned churches, the blood of murdered Christians. Matthew of Westminster tells us that the churches that were burned had the happier fate. In thirty cases churches were saved and made into heathen temples, the altars polluted with pagan sacrifice. But the Saxons and Angles made way so slowly that it is certain they met with a much st.u.r.dier opposition than Gildas credits his countrymen with. Strive as they would, however, and did, the Britons gradually gave way. Thus, and thus only, can we fill the dreary void in British history, which we know as the first hundred and fifty years of the Making of England.

This brings us very near to the end of our period. Not of our subject; for in my concluding lecture I have to deal--with sad scantness--with the Christian Church in other parts of these islands, before and at the coming of Augustine.

In the twenty years immediately preceding the arrival of Augustine, the long line of British Bishops of London came to an end. It has been a subject of remark, and of moralising, that Theonus, the last bishop, lost heart and fled just when the chance was coming for which it is presumed that he had been waiting, the actual beginning of the conversion of the English. But remarks of this character are misplaced; they disregard--or are ignorant of--the political facts of the time. Theonus of London was a British bishop in a British city. London had not fallen. Most difficult of access in the then state of land and water, of marsh and mud, whether from north or south or east or west, it held out to the last. The earliest date that can be a.s.signed to its fall is about the year 568, and a date so early as that is only given to account for Ethelbert's being able to take his army from Kent to Wimbledon without interruption from London. But for that, and there may be other explanations of it, it is quite possible to put the taking of London by the East Saxons a few years later. But it is not necessary for our purpose. The date of the flight of Theonus has been said to be 586. It is probable that this is about the date of Ethelbert's vigorous action northwards, by which he made himself over-lord of his East Saxon neighbours and of London their most recent conquest, which they appear not to have occupied for some years after its fall. The political and administrative changes, due to this expansion of the power of Kent, may well have made ruined London no longer a possible place of residence, and of work, for a Christian Briton so prominent in position and office as the Bishop of London must always have been. It seems probable that Matthew of Westminster was not far wrong when he wrote that in 586 Theonus took with him the relics of the saints, and such of the ordained clergy as had survived the perils, and retired to Wales. Others, he says, fled further, to the continental Britain. Thadioc of York, he adds, went at the same time. In some parts, as for instance about Glas...o...b..ry, the British Christians remained undisturbed by the English for sixty or seventy years longer[32].

A year or two ago, when we set up the list of Bishops of London in the south aisle here, there was at first an inclination in some quarters to criticise the decision at which we arrived as to the bishops of the British period. But the explanations kindly given by those who approved our action soon put a stop to that. There is a list of Archbishops of London before Augustine's time, beginning about the year 180 and ending with Theonus, whose date may be put about 580. In those four centuries, sixteen names are given, a number clearly insufficient for 400 years. The names are specially insufficient in the later part of the time, only four being given between 314 and 580. This is rather in favour of the four names being real; for it is evident that if people were inventing names, they might as well have invented twenty, while they were about it, instead of only four, for 260 years[33].

The traditions of York do not supply any long list of bishops, continuous or not. Eborius, at Arles in 314, is the first named. And there are only three others, each of whom has a date with Matthew of Westminster, Sampson 507, Piran 522, Thadioc 586. York probably fell as early as the date a.s.signed to Sampson; who, by the way, was created Archbishop of York by the forgers of the twelfth century, to back up an ecclesiastical claim on the continent.

The decision at which we arrived in respect of the London list was to give one name only, that of Rest.i.tutus, putting a row of dots above him and below him, to shew that there were British bishops before him, probably very few, and British bishops after him, certainly many. Rest.i.tutus signed the decrees of the Council of Arles, as Bishop of London, in the year 314.

That is sure ground; and in a list of bishops, set up officially in the Cathedral Church, nothing less solid than sure ground should be taken.

As to the British Bishops of London being styled archbishops, there is no evidence for it. Our famous Dean Ralph (A. D. 1181), no mean historian, left on record his view that there were three archbishoprics[34] in Britain--London, York, and Caerleon--which last, he said, corresponded to St. David's. Whether Gregory had some information that has since been lost, respecting the ecclesiastical arrangements which had existed here, we cannot say; but it is a curious coincidence, explicable perhaps by the mere importance of the two places, that he directed Augustine to make arrangements for a metropolitan at London, with twelve suffragans, and a metropolitan at York with twelve suffragans. The complete arrangements, as set out by Gregory when he sent an additional supply of missionaries to Augustine, of whom Mellitus was one, were as follows. Augustine was told to ordain in various places twelve bishops, to be subject to his control, so that London should for the future be a metropolitan see; and it appears that Gregory contemplated Augustine's occupying as a matter of course the position of Bishop of London[35]. He was to ordain and send to York a suitable bishop, who should in like manner ordain twelve bishops and become the metropolitan. The northern metropolitan was to be under Augustine's jurisdiction; but after Augustine's death he was to be independent of London, and for the future the metropolitan who was senior in consecration was to have precedence[36]. This takes no account of the bishops existing in what we call Wales and Cornwall. Gregory specially declared that those bishops, then at least seven in number, were subject to Augustine. It is impossible that these seven were to be included among the twelve suffragans of London, for with Rochester and Canterbury that would leave only three bishops for the whole of the rest of the south of England. That the tradition of British times, and a part of the scheme actually laid down by Gregory, should be carried out in our time, would be I think an excellent thing. An Archbishop of London, with some half-dozen suffragans, with dioceses and diocesan rank, in districts of this great wilderness of houses, would be a solution of some very difficult problems.

There were two names in the traditional list which it was thought we might at least have included along with Rest.i.tutus. One was that of the last on the list, Theonus. But the evidence for him, though quite sufficient for ordinary purposes, was not of the highest order. The other was that of Fastidius, the last but two on the list. His date--for he was a real and well-known man--was much earlier than that position would indicate, for he was described, among ill.u.s.trious men, by a writer who lived a full century before Theonus, the last on the list. This writer, Gennadius of Ma.r.s.eilles, informs us that Fastidius was a British bishop. One important ma.n.u.script has, in place of this, "Fastidius a Briton," as if his being a bishop was not certain. In any case there is nothing to connect him with the bishopric of London, or with London, beyond the natural a.s.signment to the most important position of a man not specially a.s.signed by the earliest historian. His date is probably about 430 to 450.

This Fastidius is the only writer of the British Church, besides Pelagius if we can properly reckon him as one, whose work has come down to us. I do not know that the early British Christians produced any writers other than Fastidius and Pelagius. Had their records not been destroyed, it might well have been that many a ma.n.u.script work of British bishops would have remained till the middle ages and been now in print. Fastidius and Gildas are sufficient evidence of the literary tendencies of the British mind.

Indeed, we may credit the Britons of the time of Gildas with having been laborious students, those, at least, who were settled in Wales. Their Celtic cousins had a pa.s.sion for writing.

We find Gennadius of Ma.r.s.eilles testifying to the soundness of the doctrine of Fastidius, and its worthiness of G.o.d. But who shall testify to the soundness of Gennadius? He was a semi-Pelagian; and so it appears was Fastidius, for whose soundness he vouches. Fastidius distinctly quotes from Pelagius, though without mentioning him by name. He uses the phrase which is the keynote of Pelagianism, man sinned "after the example of Adam;" and he describes the manner in which saints should pray, in words which cannot be independent of Pelagius's words on that subject.

Apart from their heretical tendency, the works or work of Fastidius may be taken as containing excellent teaching. He naturally presses most the practical side, the necessity of a good life. "Our Lord said," he shrewdly reminds the reader, "If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments; He did not say keep faith only. For if faith is all that is required, it is too much to say that the commandments must be kept. Far be it from me to suppose, that my Lord said too much on any point." One interesting allusion to the state of the country in his time, the Christian settlements here and there in the midst of a heathen population, it may be the Romano-Briton among the unmixed Britons, occurs in a pa.s.sage full of practical teaching:--"It is the will of G.o.d that His people should be holy, and free from all stain of unrighteousness; so righteous, so merciful, so pure, so unspotted from the world, so single-hearted, that the heathen should find in them no fault, but should say in wonder, Blessed is the nation whose G.o.d is the Lord, and the people whom He hath chosen for His own inheritance."

LECTURE III.

Early Christianity in other parts of these islands.--Ninian in the south-west of Scotland.--Palladius and Patrick in Ireland.--Columba in Scotland--Kentigern in c.u.mbria.--Wales.--Cornwall.--The fate of the several Churches.--Special rites &c. of the British Church.--General conclusion.

We are to consider this evening the early existence of Christianity in other parts of these islands, in order that we may have some idea of the actual extent to which Christianity prevailed in England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, at the time when Augustine came to Kent.

The Italians appear to have blamed the British Church for its want of missionary zeal. But that only applied to missions to the Angles and Saxons; and I have never quite been able to see how the Britons could be expected to go to their sanguinary and conquering foes with any message, least of all to tell them that their religion was hopelessly false. The expulsion of the Britons from the land of their fathers was too recent for that; the retort of the Saxons too apposite, that at least their G.o.ds had shewn themselves stronger than the G.o.d of the Britons.

It is a curious fact that we know more of the work of the British Church beyond its borders than at home; and what we know of it is very much to its credit. Somewhere about the year 395, when the inroads of barbarians from the north had become a grave danger, and the territory between the walls had been abandoned by the Romano-Britons, one of the British nation, who had studied at Rome the doctrine and discipline of the Western Church, and had studied among the Gauls at Tours, established himself among the Picts of Galloway and built there a church of stone. The story is that he heard of the death of his friend Martin of Tours when he was building his church, and that he dedicated it to him. This, which after all is a late story in its present form, but is, as I think, to be fully accepted, gives us the date 397; the only sure date in Ninian's history. From this south-west corner of Scotland he spread the faith, we are told, throughout the southern Picts, that is, as far north as the Grampians.

This Christianising of the Picts may not have been very lasting. Patrick more than once speaks of them[37] as the apostate Picts. It did not prevent their ravaging Christian Britain, denuded of the Roman troops. But it had a great influence in another way. The monastery of Whithorn, which Ninian founded, was for some considerable time the training place of Christian priests and bishops and monks, both for Britain, and, especially, for Ireland. The Irish traditions make Ninian retire from Britain and live the later part of his life in Ireland, where he is certainly commemorated under the name Monenn,--"Mo" being the affectionate prefix "my," and Monenn meaning "my Ninian."

Ninian lived and worked, we are told, for many years, dying in 432, a date for which there is no known authority. That period covers the second, third, and fourth withdrawal of the Roman troops from the northern frontier and from Britain[38]; a time when British Christians might well have said they had more than enough to do at home. Ninian's work has left for us memorials such as no other part of these islands can shew. There are three great upright stones, one at Whithorn itself, and two at Kirkmadrine, that in all human certainty come from his time. They are in complete accordance with what we know of sepulchral monuments in Roman Gaul. Each has a cross in a circle deeply incised, with the member of an R attached to one limb, so as to form the Chi Rho monogram. The Chi Rho is found as early as 312 in Rome and 377 in Gaul, with Alpha and Omega, 355 in Rome and 400 in Gaul. _Hic iacet_ is found in 365. The stone at Whithorn itself has _Petri Apustoli_ rather rudely carved on it. The two at Kirkmadrine have Latin inscriptions[39] well cut, running apparently from one to the other, as though they had stood at the head and foot of a grave in which the four priests were buried:--"here lie the chief priests"--some say that at that time _sacerdotes_ meant bishops--"that is, Viventius and Mavorius" "[Piu]s and Florentius." One of these latter stones has at the top, above the circle, the Alpha and Omega[40]. I ought to say "had," for some years ago a carriage was seen from a distance to drive up to the end of the lane leading to the desolate burying-place, a man got out, went to the stone, knocked off with a hammer the corner which bore the Omega, and made off with it. They are since then scheduled as ancient monuments. There was formerly a third stone, which bore the very unusual Latin equivalent of Alpha and Omega, _initium et finis_, "the beginning and the end." These remains in a solitary place may indicate the wealth of very early monuments we must once have had in this island, long ago broken up by men who saw nothing in them but stones. Time would fail if I were to begin to tell of the recent exploration of the cave known by immemorial tradition as Ninian's cave, and of the sculptured treasures of early Christianity found there. There is in this same territory between the walls, but nearer the northern wall, another memorial of the later British times. It is a huge stone a few miles north-west of Edinburgh, with a rude Latin inscription[41], _In this tumulus lies Vetta, son of Victis_. It takes us to the time when, along with the Picts and Scots who ravaged Britain, we hear for the first time of allies of the ravagers called Saxons. We are accustomed to think of the Saxons as coming first from the south-east and east; but we hear of them first in this region of which we are speaking. As Vetta and Victis correspond to the names of the father and grandfather of Hengist and Horsa, it is difficult to resist the suggestion that in this great Cat Stane, that is, Battle Stone, we have the monument set up by the Romano-Britons, in triumph over the fallen chief of the Saxon marauders. If this is so, the sons of Vetta found the south of the island better quarters than their father found the north, though Horsa, it is true, was killed soon. A great monument bearing his name was to be seen in Bede's time in Kent, and this fact serves to confirm the a.s.signment of the Cat Stane to another generation of his family.

Ninian affords one of the many evidences of a close connection between Britain and Gaul. We should have been surprised if there had not been this close connection; but somehow or other it has been a good deal overlooked.

He dedicated his church to his friend St. Martin of Tours. In the Romano-British times a church at the other end of the island, in Canterbury, had a like dedication; and these are the only Romano-British dedications of which we are sure, so far as I know.

In these dedications we may find an interesting ill.u.s.tration of what took place in Gaul, especially in the parts near Britain. There are eighty-six dioceses in modern France, and there are in all no less than 3,668 churches dedicated to St. Martin. There are eight of the eighty-six dioceses which have more than 100 churches thus dedicated, and all of these eight are in the regions opposite to the sh.o.r.es of Britain. Amiens has 148; Arras 157; Bayeux 107; Beauvais 110; Cambray 122; Coutances 103; Rouen 112; Soissons 158. Here again is an instance which shows Soissons prominent in a British connection[42]. No other diocese has more than eighty-four; and only five others have more than seventy. The Christian poet of the sixth century, writing at Poitiers of St. Martin, declares that the Spaniard, the Moor, the Persian, the Briton, loved him. This order of countries is due only to the exigencies of metre. Gaul is not named, because it was the centre of the cult of St. Martin, and there Fortunatus wrote.

Next in order of time, we must turn to the main home of the Celtic or Gaelic Church, the main centre of its many activities, Ireland. As is very well known, Ireland never formed part of the Roman empire; never came under that iron hand, which left such clear-cut traces of its fingers wherever it fastened its grip. Agricola used to talk of taking possession, about the year 80 A. D., but he never went. He had looked into the question, and he thought the enterprise not at all a serious one, from a military point of view; while, as a matter of policy, he was strongly inclined to it. His son-in-law Tacitus tells us this[43], in one of those little bursts of confidential talk which obliterate the eighteen centuries that intervene, and make us hear rather than read what he says. "I have often heard Agricola say that with one legion, and a fair amount of auxiliaries, Ireland could be conquered and held; and that it would be a great help, in governing Britain, if the Roman arms were seen in all parts, and freedom were put out of sight." If this means that Ireland could be seen from the parts of Britain of which he was speaking, we must understand that he spoke of the Britons north of the Solway; and we know that after his operations against Anglesey he pa.s.sed on to subdue the parts of Wigton and Dumfries, and, two years later, Cantyre and Argyll.

Those are the parts of this island from which Ireland is easily visible.

Of course we all know that St. Patrick was the Apostle of Ireland. That puts the introduction of Christianity rather late; the date of Patrick's death, which best suits at once the national traditions and the arguments from contemporary events, being A. D. 493. Those who feel bound to give him a mission from Pope Celestine put his death in 460, rather than face the difficulty of making him live to be 120--or, as some say, 132.

The story of St. Patrick's life is told by many people in many different ways, both in modern times and in ancient. In one of the accounts, known as the Tripart.i.te Life, written in early Irish, we find mention of the existence of Christianity in Ireland before his time. He and his attendants were about to perform divine service in the land of the Ui Oiliolls, when it was found that the sacred vessels were wanting. Patrick, thereupon, divinely instructed, pointed out a cave in which they must dig with great care, lest the gla.s.s vessels be broken. They dug up an altar, having at its corners four chalices of gla.s.s. Even in the Book of Armagh we find that Patrick shewed to his presbyter a wonderful stone altar on a mountain in this region. This may seem a slight basis on which to found the existence of Christianity before Patrick, but its incidental character gives it importance; and traditions of early times support the conclusion. The whole of an elaborate story of Patrick finding bishops in Munster, and coming to a compromise with them, is a late invention, forged for an ecclesiastical purpose.

There is certainly evidence of an intention to preach Christianity in Ireland before Patrick's time, and this evidence itself affords evidence of a still earlier teaching. In speaking of the visit of Germa.n.u.s to Britain to put down Pelagianism, the first of two visits as tradition says, I intentionally said nothing about the visit of Germa.n.u.s's deacon Palladius to Rome. Some writers would not allow the phrases "Germa.n.u.s's deacon," and "visit to Rome." They say that Palladius was a deacon of Rome; from that he is made archdeacon of the Pope; and from that again a cardinal and Nuncio apostolical. But I shall take him to be the deacon of Germa.n.u.s, a Gaul by birth and education, though some believe that he must have been himself an Irishman.

The Chronicle of Prosper of Aquitaine, of which we have heard before[44], has in the less corrupt of the two editions the statement that in 431 "Palladius was consecrated by Pope Celestine, and sent to the Scots believing in Christ, as their first bishop." The Scots, of course, then and for some centuries later, were the Irish. It is interesting to us to find Pope Leo XIII, in his Bull restoring the Scottish hierarchy in 1878, gravely taking Prosper to mean that Celestine sent Palladius as the apostle of the Scots in the modern sense of the word, that is, the people of what we call Scotland. Fordun, the chronicler of Scotland, came upon the same rock, and was driven by consequence into wild declarations about the work of Palladius in North Britain. Fordun, however, had the disadvantage of not being infallible.

Prosper of Aquitaine is not a person to be implicitly followed, when the subject is the claims and the great deeds of bishops of Rome. There is a fair suspicion that it was he who credited Eleutherus with the mission to Lucius[45]. His very t.i.tle, Prosper of Aquitaine, reminds us that Aquitaine includes Gascony. He is suspected of being a romancer. With him, as indeed with many of the evidences of the importance of the action of Rome in early times, great caution is necessary.

Remarks of this kind I do not make from choice; they are forced upon me.

It is a pleasure of a very real kind to feel grateful; but when people base upon benefits conferred very large demands and claims, one's feelings of grat.i.tude rapidly and permanently take a very different character. A proverb tells us not to look a gift horse in the mouth. But when there is grave doubt whether the horse ever existed, and when an immense price is afterwards demanded for the gift, proverbs of that kind do not appeal to us very strongly. The claims upon us of mediaeval Rome, mischievous as they were absurd, were based on evidence much of which was so fict.i.tious, that we are more than justified in scanning closely the beginnings of any of the evidence. Time after time one is reminded, in looking into these claims, of the retort of a lay ruler, referring to the forged donation by the first Christian Emperor to the bishops of Rome. Asked by the Pope for his authority for the independent position he maintained, "you will find it," he said, "written on the back of the donation of Constantine."

Nor, again, would it disturb me in the least, if convincing evidence were discovered, in favour of much which I think at best doubtful on the evidence as now known. Benefits conferred lay the foundation of grat.i.tude, not of subservience. The descendants, and representatives, of those who conferred them, have in our eyes all the interest attaching to descendants of benefactors. But when the Popes--say of the Plantagenet times--on the strength of the past or of the supposed past, lorded it over the English people, and carried out of England, every year, to be spent in no very excellent way in Italy, sums of money that would seem fabulous if it were not that no one at the time contested their accuracy, the English people found them, and frankly told them so, an intolerable nuisance. The demands of the Popes were so ludicrous in their shamelessness, that when one of them was read to the a.s.sembled peers, the peers roared with laughter. We might perhaps forget such episodes as these. We might forget the abominations which at times have steeped the Papacy and the infallible Popes in earth's vilest vilenesses. We might dream, some of us did dream, as young men, of drawing nearer to communion with the old centre of the Western Church, while maintaining our doctrinal position. It was always the fault of the Roman more than the Englishman that we had to part. And now, late in time, in our own generation, the Roman has cut himself off from us by an impa.s.sable barrier, the declaration of the divine infallibility of the man who is the head of his Church. It is to me one of the saddest sights on the face of the earth, a thoroughly estimable and loveable old man, whom one cannot but venerate, made the mouthpiece of ecclesiastics who are pulling the wires of policy, and declared to be the medium of divinely infallible judgement.

It may well have been that Palladius came to Britain with Germa.n.u.s, and here heard--probably from the Britons of the West--of spa.r.s.e congregations of Christians scattered about in Ireland; and that he sought authority to visit them, and confirm them in the faith, from some source which the Irish people would not suspect or regard with jealousy. That he had the a.s.sent of Germa.n.u.s we may fairly suppose; that he had the consent and authorisation of Pope Celestine I am quite ready to believe. Pope Celestine, we may remember, was one of the Popes who got into trouble with Africa for persisting in quoting a Sardican Canon as a Canon of Nicaea. He was not likely to hesitate on ecclesiastical grounds when action such as this was proposed to him.

Palladius went, then, about 432, to visit the scattered Irish Christians.

There is not a word of his mission being of the same character as that of Germa.n.u.s to Britain, namely, to attack Pelagianism. He landed in Ireland; and then the several accounts proceed to contradict one another in a very Celtic manner. The two earliest accounts, dating probably not later than 700, agree that the pagan people received him with much hostility. One of the two accounts martyrs him in Ireland; the other says that he did not wish to spend time in a country not his own, and so crossed over to Britain to journey homewards by land, but died in the land of the Britons.

Another ancient Irish account says that he founded some churches in Ireland, but was not well received and had to take to the sea; he was driven to North Britain, where he founded the Church of Fordun, "and Pledi is his name there." I found, when visiting Fordun to examine some curious remains there, that its name among the people was "Paldy Parish."

The Scottish accounts make Palladius the founder of Christianity among the Picts in the east of Scotland, Forfars.h.i.+re and Kincardines.h.i.+re and thereabouts, Meigle being their capital for a long time. They are silent as to any connection with Ireland. They are without exception late and unauthentic, whatever may be the historical value of the matter which has been imported into them. But all, Scottish and Irish, agree in a.s.signing to the work of Palladius in Ireland either no existence in fact, or at most a short period and a small result. The way was thus left clear for another mission. The man who took up the work made a very different mark upon it.