II

ST. COLUMBA

 

With St. Columba we pass from a cloudy dawn into bright sunlight. He was born in 521 at Gartan in Donegal, was the son of a chief, was baptized and became the pupil of St. Finian. After his ordination he and three of his fellow students lived a religious life at Glasnevin. He built his first church at Derry in 545 and founded many others.

In 563 he crossed to the west of Scotland and received a grant of the island known to us as Iona. It is most likely that this banishment to Scotland was a voluntary penance for his action in stirring up a war in Ireland. Iona lay on the geographical borderline between the Scots and the Picts, and the conversion of the Picts became a definite part of his work.

He was the very type of Irish character. He was passionate, “fragile as glass”, says an ancient writer. He had a fair face and large grey eyes, a voice 'sweet with more than the sweetness of the bards'. He was deeply loved by his monks, and himself loved all things that God made, as is shown by his kindness to a tired heron that fell upon the beach, and to the old horse that he caressed on the last evening of his life. Coarsely clad and devoting much time to prayer and manual labor, he allowed his community to eat fish, eggs, and the flesh of seals, not enforcing too rigorous an abstinence, and he practiced a generous hospitality.

His work spread far and wide in the west and north of Scotland, and he ruled many important churches in Ireland. He governed with absolute authority in his monastery, free from Episcopal jurisdiction. But he was only in priest’s orders, and employed bishops to ordain, treating them with veneration as members of a superior order. Blessed in his life, he was happy in his death, which came on June the 9th, 597. He was happy also in the fact that his biography was written by Adamnan, who had conversed with persons acquainted with Columba, and whose work is of such value and interest as to immortalize both the author and his subject.

 

St. AGUSTINE

Late in the spring of 597 St. Augustine landed in the Isle of Thanet on the coast of Kent. A few days later St. Columba died in the isle of Iona. We can well imagine the dignified Roman missionary coming, not altogether unbefriended or unexpected, with forty monks, preceded by a cross and a picture of 'the Lord the Savior', chanting a litany as they moved in procession to meet Ethelbert, the King of Kent. And we can also imagine the Irish abbot, dying with a smile before the altar of his church, surrounded by the devoted monks who hurried to him in the dark night with the lanterns which they had just lighted to help them sing Mattins. Both men deserved success. More than any others they founded the Christian religion of Great Britain.

Ethelbert’s wife, Bertha, was daughter of the Frankish king of Paris, and a Christian. She and her chaplain had used for worship the church of St. Martin, outside Canterbury, which had survived in a ruined state from Roman times. And it was probably in this church that Ethelbert, quickly converted to the faith by Augustine, was baptized on Whitsunday 597. He did not compel his subjects to follow his example; but that example, reinforced by the self-denying labors of the missionaries, bore rapid fruit. The Pope soon held that it was time for Augustine to be consecrated Bishop of the English, so Augustine crossed the channel and was consecrated at Arles.

Returning to England, he founded the monastery of Christchurch on the site of a Roman basilica and of the present cathedral. And beyond the walls of Canterbury he built another monastery dedicated to St. Peter and St. Paul, the two patron saints of Rome. It was probably the first Benedictine monastery founded outside Italy. Possibly he intended to separate the life of a cathedral from the more purely missionary monastic centre. And by these two foundations he made Canterbury a permanent stronghold of Christian life and civilization. He found it necessary to direct several questions to Gregory which show his anxiety to deal with new and perplexing circumstances. Among the replies sent by Gregory is the famous maxim that things were not to be loved for the sake of places, but places for the sake of good things, and that what was good in any local custom might be brought into the Church of the English. He permits Augustine alone by himself to consecrate a bishop in case of need. He is to exercise no authority in Gaul, but “all the bishops of the Britains” are to be under his care. These replies were conveyed by Mellitus, Paulinus, and other new missionaries, who brought also for Augustine a pallium, the narrow scarf signifying jurisdiction delegated by the Pope to a metropolitan. Augustine was further directed to consecrate twelve bishops to be under his jurisdiction as Bishop of London; and for the city of York a bishop was also to be ordained, who, as the Church extended, was to be over twelve other bishops.

Ethelbert was not only the leading monarch over all England south of the Humber; the East Saxons were indirectly but really under his control. Their king Saebert was his nephew and reigned in dependence on Ethelbert. Augustine, in 604, shortly before his death, consecrated Mellitus as bishop and sent him to preach to the East Saxons. They accepted his message, and then Ethelbert built in London a cathedral church dedicated to St. Paul, so that Mellitus might have his see in a town of importance frequented by traders from abroad. Augustine also consecrated Justus as bishop for the people of western Kent, the see being placed at Rochester. Here the church was dedicated to St. Andrew in memory of the missionaries’ old home in the centre of Latin Christendom.

Augustine died on May the 26th, 604 or 605, and was buried outside the unfinished church of St. Peter and St. Paul until it should be ready to cover his relics. Some of the questions which he directed to Gregory are questions which would only have been asked by a man unduly troubled by details of ceremonial purity; and his summary treatment of the British bishops, which must now be described, indicates a lack of Christian courtesy and meekness. But he was always brave, laborious, and sincere, and often prudent. And we can truly say of Augustine what Bede says of Gregory, “If he be not an apostle unto others, yet he is unto us, for the seal of his apostle­ship are we in the Lord”.

THE BRITISH CHURCH

Augustine’s relations with the British bishops and Church were less happy than his relations with the English. Helped by Ethelbert, he crossed the country of the West Saxons and met the bishops at a place called Augustine's Oak in the time of Bede, usually identified with Aust near the Severn. He urged upon them the need of Catholic unity and the duty of joining in the task of preaching the Gospel to the English. No decision was reached, for both sides were unyielding as to certain points of difference. No divergence in doctrine appears to have separated the Celtic Christians from the Roman missionaries, but the disciplinary differences were acute. The principal were three in number.

First, in calculating the date of Easter, the Celts, following what had been the rule at Rome about 300, celebrated the feast on a Sunday between March the 25th and April the 21st, and on a day from the fourteenth to the twentieth day of the lunar month inclusive. The Romans celebrated the feast on a Sunday between March the 22nd and April the 25th, and on a day from the fifteenth to the twenty-first of the lunar month. The Celtic custom was peculiarly offensive to the Romans because it permitted Easter to coincide with the Jewish Passover on the 4th of Nisan, a thing forbidden by the great Council of Nicaea.

Secondly, the tonsure of the Celtic priests differed from the Roman tonsure. At an early period the clergy wore their hair short in order not to appear effeminate. Later, the Romans shaved the whole head, and St. Patrick was shaved in this fashion. This tonsure was called that of St. Paul (Acts XVIII. 18). Then the Romans of the time of St. Gregory had a circle shaved on the top of the head, so as to leave a complete crown or garland of natural hair, the hair being left rather longer at the back. This was known as the tonsure of St. Peter. But the Celtic clergy were so shaved that their hair remained long at the back and formed a fringe or semicircle on the front half of their head from ear to ear, a tonsure nearly the same as that worn by the Celtic laity. This was denounced by the Romans as the tonsure of Simon Magus, who was represented in legends as opposing St. Peter in the Eternal City.

Thirdly, the Celts had some peculiarities of their own in administering baptism. Their character remains a problem. It is clear that the Celtic rite did not involve any repudiation of the doctrine of the Trinity, for we have no trace of any accusation being based upon such a heresy. The most reasonable theory is that the Celts administered baptism without confirmation, whether confirmation by a bishop or by a presbyter who used oil consecrated by a bishop. This would explain why Augustine demanded that the Britons should 'complete' baptism.

At a second meeting of Augustine with the Britons seven British bishops were present. According to a well-known story told by Bede, they first consulted a holy anchorite as to whether they ought at the preaching of Augustine to abandon their own traditions. He replied that they ought to do so if he were a man of God, and that he would be a man of God if he were humble. They asked how they were to know whether he was humble. The reply was that if Augustine rose to meet them, he would show himself to be a servant of Christ. If he did not rise but despised them, “let him also be despised by you”. And Augustine remained seated. Otherwise he was not unconciliatory.

He only insisted on three points, the celebration of Easter at the same time as the Church elsewhere, the “completing of Baptism”, and a joint preaching of the word of the Lord to the English nation. The Britons flatly refused and said that they would not regard him as archbishop. The Church of the Britons and the Church of the English were thus separated. It was the Gaelic and not the Cymric monks who threw themselves into the work of preaching Christ among the English of Northumbria and elsewhere. The intense British dislike of the English and the English Church was of course connected with bitter recollections of the English conquest; and their antipathy to Augustine was strengthened by their veneration for their own saints such as Illtud, David, and Samson.

After Augustine's death friendly attempts were made by his successor Laurentius to win over both the Irish and the Welsh, though an Irish (Scot) bishop who came to England refused to eat in the same house with him. His efforts met with no visible result. It was not until 755 that Elvod, Bishop of Bangor, induced the people of North Wales to accept the Roman Easter, and some years later the people of South Wales followed. In Cornwall there was some dissent as late as the time of Eadulf, the first (English) bishop of Crediton (909-93t).

The Irish Gaels were less persistent than the Celts of Wales and Cornwall. The north of Ireland yielded to the influence of Adamnan (d. 704), the saintly abbot of Iona who, having candidly examined the subject, came to the conclusion that the Roman reckoning was correct. A few years after his death most of the monks of Iona followed his example.

As to the nature of the episcopate among the Celts of this period, much remains somewhat obscure. But the ascertained facts do not point to such a wide divergence between the Celts and other Christian nationalities in this respect as has often been supposed. Among those facts is, first, the influence of the clan or tribal system in determining the boundaries of a bishopric, and, secondly, the limitation of Episcopal authority by powerful monasteries which came to possess large estates of their own.

St. Gregory gave authority to St. Augustine over “all the bishops of the Britains”. It is more than probable that the British bishops had been under no such metropolitan or archbishop, and that ecclesiastical “provinces”, including several bishops, were unknown. Gildas knows of none. The title archiepiscopus in Latin is not applied to the bishop of Menevia until it is so used by Asser c. 893. But it is likely that St. David, Abbot and Bishop of Menevia, did in the sixth century exercise an influence which anticipated the rather vague primacy that was claimed in turn by other Welsh sees, first at Caerleon and finally at St. David's. With regard to Ireland it is practically certain that Armagh would not have gained its early prestige if St. Patrick had not exercised from Armagh, and intended his successors to exercise, an authority similar to that of metro­politans on the Continent. All Ireland was one province. And any early Irish bishop who bore the title of primescop or principal bishop was not a metropolitan, but the chief bishop over a clan, the other bishops belonging to a class which must now be briefly described.

In all Celtic lands the monastic foundations were essential to the spiritual structure of the Church. The prevalence in Wales, Cornwall, and Brittany of the word Ilan or Ian, which signified a monastery before it signified a church building, still testifies to the ancient prevalence of monasticism. The monks served the needs of the surrounding country; they included a staff of priests, and the abbot was often a bishop. Even in Cornwall monastery bishops seemed to have survived after part of the country had become settled by Saxons. But in Ireland the great increase of monasteries led to a multiplication of bishops, each important new monastery desiring to have a private prelate of its own. The confusion became more confounded by the Danish invasions; numbers of bishops had no sees, and became bishops errant, and sometimes erring. There are traces of the same abuse in Gaul. In fact the large number and the comparative insignificance of bishops among the Celts is not a survival of a primitive Christian practice, but a perversion of it. It was not until the twelfth century that Gillebert, Bishop of Limerick, and St. Malachy of Armagh, the friend of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, began to put an end to the chaotic condition of the Church of Ireland, and the boundaries of provinces and dioceses were carefully defined. And it was not until that period that the pallium was worn by the metropolitans of Ireland.