Everyone knows the story of the Roman Mission which first brought to the

English the knowledge of the Gospel. St. Gregory's deep compassion for the

angel-faces of some captive Angle children in the Roman slave-market led in time

to the sending of the monk St. Augustine and his companions. They were well

received by Ethelbert of Kent who had already married a Christian wife.

Augustine landed in Thanet only in 597, but before the end of the century most of

the Jutes of Kent had been converted. Acting on instructions previously received,

he went to Arles to receive episcopal consecration. Frequent communications

were exchanged with Rome, and St. Gregory in 601 sent Augustine the pallium,

the emblem of archiepiscopal jurisdiction, directing him to consecrate other

bishops and to set up his see in London. This was not then possible, and

Canterbury became the mother church of England. London, however, very shortly

afterwards had its church, and Mellitus was consecrated to reside there as

Bishop of the East Saxons, while another church was erected at Rochester with

Justus as bishop.

On Ethelbert's death in 616 great reverses befell the cause of Christianity. Essex

and part of Kent apostatized, but St. Lawrence, the new archbishop, stood his

ground. A few years later a great advance was made by the marriage of the

powerful King Eadwine of Northumbria to a Kentish Christian princess. Paulinus,

a Roman who had been sent to help Augustine, was consecrated bishop, and,

accompanying her as her chaplain, he was able to baptize Eadwine in 627, and

build the church of St. Peter at York. It is true that a pagan reaction six years

afterwards swept away most of the results achieved, but even then his deacon

James remained at work in Yorkshire. Meanwhile Felix, a Burgundian monk

acting under orders from Canterbury, had gained over East Anglia; and Birinus,

who had been sent straight from Rome, began in 634 the Conversion of the

people of Wessex. In the North it seemed as if the Faith was almost

extinguished, owing mainly to the relentless opposition of Penda, the pagan King

of Mercia, but help came from an unexpected quarter. In 634 the remnants of

Northumbrian sovereignty were soon grasped by St. Oswald, who had been

brought up in exile among the Irish monks settled in Iona, and had there become

a Christian. When this young prince had gained a victory over his enemies and

established himself more firmly, he summoned (c. 635) a Scottish (i.e. Irish)

missionary from Iona. This was St. Aidan, who established a community of his

followers in the island of Lindisfarne, and thence evangelized all the land of the

north. St. Aidan followed the Celtic traditions in the points in which they differed

from the Roman (e.g. the keeping of Easter), but there can be no question as to

his sanctity or as to the wonderful effects of his preaching. From Lindisfarne

came St. Cedd and St. Chad two brothers who respectively evangelized Essex

and Mercia. To Lindisfarne also we are indebted, at least indirectly, for St.

Cuthbert, who consolidated the empire of Christianity in the north, and for St.

Wilfrid, who, besides converting the South Saxons, the tardiest of the Teutonic

settlers to receive the Gospel, accomplished the great task of reconciling the

Christians of Northumberland to the Roman Easter and to the other institutions

which had the support of papal authority. To sum up, it has been said, not

inaptly, that in the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons "the Roman planted, the Scot

watered, the Briton did nothing."

III. DEVELOPMENT UNDER ROMAN AUTHORITY

Meanwhile a great work of organization had been going on. Theodore of Tarsus, a

Greek monk who had been consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury by Pope

Vitalian, came to England in 669. He was warmly welcomed by all, and in 673

held a national council of the English bishops at Hertford, and another in 680 at

Hatfield. In these synods much was done to promote unity, to define the limits of

jurisdiction, and to restrain the wanderings and mutual interference of the clergy.

What was still more important, St. Theodore, visiting the whole of England,

consecrated new bishops and divided up the vast dioceses which in many cases

were coextensive with the kingdoms of the heptarchy. It seems to have been a

consequence of this last proceeding that a feud for a while broke out between

Theodore and Wilfrid, the latter being driven from his See of Ripon and appealing

to Rome. But after some tempestuous years, marked alike by great endurance

and missionary zeal on Wilfrid's part, Theodore acknowledged that he had done

grave wrong to his brother bishop. They were reconciled and for the short time

that remained worked together harmoniously in the cause of Roman order and

discipline.

It would seem that in the interests of anti-papal controversy, a great deal too

much has been made of the divergent customs of the Roman and Celtic

missionaries. Both in Scotland and on the Continent, Irish Christianity was

thoroughly loyal in spirit to the See of Rome. Such men as St. Cuthbert, St.

Cedd, St. Chad, and St. Wilfrid co-operated heartily with the efforts to preach the

Gospel made by the teachers sent from Canterbury. The Celtic customs had

already received their death-blow in the choice made by the Northumbrian King

Oswiu, when at the Synod of Whitby (664) he elected to stand by the Roman

Key-bearer, St. Peter. In fact, after the lapse of a few years they are no more

heard of.

In the eighth century the pope granted the pallium to Egbert, Bishop of York, and

thus restored the see as an archbishopric according to a scheme already

foreshadowed in St. Gregory's letter to Augustine. Moreover, two very important

synods were held at this period. The one, in 747, Novas summoned at the

instance of Pope Zacharias, whose letter was read aloud, and devoted itself to

thorough-going legislation for the internal reform of the clergy. The other, in 787,

was presided over by the two papal legates, George and Theophylact, who

forwarded to Pope Adrian a report of the proceedings, including among other

things a formal recognition of tithes. In this synod Lichfield, through the influence

of Offa, King of Mercia, who made misleading representations at Rome, was

erected into an archbishopric; but, sixteen years later, when Offa and Pope

Adrian were dead, Leo III reversed the decision of his predecessor. It has been

suggested that the institution of Peter's pence, which dates from this period, was

the price paid by Offa for Adrian's complaisance, but this is pure conjecture.

During the ninth century, in the course of which Wessex gradually acquired a

position of supremacy, the Danish incursions destroyed many great seats of

learning and centres of monastic discipline, such, for instance, as Jarrow, the

home of St. Bede, and these calamities soon exercised a disastrous effect upon

the lives and work of the clergy. King Alfred the Great strove hard to put things on

a better footing, and, speaking generally, the devotion of secular rulers towards

the papacy and the Church was never more conspicuous than at this period. To

this age belongs the famous grant to the Church of a tenth of his land by

Ethelwulf, father of Alfred. This had nothing directly to do with tithes, but it

showed how completely the principle was recognized and how close was the

union between Church and State. The final victory of Alfred over the Danes, the

treaty with Guthrum their leader at Wedmore, and the consequent reception of

Christianity by the invaders, did much to restore the Church to happier

conditions. In the joint code of laws published by Alfred and Guthrum, apostasy

was declared a crime, negligent priests were to be fined, the payment of

Peter's-Pence was commanded, and the practice of heathen rites was forbidden.

The union between secular this time, and indeed throughout the whole of the

Anglo-Saxon period, was very close, and some of the great national councils

seemed almost to have the character of Church synods. But the clergy, while

remaining closely identified with the people, and discharging in each district the

functions of local state officials, seem never to have quite regained the religious

spirit which the period of Danish incursions had impaired. Hence, in the time of

St. Dunstan, who was Archbishop of Canterbury from 960 to 988, a very strong

movement made itself felt (encouraged especially by St. Æthelwold of

Winchester, and St. Oswald of Worcester and York), which aimed at replacing

the secular clergy by monks in all the more important "minsters". There can be

no doubt that at this period the law of celibacy was ill observed by priests, and

the custom of marrying was so general that it seemed to have been impossible

to enforce any very severe penalties against delinquents. Hence, great efforts

were made by the three saints named and by King Edgar to renovate and

spiritualize monasticism upon the lines of the great Benedictine rule, hoping

thereby also to raise the tone of the secular clergy and to increase their influence

for good. For the same end St. Dunstan sought to remedy the isolation of the

English Church not only by intercourse with France and Flanders, but also, in the

words of Bishop Stubbs, "by establishing a more intimate communication with

the Apostolic See". Henceforth nearly all archbishops went personally to Rome

for the pallium.

These efforts resulted in a distinct advance in general culture, though England no

longer led, but was content to follow the scholars of the Continent. Still, much

was gained, and when, after renewed invasions, a Danish dynasty became

masters of England, "the society which was unable to withstand the arms of

Canute, almost immediately humanized and elevated him". Canute was a fervent

convert. He made a great pilgrimage to Rome in 1026-27. His legislation was

largely ecclesiastical in character, and he insisted anew on the payment of

Peter's-Pence. These Roman influences were also reinforced under Edward the

Confessor by the appointment of several foreigners to English sees and by a

great revival of pilgrimages to Rome. The foreigners were probably both more

devout and more capable than any native priests that were available. There is

nothing to show that competent Englishmen were passed over. On the contrary,

when in 1062 papal legates again visited England they were responsible for the

appointment of one of the greatest native churchmen of Anglo-Saxon times, St.

Wulstan, Bishop of Worcester. In himself "a faultless character" (Dict. Nat.

Biog., s.v.), he lived on under Norman rule, for nearly thirty years, serving to

perpetuate the best traditions of the Anglo-Saxon Church in the reorganized

hierarchy of the Conquest.

IV. ECCLESIASTICAL ORGANIZATION

There can be no doubt that in the Christianizing of Britain the monk came before

the secular priest, the minster (monasterium) was prior to the cathedral. St.

Augustine and his companions were monks, belonging seemingly to

communities founded by St. Gregory himself, though it would be a mistake to

regard them as identical in discipline, or even in spirit, with the Benedictines of a

later age. Still greater would be the error of using modern standards to judge of

the monks of the Celtic Church, those rude but ascetic missionaries who

established themselves in the lonely island of Lindisfarne, and who in their

excursions under the leadership of St. Aidan gradually built up the Church of

Northumbria. The early monastic institutions of the West, both Roman and

Celtic, were very adaptable and seem to have been well fitted for missionary

efforts; but they were nevertheless incapable of providing permanently for the

spiritual needs of a Christian population, as they essentially supposed some

form of common life and the gathering of numbers in one monastic center. As

soon, then, as the work of conversion had made some little progress, it became

the aim of the bishop or abbot and under the Celtic system the abbot was often

the religious superior of the bishop to draw young men into intercourse with their

community and after more or less of instruction to ordain them priests and send

them to dwell among the people, wherever their ministrations were most needed,

or where provision for their support was most readily offered. To a large extent the

parochial system in England was brought into being by what may be called

private chaplaincies (cf. Earle, Land Charters, 73). It was not, as used formerly to

be maintained, the creation of Archbishop Theodore or any one organizer. The

gesith, or noble landowner, in any "township" (this, of course, was a rural

division) would build a church for his own private convenience, often in contiguity

to his own house, and then he would either obtain from the bishop a priest to

serve it or, more commonly, would present some nominee his own for ordination.

No doubt the bishop himself was also active in providing churches a n d clergy for

noteworthy centres of population. Indeed, Bede writing to Archbishop Egbert of

York urged that there ought to be a priest in each township (in singulars vicis),

and to this day the parishes coincide with the former townships (now known as

"civil parishes"), or in more thinly populated districts with a group of townships.

While, in this way parishes came into being out of the oratories of the lords, a

strong effort seems to have been made by the bishops at an early date both to

check abuses and to secure some definite provision of a permanent nature for

the support of the priest. This often took the form of lands legally "booked" to the

saint to whom the church was dedicated. At first the bishop seems to have been

seised of these endowments, as also of the tithes and of the general

contributions for ecclesiastical purposes known as "Church-shot", but soon the

parish priest himself acquired, along with fixity of tenure, the administration of

these emoluments. It is quite possible that the general prevalence in England of

lay patrons with the right to present to benefices (q.v.) is to be traced to the fact

that the parish church in so many cases originated in the private oratory of the

lord of the township. It is difficult to decide at what date the organization of the

parochial system should be regarded as complete. We can only say that the

Domesday commission in the reign of William the Conqueror takes it for granted

that every township had its own parish priest. The dioceses which were first

divided up with some degree of adequacy by Archbishop Theodore were further

added to. As time went on, York, as we have noticed, became an archbishopric

under Egbert, but the province of York was always far behind Canterbury in the

number of its suffragans. On the other hand, the recognition almost universally

accorded to Canterbury, and the oaths of fealty taken by the bishops to the

archbishop probably did much towards developing the idea of the national unity.

At the close of the Anglo-Saxon period there were some seventeen bishoprics,

but the numerous subdivisions, suppressions, translations, and amalgamations

of sees during the preceding centuries, are too complicated to be detailed here.

The matter has been very fully discussed, in "English Dioceses", by G. Hill, who

gives the following list of bishoprics in 1066. I add the date of foundation; but in

some cases, indicated in brackets, the see was suppressed or transferred and

afterwards refounded.

Canterbury, 597;

London 604;

Rochester, 604;

York, (625), 664;

Dorchester (634), 870 with Leicester;

Lindisfarne, 635, later Durham;

Lichfield, 656;

Winchester, Hereford, 609; 662;

East Anglia (Elmham), 673;

Worcester, 620;

Sherborne, 705;

Sussex (Selsey), 708;

Ramsbury, c. 909;

Crediton, c. 909;

Wells, c. 909;

Cornwall (St. Germans), 931.

Some of these dioceses afterwards became more famous under other names.

Thus Ramsbury was later on represented by Salisbury or Sarum, which, owing to

the influence of St. Osmund (d. 1009), a post-Conquest bishop, acquired a sort

of liturgical primacy among the other English dioceses. Similarly, the sees

established at Dorchester, Elmham, and Crediton were after the Conquest

transferred to the far more famous cities of Lincoln, Norwich, and Exeter. Other

bishoprics at one time renowned, such as those of Hexham and Ripon, were

suppressed or merged into more important dioceses. At the period of the Norman

Conquest, York had only one suffragan see, that of Lindisfarne or Durham, but it

obtained a sort of irregular supremacy over Worcester, owing to the abuse that

for a long time the same archbishop had been accustomed to hold the sees of

York and Worcester at once. Undoubtedly a large part of the chopping and

changing which are noticed in the delimitation of the old Saxon dioceses must be

attributed to the effects of the Danish irruptions. The same cause is no doubt

mainly responsible for the decay of the older monastic system; though

something should also be laid to the charge of the looseness of organization and

the undue prevalence of family influence in the succession of superiors, which in

many instances left to the cloister only the semblance of religious life. The

"booking" of land to these pretended monasteries seems in the early period to

have become recognized as a fraudulent means of evading certain burdens to

which the land was subject. The prevalent system, of "double monasteries", in

which both sexes resided though of course in separate buildings, the nuns under

the rule of an abbess, seems never to have been viewed with approval by Roman

authority. It is not clear whether the English derived this institution from Ireland or

from Gaul. The best known examples are Whitby, Coldingham, Bardney,

Wenlock, Repton, Ely, Wimborne, and Barking. Some of these were purely

Celtic in origin; others, for example the last, were certainly founded under Roman

influences. Only in the case of Coldingham have we any direct evidence of grave

scandals resulting. When, however, in the tenth century, after the submission of

the Danes, the monasteries began to revive once more, English monks went to

Fleury which had recently been reformed by St. Odo of Cluny, and the Fleury

tradition was imported into England. (Eng. Hist. Review, IX, 691 sq.). It was the

spirit of Fleury which, under the guidance of St Dunstan and St. Æthelwold,

animated the great centres of English monastic life, such as Winchester,

Worcester, Abingdon, Glastonbury, Eynsham, Ramsey, Peterborough, and

many more. We must also remember, as an explanation of the efforts made at

this time to dislodge the secular canons from the cathedrals, that these secular

canons were themselves the successors, and sometimes the actual progeny, of

degenerate monks. It was felt that all sacred traditions cried out for the

restoration of a worthier clergy and a stricter observance. Even during times of

the greatest corruption ecclesiastical authority never fully acquiesced in the

marriage of the Anglo-Saxon Mass-priests, though this was undoubtedly

prevalent On the other hand, it should be remembered that the word preost (as

opposed to messe-preost) of itself only means cleric in minor orders, and

consequently every mention of the son of a priest does not necessarily

presuppose a flagrant violation of the canons. To the clergy in general, from a

social point of view, great privileges were accorded which the law fully

recognized. The priest, or mass-thegn, enjoyed a high wergeld (i.e. man-price, a

claim for compensation proportionate to and an increased mundbyrd, or right of

protection. He ranked as a thane, and the parish priest together with the reeve

and the four best burghers of each township attended the hundred-moot as a

matter of right. On the other hand, the clergy end their property, at least in later

times, were not exempt from the public burdens common to all. Save for the

option of the corsned, a form of ordeal by blessed bread, the clergy were judged

in the ordinary tribunals, and frithborh, or the duty of finding a member of sureties

for their keeping the peace, was incumbent upon them as upon other men.

V. ECCLESTIASTICAL OBSERVANCES

The close union of the religious and social aspects of Anglo-Saxon life is

nowhere more clearly seen than in the penitential system. Codes of penalties for

moral offences, which were known as Penitentials and were ascribed to such

venerated names as Theodore, Bede, and Egbert, meet us from an early period.

The application of these codes, at least in some imperfect way, lasted on until

the Conquest, and the public penance enforced upon the offenders seems almost

to have had the effect of a system of police. Closely related with this was the

practice of making confession to the parish priest on Shrove Tuesday or shortly

afterwards. In cases of public offenses against morality, reconciliation was

commonly deferred at least until Maundy Thursday, at the end of Lent, and

belonged of strict right to the bishop alone. Confession may have been relatively

infrequent, and probably enough its necessity was only recognized when there

was question of sins of a palpably grievous character, but it is certain that

secrecy was respected in the case of hidden sins, and that absolution was given,

at least in the precatory form. The earliest example of our modern declarative

form of absolution in the West is probably of Anglo-Saxon origin. Of the general

prevalence of confession no stronger proof can be given than the fact that the

term commonly used in Anglo-Saxon to denote a parish was scriftscir (i.e. shrift

shire, confession district). Like the observance of certain appointed fasts and

festivals, the obligation of confession was made a subject of secular legislation

by the king and his Witan. Another obligation enforced by legal enactment in the

Witena gemot (council of the wise men) was the Cyricsceat (i.e. church-shot,

church dues). The nature of this payment is clear, but it seems to have consisted

in the in the fruits of the seed-harvest (cf. Kemble, Saxons in England, II, 559). It

was apparently distinct from tithes and probably was even older than the

formation of regular parishes (Baldwin Brown, Arts in Early Eng., I, 314-316). The

payments of the tithe of increase was first plainly enjoined in the legatine synod

held at Cealchythe (Chelsea?) in 787 and the obligation was confirmed in an

ordinance of Athelstan, 927. Soul-shot (saul sceat), also a payment enforced by

legal sanction, seems to have been a due paid to the parish church with a view to

the donor's burial in its churchyard. The importance attached to it shows how

intimately bound up with Anglo-Saxon religious conceptions was the duty of

prayer for the dead. The offering of Masses for the dead is legislated for in some

of the earliest ecclesiastical documents of the English Church which have been

preserved to us, e.g. in the "Penitential" of Theodore. The same desire to obtain

the prayers of the living for the souls of the departed is manifested alike in the

wording of the land charters and in the earliest stone monuments. The cross

erected at Bewcastle in Cumberland about 671, in honour of the Northumbrian

king Alchfrith, has a runic inscription asking prayers for his soul. Religious

communities as early as the first half of the eighth century banded themselves

together in associations pledged to recite the psalter and offer Masses for their

deceased members, and this movement which spread widely in Germany and on

the Continent had its origin in England. (See Ebner, Gebetsverbrüderungen, 30.)

Similarly among secular persons guilds were formed, the main object of which

was to secure prayers for the souls of their members after death (Kemble,

Saxond, I, 511). For the same purpose, at the obsequies of the great, doles of

food were commonly distributed, and slaves were manumitted. Another institution

many times mentioned in the later Anglo-Saxon laws is that of Peter's-Pence

(Rom-feoh, Rom-pennig). It appears from a letter of Pope Leo III (795-816) that

King Offa of Mercia promised to send 365 mancusses yearly to Rome for the

maintenance of the poor and of lights, and Asser tells of some similar gift of

Ethelwulf, the father of King Alfred, to St. Peter's. Not very long after, it seems to

have taken the form of a regular tax collected from the people and annually

transmitted to Rome. This voluntary contribution undoubtedly bears witness to a

very close union between England and the Holy See, and indeed this is made

clear to us in numerous other ways. It is Bede who directs special attention to

the constant pilgrimages from England to the Holy City and to the abdication of

kings, like Cædwalla and Ine, who resigned the crown and went to Rome to die.

The prevalence of dedications to St. Peter, the generous gifts of such men as the

Abbot Ceolfrith, whose present to the Pope, the magnificent Northumbrian

manuscript now known as the "Codex Amiatinus", is preserved to this day,

together with the language of several of the English synods, all point in the same

direction. The fact was even commented upon by continental contemporaries,

and the "Gesta Abbatum Fontanellensium" (Saint Vandrille), written c. 840,

speaks of the "English who are always specially devoted to the Apostolic See "

(Hauck, Kirchengeschichte . Deutschlands, I, 457, 3d ed.). We have very good

evidence of the existence in the Anglo-Saxon Church of the whole of the present

Sacramental system, including Extreme Unction, Holy Orders, and Matrimony.

The Mass was the centre of all religious worship, and the Holy Sacrifice was

certainly offered privately, sometimes as often as three or four times in the same

day by the same priest, but always fasting. The attempt made, upon the

authority of certain expressions of Abbot Ælfric (q. v.), to show that the

Anglo-Saxons did not believe in the Real Presence is wholly illusory. (See

Bridgett, Hist. of Holy Eucharist, I, 119 sq.). In these matters of faith and ritual

England differs in no substantial respect from the rest of Western Christendom.

The Latin language was used both in the liturgy and in the canonical hours. The

books were the Roman service books without any important additions of native or

Celtic growth. The principal foreign influence which can be discerned is a

likeness to the ritual observances of southern Italy (e.g., Naples), a. peculiarity to

which attention has been drawn on many occasions by Edmund Bishop and

Dom Germain Morin. It is probably due to the fact that Adrian, Abbot of St.

Augustine's, Canterbury, who came to England in the train of Archbishop

Theodore, had brought with him the traditions of Monte Cassino. Even the

coronation service, which began by being pronouncedly Celtic, was remodelled

about the time of Eadgar (973) in imitation of the usages which obtained in the

coronation of the Emperor of the West (Robertson, Historical Essays, 203 sq.;

Thurston, Coronation Ceremonial, 18 sq.). Hence many interesting details of

liturgical custom, e.g. the churchyard procession on Palm Sunday, the dramatic

dialogue beside the Sepulchre on Easter eve, the episcopal benediction after the

Pater Noster of the Mass, the multiplication of prefaces, thle great O's of Advent,

the communion of the laity under both species, etc., were not peculiar to

England, even though in some cases the earliest recorded examples are English

examples. As regards the veneration of the saints and of their relics, no Church

was farther removed than the Anglo-Saxon Church from the principles of the

Reformation. The praises of our Blessed Lady are sung by Aldhelm and Alcuin in

Latin, and by the poet Cynewulf (c. 775) in Anglo-Saxon, in glowing verse. An

Anglican writer (Church Quarterly Rev., XIV, 286) has frankly admitted that

"Mariolatry is no very modern development of Romanism -- the Blessed Virgin

was not only Dei Genitrix and Virgo Virginum, but in a tenth-century English

litany she is addressed thus:

Sancta Regina Mundi, ora pro nobis;

Sancta Salvatrix Mundi, ora pro nobis;

Sancta Redemptrix Mundi, ora pro nobis."

The bodies of the saints, e.g. that of St. Cuthbert, were reverently honoured from

the beginning and esteemed the most precious of treasures. Besides the feasts

of Christ and Our Lady, a number of saints' were observed throughout the year, to

which in a synod of 747 the festivals of St. Gregory and St. Augustine, the true

apostles of England, were specially added. Later secular legislation determined

the number of such feasts and prescribed abstention from servile work. All feasts

of the Apostles had vigils on which men fasted. Sts. Peter and Paul's day was

celebrated with an octave. The Ordeals, a method of trial by "judgment of God",

though accompanied by prayer and conducted under the supervision of the

clergy, were not exactly an ecclesiastical institution, neither were they peculiar

to the Anglo-Saxon Church.

VI. MISSIONS

Of the missionary enterprise of the Anglo-Saxons a more detailed account must

be sought under the names of the principal missionaries and of the countries

evangelized. It will be sufficient to say here in general that the preaching of the

Irish monks, of whom St. Columban was the most celebrated, in central and

western Europe, was followed and eclipsed by the efforts of the Anglo-Saxons, in

particular by those of the Northumbrian St. Willibrord and the West Saxon

Winfrith better known as St. Boniface. St. Boniface, to whom a later age gave the

name of the Apostle of Germany, was supported by many followers, e.g. Lull,

Willibald, Burchard, and others. The work of evangelization in Germany was

almost accomplished in the eighth century, the crowning effort being made by St.

Willehad between 772 and 789, in the North, beside the banks of the Elbe and

the Weser. These missionary undertakings were much assisted by the devotion

of many holy Englishwomen, e.g. Sts. Walburg, Lioba, Tecla, and others, who

founded communities of nuns and in this way did much to educate and

Christianize the young people of their own sex. At a somewhat later date another

great missionary field was provided for Anglo-Saxon zeal in the northern lands of

Denmark and Scandinavia. St. Sigfrid led the way under the protection of King

Olaf Tryggvesson, but the accession of King Canute to the throne of England was

an important factor in this new development. Although not much is known of the

history of the missions in Sweden and Norway, it has lately been shown by such

scholars as Taranger and Freisen, alike from linguistic and liturgical

considerations, that the impress of the Anglo-Saxon Church is everywhere

recognizable in the Christian institutions of the extreme North.

VII. LITERATURE AND ART

Both literature and art among the Anglo-Saxons were intimately bound up with

the service of the Church, and owed almost all their inspiration to her ministers.

In the century or more which preceded the terrible Viking raid of 794

extraordinary progress was made. Aldhelm, Bede, and Alcuin represented the

high-water mark of Latin scholarship in the Christian West of that day, and the

native literature, so far as we can judge from the surviving poetry of Cædmon and

Cynewulf (if the latter, as seems likely, is really the author of the "Christ" and the

"Dream of the Rood") was of unparalleled excellence. With this high standard the

arts introduced from Rome, especially by St. Wilfrid and St. Benedict Biscop,

seem to have kept pace. Nothing could be more remarkable for graceful design

than the ornamentation of the stone grosses of Northumbria belonging to this

period, e.g. those of Bewcastle and Ruthwell. The surviving Manuscripts of the

same epoch are not less wonderful in their way. We have spoken of the copy of

the Bible written at Jarrow and taken to Rome by Ceolfrid as a present for the

Pope. Two other equally authentic relics are the Lindisfarne Gospels and the

copy of the Gospel of St. John, now at Stonyhurst College, which was buried

with St. Cuthbert and found in his tomb. But this precocious development of

culture was, as already explained above, terribly blighted by the inroads of the

Danes. With the era of King Alfred, however, there are many signs of recovery.

His own Anglo-Saxon prose, mostly translations, is conspicuous for its grace

and freedom, also the remarkable work of art known as the Alfred jewel bears

witness, with rings and other objects of the same epoch, to a very high level of

technical skill in goldsmith's work. Within the century of Alfred's death we also

find that in this period of comparative peace and religious revival an admirable

school of calligraphy and illumination had grown up which seems to have had its

principal home at Winchester. The Benedictional of St. Æthelwold and the

so-called Missal of Robert of Jumièges are famous MSS. which may be regarded

as typical of the period. In literature also this was a time of great development,

the inspiring motive of which was almost always religious. Considerable

collections of homilies are preserved to us, many of them rhythmical in structure,

which are specially connected with the names of Ælfric and Wulfstan. Besides

these we have a number of manuscripts which contain translations, or at least

paraphrases, of books of Scripture; Bede's last work, as is well known, was to

translate into his native tongue the Gospel of St. John, though this has not

survived. Still more commonly Latin texts were transcribed, and an Anglo-Saxon

gloss written over each word as an aid to the student. This was the case with the

famous Lindisfarne Gospels, written and illuminated about the year 700, though

the Anglo-Saxon interlinear translation was only added some 250 years

afterwards. The manuscript, one of the treasures of the British Museum, is also

remarkable for the beauty of its interlaced ornament. This form of decoration,

though no doubt originally derived from the Irish missionaries who accompanied

St. Aidan to Northumbria, soon became a distinctive feature of the art of the

Anglo-Saxons. It is as conspicuous in their stone carvings (compare the early

crosses mentioned above) as it is in the decoration of their manuscripts, and it

long survived in a modified form. In the field of history, again, we possess in the

so-called "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle", reaching in some manuscripts from the

Saxon conquest down to the middle of else twelfth century, the most wonderful

chronicle in the vernacular which is known to any European people while in the

"Beowulf" we have a comparatively late transcription of a pagan Teutonic poem

which in subject and inspiration is older than the eighth century. But it is

impossible to enumerate within narrow limits even the more important elements

of the rich literature of the Anglo-Saxon period. Neither can we describe the

many architectural remodels, more particularly' of churches, which survive frown

before the Conquest, and which, though mainly noteworthy for their massive

strength, are not lay any means lacking in a sense of beauty or destitute of

pleasing ornament. The ancient Saxon tower of Earl's Barton church near

Northampton may be appealed to as an illustration of the rest.

Transcribed by Fred Dillenburg