ANGLO-SAXON BRITAIN.

93

CHAPTER X.
ROME AND 10NA .

IT was not the Roman mission which finally suc-

ceeded in converting the North and the Midlands.
That success was due to the Scottish and Pictish
Church. At the end of the sixth century, Columba,
an Irish missionary, crossed over to the solitary rock
of Iona, where he established an abbey on the Irish
model, and quickly evangelised the northern Picts.
From lona, some generations later, went forth the
elevoted missionaries who finally converted the
northern haJf of England.
-:-i.<:: native Churches of the west, cut off from
direct intercourse with the main body of Latin
Christendom, had retained certain habits which were
now regarded by Rome as schismatical. Chief
among these were the date of celebrating Easter,
and the uncanonical method of cutting the tonsure
in a crescent instead of a circle. Augustine, shortly
after his arrival, endeavoured to obtain unity between
the two churches on these matters of discipline, to
which great importance was attached as tests of sub-
mission to the Latin rule. He obtained from LEthel-
berht a safe-conduct through the heathen West-
Saxon territories as far as what is now Worcester..
shire; and there, "on the torders of the Huiccii
94 ANGLO-SAXON P,RITAI N.

and the West-Saxons," says Breda, "he convened to

a colloquy the bishops and doctors of the nearest
province of the Britons, in the place which, to the
present day, is called in the English language, Augus-
tine's Oak." Such open-air meetings by sacred trees
or stones were universal in England both before and
after its conversion. "He began to admonish them
with a brotherly admonition to embrace with him the
Catholic faith, and to undertake the common task of
evangelising the pagans. For they did not observe
Easter at the proper period: moreover, they did
many other things contrary to the unity of the
Church." But the Welsh were jealous of the intru-
ders, and refused to abandon their old customs.
Thereupon, Augustine declared that if they would
not help him against the heathen, they would perish
by the heathen. A few years later, after Augustine's
death, this prediction was verified by h:thelfrith of
N orthumbria, whose massacre of the monks of Bangor
has already been noticed.
It was in return for the destruction of Chester and
the slaughter of the monks that Cadwalla joined the
heathen Penda against his fellow Christian Eadwine.
But the death of Eadwine left the throne open for
the house of h:thelfrith, whose place Eadwine had
taken. After a year of renewed heathendom, how-
ever, during part of which the Welsh Cadwalla reigned
over Northumbria, Oswald, son of h:thelfrith, again
united Deira and Bernicia under his own rule. Oswald
was a Christian, but he had learnt his Christianity
from the Scots, amongst whom he bad spent his exile,
 ROME AND IONA . 9S
and he favoured the introduction of Pictish and
Scottish missionaries into N orthumbria. The Italian
monks who han accompanied Augustine were men of
foreign ' speech al).d manners, representatives of an
alien civilisation, and they attempted to convert
whole kingdoms en bloc by the previous conversion
of their rulers. Their method was political and
systematic. But the Pictish and Irish preachers were
men of more Britannic feelings, and they went to
work with true missionary earnestness to convert the
half Celtic people of Northumbria, man by man, in
their own homes. Aidan, the apostle of the north,
carried the Pictish faith into the Lothians and Nor-
thumberland. He placed his bishop-stool not far
from the royal town of Bamborough, at Lindisfarne,
the Holy Island of the N orthumbrian coast. Other
Celtic missionaries penetrated further south, even
into the heathen realm of Penda and his tributary
princes. Ceadda or Chad, the patron saint of Lich-
field, carried Christianity to the Mercians. Diuma
preached to the Middle English of Leicester with
much success, Peada, their ealdorman, son of Penda,
having himself already embraced the new faith. Penda
had slain Oswald in a great battle at Maserfeld in
641; but the martyr only brought increased glory
to the Christians : and Oswiu, who succeeded him,
after an interval of anarchy, as king of Deira (for
Bernicia now chose a king of its own), was also a
zealous adherent of the Celtic missionaries. Thus the
heterodpx Church made rapid strides throughout
the whole of the north.
 ANGLO-SAXON BRITAIN.

Meanwhile, in the south the Latin mIssIonaries,

urged to activity, perhaps, by the Pictish successes,
had been making fresh progress. In the very year
when Oswald was chosen king by the Northumbrians,
Birinus, a priest from northern Italy, went by com-
mand of the pope to the West Saxons: and after
twelve months' he was able to baptise their king,
Cynegils, at his capital of Dorchester, on the Thames,
his sponsor being Oswald of Northumbria. A year
later, Felix, a Burgundian, "preached the faith of
Christ to the East Anglians," who had indeed been
converted by the Augustinian missionaries, but
afterwards relapsed. Only Sussex and Mercia still
remained heathen. But, in 655, Pellda made a last
attempt against N orthumbria, which he had harried
year after year, and was met by Oswiu at Winwidfield,
near Leeds; the Christians were successful, and
Penda was slain, together with thirty royal persons-
petty princes of the tributary Mercian states, no
doubt. His son, Peada, the Christian ealdorman of
the Middle English, succeeded him, and the Mer-
cians became Christians of the Pictish or Irish type.
"Their first bishop," says Bceda, "was Diuma, who
died and was buried among the Middle English. The
second was Cellach, who abandoned his bishopric,
and returned during his lifetime to Scotland (perhaps
Ireland, but more probably the Scottish king-
dom in Argyllshire). Both of these were by birth
Irishmen. The third was Trumhere, by race an
Englishman, but educated and ordained by the Irish."
Thus Roman Christianity spread over the whole of
 ROME AND IONA • 97
. England south of the Wash (save only heathen Sus-
sex): while the Irish Church had made its way over
all the north, from the Wash to the Frith of Forth.
The Roman influence may be partly traced by the
Roman alphabet superseding the old English runes.
Runic inscriptions are rare in the south, where they
were regarded as heathenish relics, and so destroyed;
but they are comparatively common in the north.
Runics appear on the coins of the first Christian
kings of Mercia, Peada and .tEthelred, but soon die
out under their successors.
Hea,thendom was now fairly vanquished. It sur··
vived only in Sussex, cut off from the rest of England
by the forest belt of the Weald. The next trial of
strength must clearly lie between Rome and lana.
The northern bishops and abbots traced their suc-
cession, not to Augustine, but to Columba. Cuth-
berht, the English apostle of the north, who really
converted the people of Northumbria, as earlier mis-
sionaries had converted its killgs, derived his orders
from lona.· Rome or Ireland, was now the practical
question of the English Church. As might be
expected, Rome conquered. To allay the discord,
King Oswiu summone::d a synod at Streoneshalch
(now known by its later Danish name of Whitby) in
664, to settle the vexed question as to the date of
Easter. The Irish priests claimed the authority of
St. John for their crescent tonsure j the Romans,
headed by Wilfrith, a most vigorous priest, appealed
to the authority of St. Peter for the canonical circle.
"I will never offend the saint who holds the keys of
H
98 ANGLO-SAXON I3RITAIN.

heaven," said Oswiu, with the frank, half~heathendom

of a recent convert; and the meeting shortly de--
cided as the king would have it. '?he Irish party
acquiesced or else returned to Scotland j and thence-
forth the new English Church remained in close com-
munion with Rome and the Continent. Whatever
may be our ecclesiastical judgment of this decision,
there can be little doubt that its material effects wel'e
most excellent. By bringing England into connection
with Rome, it brought her into connection with the
centre of all then-existing civilisation, and endowed her
with arts and manufactures which she could never
otherwise have attained. The connection with Ireland
and the north would have been as fatal, from a purely
secular point of view, to early English culture as was
the later connection with half-barbaric Scandinavia.
Rome gave England the Roman letters, arts, and
organisation: Ireland could only have given ber a
more insular form of Celtic civilisation.