CRISTO RAUL.ORG '

THE UNIVERSAL HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY

FROM JUSTINIAN TO LUTHER. AD 518-1517

CHAPTER IV

THE ENGLISH CHURCH FROM ST. WILFRID TO EDWARD THE CONFESSOR

THE organization of the Church in England and its assimilation to the Latin rather than the Celtic model was to a great extent effected in the second half of the seventh century. The two men who showed an untiring activity in this work were Wilfrid, who is specially connected with Northumbria, and Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury.

WILDFRID

Wilfrid (634-709), a well-born Northumbrian youth, was helped by Eanfled, the Northumbrian queen, first to gain instruction from a monk of Lindisfarne and then to visit Rome. On his way thither he stayed at Lyons, where he won the favor of the archbishop, and in Rome he fell completely under the spell of a Church which was already venerable as well as vigorous. He then stayed at Lyons for about three years, and while there received the Roman tonsure. On his return home he was given a monastery at Ripon, and soon afterwards his speech at the Synod of Whitby in 664 resulted in the adoption of the Roman date for keeping Easter and the departure of the Celtic bishop, Colman.

Oswy, King of Northumbria, opened the proceedings at Whitby by urging the benefits of uniformity, and asking which of the two different traditions as to Easter was the true. Colman, Bishop of Lindisfarne, was called upon to speak, and defended the Celtic custom on the ground that it was derived from St. John. His speech was interpreted in English. Wilfrid replied with confidence and ability. In tracing the Roman custom to St. Peter he was as credulous as Colman in tracing the Celtic custom to St. John, his manner towards Colman was dictatorial, and his references to St. Columba were couched in a tone of superb indulgence. But he was correct in asserting the wide prevalence of the 'Catholic' Easter, he scored decisively when he pointed out that the Celts agreed with neither St. John nor St. Peter, and in a dexterous peroration introduced the great text 'Thou art Peter'. The perplexed king asked Colman if these words were really spoken by our Lord to St. Peter.

“Certainly”

“Did He ever give the like power to your Columba?”

“Never”

And as both parties were in this agreed, the king resolved to be on the side of the door-keeper, “lest haply when I come to the doors of the kingdom of heaven, I may find none to unbar them, if he is adverse to me who is proved to hold the keys”. The cause was finished.

Colman departed for Iona, taking with him some of the bones of Aidan; and he died twelve years later in Inisboffin, a little island off the coast of Mayo.

Wilfrid was elected Bishop of York; and, scorning consecration at the hands of bishops whom he regarded as schismatics, he went to France and was consecrated with great pomp at Compiegne.

The rest of Wilfrid’s life was one of ceaseless activity and varying fortunes, caused by his invincible determination to uphold the jurisdiction of the Pope in England. As soon as he returned home after his consecration he found his see occupied by Ceadda (St. Chad). Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury, deprived Ceadda, but, in conjunction with King Egfrid, divided Wilfrid’s huge diocese into four. Wilfrid declared that he would appeal to Rome. His words were treated with derision, and when he came back from Rome with the decision of a Roman Synod in his favor, he was put in prison. He had previously done active missionary work among the pagan Frisians, and, as soon as he was free, he began to evangelize the people of Sussex, whom he rescued from famine. After Egfrid's death he went again to York and was again expelled and even excommunicated by a Northumbrian Council. He again said that he would appeal to Rome, and in spite of his seventy years set out to accomplish the journey on foot. He reached Rome in 704 and obtained another decision in his favor. After his return he made peace with his opponents. He surrendered his claim to York and received instead the see of Hexham. In spite of his appeals to Rome he was left in a worse position than that created by Theodore in 678. He died at his monastery at Oundle in 709, but it is uncertain whether his relics finally rested at Ripon or at Canterbury. He was a man of great ability and courage, of genuine missionary zeal and high personal character, although too unbending in his attitude towards his real or supposed adversaries.

Wilfrid must be remembered as a patron of fine architecture. At York he restored the church of Paulinus, which was rebuilt on a grand scale in the eighth century. He built a large church at Ripon; and at Hexham built not only a fine church of the basilican type, but another which was in the form of a Greek cross with a central tower, possibly an octagon, with galleries like those at San Vitale, Ravenna. The minsters at Ripon and Hexham still contain the stone crypts which without doubt are Wilfrid's work and are among the few early Christian monuments of Western Europe of which the date is certain. Saxon architecture of the later period is akin to the Romanesque of Germany rather than that of Italy, a fact to be explained by the religious and political intercourse between England and the Continent in and after the reign of Charles the Great.

THEODORE

Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury (d. 690), was a native of Tarsus in Cilicia, the early home of St. Paul. He was consecrated in Rome in 668 by Pope Vitalian on the recommendation of Hadrian, an African who was abbot of a monastery near Naples. Together with Hadrian and Benedict Biscop he set out for England and, after various delays in France, arrived at Canterbury. Theodore, who had a scholar’s knowledge of both Greek and Latin, immediately gave proof that his scholarship was not divorced from great administrative ability. The recent victory of the Roman party over the Celtic monks had as yet brought neither goodwill nor good order: and Theodore, on making a tour through all the English parts of the country, found only two or three bishoprics that were not vacant. He was able to get his authority almost universally recognized, and Ceadda even submitted to be reconsecrated by him in the Roman manner on leaving the see of York for that of Mercia.

Theodore proceeded to make Canterbury a centre of learning, and gave personal instruction to a crowd of scholars. He held the first Synod of the clergy of England at Hertford in 673, a Synod at which the Church of England first acted as a single body. He steadily increased the number of bishops. And though he acted with a high hand in dividing the diocese of York without the consent of Wilfrid, new dioceses were really needed, and the creation of them was sanctioned by Rome. A Synod of bishops held under Theodore at Hatfield in 68o made a declaration of orthodoxy, acknowledging the five Ecumenical Councils which had hitherto been held, and also the Synod held at Rome in the time of Pope Martin repudiating the Monothelete heresy. Theodore’s Penitential is the only important literary work ascribed to the great archbishop that still remains. It consists of a number of answers given to inquiries such as were necessitated by the life and morals of rude and recent converts. More than twenty references are made to the customs of the Greek Church, a fact which proves a real connection with the reputed author. The tone is austere, but tempered with ideas that are both spiritual and humane. Theodore’s Penitential informs us that the Greeks then communicated every Sunday, and Bede, who had observed the same custom in Rome, wishes that it were followed by the English.

The custom of assigning the penances due to sins had long been facilitated by old canonical regulations, and by letters of ancient fathers such as St. Cyprian and St. Basil. But these rules were hardly sufficient for the use of ignorant priests dealing with people who were only beginning to learn the moral principles of Christianity. Hence we find, especially among the Irish, the English, and the Franks, a growing attempt to provide manuals intended for the use of parish priests. These now took a larger share than before in the administration of penance, which had formerly rested mainly with the bishops. The development of auricular confession and private penances among the Celts increased the need of written manuals. So in Ireland we find in the fifth century the 'Canons of St. Patrick', followed in the next century by those of St. Finian, and by the British penitentials of St. David of Menevia and Gildas. They furnished material for St. Columban's Liber de poenitentia, which had a widespread influence. The Penitential of Theodore was of still greater importance. In its comprehensiveness, its orderly treatment, and fullness of detail it is in advance of any previous treatises of the same character. Theodore was well aware of the Roman custom of the bishop publicly 'reconciling' a penitent, after his penance had been accomplished, within the apse of the church, and he revered the decrees of Rome. In spite of this, he adopted the Celtic system of private reconciliation, the priest, and not the bishop, being the ordinary minister of reconciliation. He makes the interesting remark that there is 'no public penance' in this province, and he admits the lawfulness of confession made to God alone. But he realized the value of a regulated discipline by which the children of the Church might make their peace with God, and in. England the practice of private confession and penance quickly became habitual, and was so general as to be characteristic of 'the Church of the English'.

Archbishop Theodore, between the years 673 and 681, founded as many as seven new sees in England, and the boundaries of some of these sees remained the same for more than a thousand years. The earliest bishoprics were conterminous with the old English kingdoms of the eighth century and were usually attached to the royal court, so that Essex, Sussex, and even Wessex had each one bishop and one only. And it was Theodore who systematically divided the larger kingdoms into smaller dioceses. By 780 the dioceses were as follows: North of the Humber there were York, Hexham, and Lindisfarne, the last extending far into the south-eastern part of Scotland. South of the Humber was the large diocese of Lichfield, and also Sidnacester, which covered modern Lincolnshire; Hereford, Worcester Leicester, and Dorchester (in Oxfordshire). Elmham and Dunwich roughly corresponded with Norfolk and Suffolk. London, Rochester, and Canterbury were what they remained until the nineteenth century. Selsey was the ancient equivalent of Chichester. And westward of Selsey were the two large dioceses of Winchester and Sherborne.

The Danish invasions caused the number of bishoprics to be reduced. Hexham, Sidnacester, Leicester, and Dunwich disappeared permanently, and in the tenth century a new distribution of dioceses prevailed. Lindisfarne and Hexham were joined so as to make the new diocese of Durham. Dunwich was merged into Elmham, and Sidnacester, Leicester, and Dorchester formed one huge see of Dorchester. While the bishops of the north and east were reduced in number, those in the south were increased. King Edward the Elder (d. 924) divided Winchester by assigning Berkshire and Wiltshire to the new see of Ramsbury and divided Sherborne by giving Somerset to Wells and Devon to Crediton. When Cornwall was annexed by Wessex, a new see was founded at St. Germans. The Normans only created two new sees, Carlisle and Ely. But their practical common sense caused the Norman prelates to reside in the largest towns in their dioceses, instead of remaining in mere villages like Dorchester and Selsey.

BEDE AND THE VIKINGS

Since the coming of St. Augustine only two generations had passed when the Christian literature of England began to bloom. It began with two names of which any nation might be proud, Aldhelm and Bede. Books and a love of books had been brought to England in abundance by Theodore and Hadrian. They were accompanied on their journey to England by Benedict Biscop, Abbot of Wearmouth, who made seven visits to Rome and never came back without quantities of books, not to mention masons and church ornaments. Aldhelm and Bede are acquainted with the standard Latin poets, heathen and Christian, as well as the great Latin fathers. Very soon England was on a level with the Continent and with Ireland in the apparatus of scholarship, and the illuminated Lindisfarne Gospels and the sculptured Ruthwell cross remain to tell us what English art could produce before England was devastated by the Danes.

St. ADHELM

St. Aldhelm (d. 709), Bishop of Sherborne, was a pupil of Theodore at Canterbury. He knew Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and took a lead in the intellectual movement of the time, though, like some other learned scholars, he found arithmetic a troublesome science. He excelled as a musician and a poet, and when he found that people were unwilling to listen to his sermons, he stood on a bridge and sang until he secured their attention. Some of his intricate Latin writings remain, but unhappily his English poems, loved by King Alfred, have perished. Like Wilfrid, he was keenly interested in architecture. His great churches at Malmesbury and Sherborne were rebuilt in later times, and even the little Saxon church of St. Lawrence, Bradford-on-Avon, though sometimes considered a specimen of his work, is probably of the tenth century. More admirable than his zeal for material buildings was his sincere desire to promote union between the English and the Celts of Devon and Cornwall. He treated the Celts as men who could be convinced by reasons, with the result that many conformed to the usages which he advocated. He visited Rome during the pontificate of Sergius I and there received a grant of privileges for his monasteries.

BEDE

Bede (d. 735), monk of the monastery of St. Peter and St. Paul at Wearmouth, was the most important writer of his age. The library collected by Benedict Biscop enabled him to sum up in himself all the learning that could then be known in western Europe. He knew Greek and possibly knew Hebrew. And he could write limpid Latin, with a scholar's instinct for the most trustworthy evidence and an artist's sense of the arresting and the picturesque. His scientific books include works on grammar and chronology; his strictly theological works consist mainly of commentaries and homilies. His chief historical work is his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, a book which has won for Bede the title of the Father of English History. It is largely drawn from different local sources, often oral, blended with admirable art. He loved to read and meditate upon the Scriptures, and from the beginning to the end of his career he manifested a spirit of intense and gentle piety.

When a little boy in the monastery of Jarrow, a pestilence so thinned the number of the monks that the Abbot Ceolfrith was left to chant the services alone. For a week he did it alone, and then the dreariness of the sacred task became more than he could bear. But the boy was eager to help his teacher, and the two together persevered, singing the whole of the daily services until there were others ready to take their part in the choir. Few stories are so touching as the story of Bede's death. The day of his death was the Feast of the Ascension, May the 26th, 735. In spite of increasing weakness he had continued to lecture and to dictate his English translation of the Gospel of St. John, saying, “I do not want my boys to read what is false”.

When the festival came and all others had gone to join in the procession of the day, Bede and his scribe reached the last chapter of the Gospel, and in the evening the last sentence. After a while the youth said, “Now it is finished”.

“Well”, said Bede, “thou hast spoken truly: It is finished”.

Then, lying on the pavement of his cell, he chanted the doxology, and as he uttered the words 'the Holy Ghost' he breathed his last. He was buried at Jarrow, but his relics were placed in the twelfth century in a precious casket in the beautiful Galilee of the cathedral church of Durham. The casket and its contents were plundered at the Reformation, though the hones of St. Cuthbert in the same church were fortunately so buried as to escape destruction or dispersion.

THE ENGLISH PILGRIMS

Anglo-Saxons, no less than Celts, were addicted to pilgrimages. In Great Britain, as elsewhere, the Holy Land and Rome were the two lodestars of the pious wanderers. The former was hallowed with memories of the Redeemer, the latter was 'the threshold of the apostles'. The Abbot Adamnan of Iona wrote a treatise De locis sanctis, written by him from the dictation of Arculfus, a Frankish bishop who had visited Palestine and had been shipwrecked on the British coast. An abridgement of the book was written by Bede. In the eighth century one of the most famous of English pilgrims was Willibald. With his father and brother he traversed France and northern Italy. His father died in Lucca; but Willibald went on to Rome, Syracuse, Ephesus, Damascus, and Jerusalem. He proceeded to Constantinople, and returned to Italy in 729, having been absent from England nine years. He then became a monk of Monte Cassino and in 739 was sent by Pope Gregory III to help St. Boniface in the work of converting Germany. Boniface made him bishop of the Middle-Frankish see of Eichstatt, where he died and was buried in 786. His life was written by a nun of the convent of Heidenheim, who probably based it on notes by Willibald himself. In the time of St. Boniface great numbers went from England to Rome. The stream had begun to flow about 653, when Benedict Biscop paid his first visit to Rome, to be soon followed by Wilfrid, who had been his companion for part of the way. In reference to Wilfrid’s journey his friend Eddius Stephanus says expressly that “as yet that road was untrodden by our nation”.

The moral dangers which beset the pilgrims, especially the women, were obvious to prudent eyes. Boniface deplores the habit of Englishwomen going to Rome as frequently fatal to their chastity. And when the Abbess Ethelburga of Fladbury found her projected pilgrimage impracticable, Alcuin, in the spirit of St. Gregory of Nyssa, assured her that it was no great loss. “Expend the money which thou hast gathered for the journey on the support of the poor; and if thou givest as thou canst, thou shalt reap as thou wilt”.

The coming of the Danish Vikings threatened the whole of the growing life of England. Late in the eighth century they began their raids on the eastern coast. It is probable that they were hard pressed on the Continent by the advance of Charlemagne and his conquest of their Saxon neighbors. At first they came to plunder monasteries and villages, and soon departed. Gradually they began to stay longer and to plunder farther inland, always manifesting a special hatred of everything that was Christian. Then they wintered in East Anglia, and in 867 advanced into Northumbria, captured York, and became masters of nearly all the country between the Forth and the Humber; where the Christianity and the civilization which had taken root for two centuries were almost annihilated. In 870 the Danes became masters of Mercia; they ravaged the lands between the Humber and the Thames; the great monasteries, including Crowland, Peterborough, and Ely, were sacked. Edmund, the King of East Anglia, was killed. It was said that he was killed by Danish arrows for refusing to abandon the faith of Christ, and his shrine at Bury St. Edmunds afterwards became the most famous in England. Only Wessex remained unconquered.

FROM ALFRED TO EDWARD

Alfred (849-900) brother of the Ethelred, King of Wessex, who fell a victim to the Danes, inherited a kingdom which was little better than a wilderness. After 871 had been spent in a series of battles of varying fortunes there was a short respite. Then the Danes attacked again and Alfred retreated to the swamps and woods of Somerset, only to organize and plan. In 878 he came out of his stronghold and won a decisive victory at Edington in Wiltshire. The Danish king, Guthrum, then made peace and England was divided between the Danes and Alfred. Alfred kept all England south of a line drawn from Chester to London, and soon gained London itself.

The tide had really turned and England was saved from completely relapsing into heathenism. A few years later the Danes came back to make a final effort, so confident of victory that they brought their wives and children with them from the Continent. They were outmaneuvered by Alfred and in 897 they gave up the struggle. The power of those who remained in England was diminished in the next century. But they have left their mark on the English language, for they were the first to drop the grammatical inflections of their newly acquired tongue. And though they gradually became Christian, some of their peasant descendants in the north of England, within the memory of men yet living, still remembered the names of the gods of their forefathers, Thor, Wod (Woden), and Lok (Loki).

Alfred, by saving his own kingdom of Wessex, made it the centre of deliverance and unity for the whole country. Though he did not make England one kingdom, he made its union a certainty in the future. His legislation is a careful selection of the laws of earlier kings, imbued with a new and deeply religious character and beginning with the Ten Commandments. His private life was one of steady devotion to practical duty. He strove to restore the monastic life, founded two monasteries, and sent gifts not only to the poor at home but even to Rome and India. But no work that he did proved of a more abiding character than his services to knowledge and learning. He found his people densely ignorant and the Latin language almost forgotten. To remedy these evils Alfred established a court school to which he invited both native and foreign scholars. He himself wrote English translations of Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy, of the histories of Bede and Orosius, and of the Pastoral Rule of St. Gregory. The result of his work and of his inspiration was not only to raise the level of general and clerical education, but also to provide the English people with a continuous record of their national history. Alfred’s West Saxon dialect was not destined to remain the literary dialect of the whole country; that place was taken by Midland English after the Norman Conquest. But as an English Christian king and scholar, and as the father of the English people, Alfred remains without a rival. It is strange that he was never canonized.

The reign of Edgar (944-975) was a time of peace and happiness in which the work of Alfred bore good fruit. There can be no doubt that he had been a youth of licentious character. But as a king he proved wise, capable, and successful. He let the English and the Danes live on equal terms and secured justice for both. It is significant that he conferred the archbishopric of York on Oswald, a Northumbrian Dane, and not on an Englishman. His success was symbolized by his magnificent coronation at Bath in 973, the first English coronation of which we have a full description. And the imagination of the people was kindled by his visit to Chester, where eight kings swore to be his fellow workers and, it is said, rowed his boat at the head of a great procession to the minster of St. John Baptist.

Edgar was fortunate in having as his friend and adviser a man of such unusual capacity and sanctified common sense as St. Dunstan (924-988). Dunstan had been trained by Irish teachers near Glastonbury, and exhibited a singular versatility for both handicraft and statecraft. He was fond of old ballads and of playing on the harp. He made church bells, crosses, and vestments, and encouraged calligraphy and the copying of manuscripts.

When a very young monk he acted as one of the treasurers of King Edred. On the king’s death he had to face the anger of the widowed queen and retired to a monastery at Ghent; but he came to his own on the accession of Edgar and occupied the see of Canterbury for nearly twenty-seven years. At Ghent secular canons had been replaced by Benedictines, and Dunstan himself joined the monastic order. In spite of this fact he showed a wise toleration in dealing with the married clerks of England. They certainly presented a difficult problem. The secular clergy were lax and strict monasticism was nearly extinct. Many of the monasteries which had survived the Danish raids were no longer tenanted by monks bound by vows of celibacy and poverty, but by colleges of clerks frequently married and devoted to few virtues except the virtue of hospitality. Dunstan himself, and likewise Ethelwold of Winchester, a fervent monk, and Oswald of Worcester, were all on the side of reform, and there was no little opposition between the monks and these clerks, later called 'canons'.

Dunstan left the clerks unmolested at Canterbury, and when he died, in 988, they were still in possession at York, London, Dorchester, and other lesser houses. A married mass priest under Dunstan was not expelled, but was admonished and had to forfeit certain privileges. A similar rule appears to have been made by Oswald when he went to Northumbria, where a priest was excommunicated if he forsook his wife in order to take another, and as late as 1076 a Council of Winchester, while forbidding canons to have wives, permitted the clergy in villages to retain their wives. The moderate policy of Dunstan in dealing with the married clergy had its counterpart in the king's attitude towards the Danes and the Mercians, an attitude which was almost certainly suggested by the archbishop himself. The result was an era of peace and prosperity.

The ecclesiastical canons drawn up by Dunstan show the same practical mind and tender heart that we find at work in the State. He is not content to denounce heathen practices, but also urges a sound education and weekly sermons. Strict rules as to ceremonial are balanced by insistence upon the duty of forgiving an enemy and comforting the sorrowful. As a teacher he was known to spare the child as well as the rod. And though he was in touch with Rome, he flatly refused to obey a papal mandate which commanded him to absolve a nobleman who had contracted an unlawful marriage. Dunstan is indeed one of the great figures in the ages that are confidently called dark by those who have done little to explore their recesses.

In 990 King Ethelred 'the Redeless' attained his majority. The hostile Danes returned, sure of some sympathy on the part of their kinsmen in the north of England. Again and again Ethelred bought a respite by paying larger and larger ransoms, until, maddened by failure, he planned a general massacre of the Danes in his own service on St. Brice's Day, 1002. The next year Svein, the Danish king who had apostatized from Christianity, began his terrible raids, sacking one English town after another. He would have been crowned King of England if he had not died unexpectedly in 1014. But only three years later Knut, a son of Svein, became king and reigned for eighteen years, and Englishmen had no cause to be sorry. He held a great gemot at Oxford in which he declared his intention of governing in accordance with the law of Edgar; he sent back to Denmark the bulk of his Scandinavian forces; he not only ruled humanely, but showed himself a zealous Christian. He continued Dunstan's work of trying to extirpate heathenism, and heartily supported the reforming monastic party in the Church. He appears to have been thoroughly sincere and not to have strengthened the Church merely because it was the only unifying and civilizing force in the country. He rebuilt the church at St. Edmundsbury in memory of the king who had been murdered by former vikings. And he transferred with much pomp to Canterbury the relics of St. Alphege (Aelfheah), whom the Danes had murdered at a drunken feast at Greenwich in 1012.

Knut died in 1035. His empire quickly fell to pieces, and the Norsemen and the Danes, being at war with each other, left England alone. The reign of Edward the Confessor (d. 1066) closes the history of the Old English Church. It was really a time of transition; for the king himself was half a Norman, he preferred the Normans as more cultured than the English, and unwisely showed his preference by constantly promoting Norman noblemen and ecclesiastics to positions of importance. Among these ecclesiastics was Robert of Jumièges, who was made Bishop of London in 1044 and was said to have such unlimited influence over the king that the king would have believed him if he had said that a black crow was white. But in spite of his partiality for foreign favorites, the king retained a hold upon the affection of his English subjects. He was dignified, affable, charitable, moderate in eating and drinking, virtuous and devout, fond of hunting. After his death the fact that Edward was the last of the line of Alfred helped to secure for him among the English people a veneration which their Norman monarchs in no way discouraged. His undoubted loyalty to the Church and his patronage of monasticism won for him the praises of his monkish biographers, and his halo was completed by the glories of the abbey church of Westminster. To the older Saxon church he added a great apsidal choir with radiating chapels in the Norman style. It was consecrated a few days before his death, and within its walls he was laid to rest. Two hundred years later the church was rebuilt in a triumphant harmony of French and English art, and over the retable of the high altar glowed in the background the shrine of the canonized St. Edward the Confessor, a marvel of pure gold and precious stones. The gold is gone, but his bones remain.