among the heathen nations in Asia and Africa. "The science of language," says a competent judge, "owes more than its first impulse to Christianity. The pioneers of our science were those very apostles who were commanded to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature; and their true successors, the missionaries of the whole Christian church." The same may be said of every branch of knowledge and art of peace. The missionaries, in aiming at piety and the salvation of souls, incidentally promoted mental culture and temporal prosperity. The feeling of brotherhood inspired by Christianity broke down the partition walls between race and race, and created a brotherhood of nations. The medieval Christianization was a wholesale conversion, or a conversion of nations under the command of their leaders. It was carried on not only by missionaries and by spiritual means, but also by political influence, alliances of heathen princes with Christian wives, and in some cases (as the baptism of the Saxons under Charlemagne) by military force. It was a conversion not to the primary Christianity of inspired apostles, as laid down in the New Testament, but to the secondary Christianity of ecclesiastical tradition, as taught by the fathers, monks and popes. It was a baptism by water, rather than by fire and the Holy Spirit. The preceding instruction amounted to little or nothing; even the baptismal formula, mechanically recited in Latin, was scarcely understood. The rude barbarians, owing to the weakness of their heathen religion, readily submitted to the new religion; but some tribes yielded only to the sword of the conqueror. This superficial, wholesale conversion to a nominal Christianity must be regarded in the light of a national infant-baptism. It furnished the basis for a long process of Christian education. The barbarians were children in knowledge, and had to be treated like children. Christianity assumed the form of a new law leading them, as a schoolmaster, to the manhood of Christ. The missionaries of the middle ages were nearly all monks. 1 Max Müller, Science of Language, I. 121. They were generally men of limited education and narrow views, but devoted zeal and heroic self-denial. Accustomed to primitive simplicity of life, detached from all earthly ties, trained to all sorts of privations, ready for any amount of labor, and commanding attention and veneration by their unusual habits, their celibacy, fastings and constant devotions, they were upon the whole the best pioneers of Christianity and civilization among the savage races of Northern and Western Europe. The lives of these missionaries are surrounded by their biographers with such a halo of legends and miracles, that it is almost impossible to sift fact from fiction. Many of these miracles no doubt were products of fancy or fraud; but it would be rash to deny them all. The same reason which made miracles necessary in the first introduction of Christianity, may have demanded them among barbarians before they were capable of appreciating the higher moral evidences. I. THE CONVERSION OF ENGLAND, IRELAND, AND SCOTLAND. § 7. Literature. I. SOURCES. GILDAS (Abbot of Bangor in Wales, the oldest British historian, in the sixth cent.): De excidio Britannia conquestus, etc. A picture of the evils of Britain at the time. Best ed. by Joseph Stevenson, Lond., 1838. (English Historical Society's publications.) NENNIUS (Abbot of Bangor about 620): Eulogium Britannia, sive Historia Britonum. Ed. Stevenson, 1838. The Works of Gildas and Nennius transl. from the Latin by J. A. Giles, London, 1841. *BEDA Venerabilis (d. 734): Historia Ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum; in the sixth vol. of Migne's ed. of Bedæ Opera Omnia, also often separately published and translated into English. Best ed. by Stevenson, Lond., 1838; and by Giles, Lond., 1849. It is the only reliable church-history of the Anglo-Saxon period. The ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLE, from the time of Cæsar to 1154. A work of several successive hands, ed. by Gibson with an Engl. translation, 1823, and by Giles, 1849 (in one vol. with Bede's Eccles. History). See the Six Old English Chronicles, in Bohn's Antiquarian Library (1848); and Church Historians of England trans. by Jos. STEVENSON, Lond. 1852-'56, 6 vols. SIR HENRY SPELMAN (d. 1641): Concilia, decreta, leges, constitutiones in re ecclesiarum orbis Britannici, etc. Lond., 1639-'64, 2 vols. fol. (Vol. I. reaches to the Norman conquest; vol. ii. to Henry VIII ). DAVID WILKINS (d. 1745): Concilia Magno Britanniæ et Hiberniæ (from 446 to 1717), Lond., 1737, 4 vols. fol. (Vol. I. from 446 to 1265). *ARTHUR WEST HADDAN and WILLIAM STUBBS: Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents relating to Great Britain and Ireland: edited after Spelman and Wilkins. Oxford (Clarendon Press), 1869 to '78. So far 3 vols. To be continued down to the Reformation. The Penitentials of the Irish and Anglo-Saxon Churches are collected and edited by F. KUNSTMANN (Die Lat. Pönitentialbücher der Angelsachsen, 1844); WASSERSCHLEBEN (Die Bussordnungen der abendländ. Kirche, 1851); SCHMITZ (Die Bussbücher u. d. Bussdisciplin d. Kirche, 1883). II. Historical Works. (a) The Christianization of England. *J. USSHER (d. 1655): Britannicarum Eccles. Antiquitates. Dublin, 1639; J. LINGARD (R. C., d. 1851): The History and Antiquities of the Anglo- KARL SCHRÖDL (R. C.): Das erste Jahrhundert der englischen Kirche. Passau & Wien, 1840. EDWARD CHURTON (Rector of Crayke, Durham): The Early English Church. London, 1841 (new ed. unchanged, 1878). JAMES YEOWELL: Chronicles of the Ancient British Church anterior to the Saxon era. London, 1846. FRANCIS THACKERAY (Episcop.): Researches into the Eccles, and Political State of Ancient Britain under the Roman Emperors. London, 1843, 2 vols. *COUNT DE MONTALEMBERT (R. C., d. 1870): The Monks of the West. Edinburgh and London, 1861-'79. 7 vols. (Authorized transl. from the French.) The third vol. treats of the British Isles. REINHOLD PAULI: Bilder aus Alt-England. Gotha, 1860. W. F. HOOK: Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury. London, 2nd ed., 1861 sqq. G. F. MACLEAR (D.D., Head-master of King's College School): Conver sion of the West. The English. London, 1878. By the same: The Kelts, 1878. (Popular.) WILLIAM BRIGHT (Dr. and Prof. of Eccles. Hist., Oxford): Chapters on Early English Church History. Oxford, 1878 (460 pages). JOHN PRYCE: History of the Ancient British Church. Oxford, 1878. EDWARD L. CUTTS: Turning Points of English Church-History. London, DUGALD MACCOLL: Early British Church. The Arthurian Legends. In "The Catholic Presbyterian," London and New York, for 1880, No. 3, pp. 176 sqq. (b) The Christianization of Ireland, Wales, and Scotland. DR. LANIGAN (R. C.): Ecclesiastical History of Ireland. Dublin, 1829. JOHN CUNNINGHAM (Presbyterian): The Church History of Scotland from the Commencement of the Christian Era to the Present Day. Edinburgh, 1859, 2 vols. (Vol. I., chs. 1–6). C. INNES: Sketches of Early Scotch History, and Social Progress. Edinb., 1861. (Refers to the history of local churches, the university and home-life in the medieval period.) THOMAS MCLAUCHLAN (Presbyt.): The Early Scottish Church: the Ecclesiastical History of Scotland from the First to the Twelfth Century. Edinburgh, 1865. *DR. J. H. A. EBRARD: Die iroschottische Missionskirche des 6, 7 und 8 ten Jahrh., und ihre Verbreitung auf dem Festland. Gütersloh, 1873. Comp. Ebrard's articles Die culdeische Kirche des 6, 7 und Sten Jahrh, in Niedner's "Zeitschrift für hist. Theologie" for 1862 and 1863. Ebrard and McLauchlan are the ablest advocates of the antiRomish and alleged semi-Protestant character of the old Keltic church of Ireland and Scotland; but they present it in a more favorable light than the facts warrant. *DR. W. D. KILLEN (Presbyt.): The Ecclesiastical History of Ireland from the Earliest Period to the Present Times. London, 1875, 2 vols. *ALEX. PENROSE FORBES (Bishop of Brechin, d. 1875): Kalendars of Scottish Saints. With Personal Notices of those of Alba, Laudonia and Stratchclyde. Edinburgh (Edmonston & Douglas), 1872. By the same: Lives of S. Ninian and S. Kentigern. Compiled in the twelfth century. Ed. from the best MSS. Edinburgh, 1874. *WILLIAM REEVES (Canon of Armagh): Life of St. Columba, Founder of Hy. Written by Adamnan, ninth Abbot of that monastery. Edinburgh, 1874. *WILLIAM F. SKENE: Keltic Scotland. Edinburgh, 2 vols., 1876, 1877. Vol. I. treats of history and ethnology; Vol. II., of church and culture. *F. E. WARREN (Fellow of St. John's Coll., Oxford): The Liturgy and Ritual of the Celtic Church. Oxford 1881 (291 pp.). Comp. also the relevant sections in the Histories of England, Scotland, and Ireland, by HUME (Ch. I-III.), LINGARD (Ch. L. VIII.), LAPPENBERG (Vol. I.), GREEN (Vol. I.), HILL BURTON (Hist. of Scotland, Vol. I.); MILMAN'S Latin Christianity (Book IV., Ch. 3–5); MACLEAR'S Apostles of Mediaeval Europe (Lond. 1869), THOMAS SMITH'S Mediaeval Missions (Edinb. 1880). § 8. The Britons. Literature: The works of BEDE, GILDAS, NENNIUS, USSHER, BRIGHT, PRYCE, quoted in ? 7. Britain made its first appearance in secular history half a century before the Christian era, when Julius Cæsar, the conqueror of Gaul, sailed with a Roman army from Calais across the channel, and added the British island to the dominion of the eternal city, though it was not fully subdued till the reign of Claudius (A. D. 41-54). It figures in ecclesiastical history from the conversion of the Britons in the second century. Its missionary history is divided into two periods, the Keltic and the AngloSaxon, both catholic in doctrine, as far as developed at that time, slightly differing in discipline, yet bitterly hostile under the influence of the antagonism of race, which was ultimately overcome in England and Scotland, but is still burning in Ireland, the proper home of the Kelts. The Norman conquest made both races better Romanists than they were before. The oldest inhabitants of Britain, like the Irish, the Scots, and the Gauls, were of Keltic origin, half naked and painted barbarians, quarrelsome, rapacious, revengeful, torn by intestine factions, which facilitated their conquest. They had adopted, under different appellations, the gods of the Greeks and Romans, and worshipped a multitude of local deities, the genii of the woods, rivers, and mountains; they paid special homage to the oak, the king of the forest. They offered the fruits of the earth, the spoils of the enemy, and, in the hour of danger, human lives. Their priests, called druids,' dwelt in huts or caverns, amid the 1 The word Druid or Druidh is not from the Greek Spis, oak (as the elder Pliny thought), but a Keltic term draiod, meaning sage, priest, and is equivalent to the magi in the ancient East. In the Irish Scriptures draiod is used for magi, Matt. 2: 1. |