§ 37. The Christianization of Russia.
§ 37. The Christianization of Russia.
Nestor (monk of Kieff, the oldest Russian annalist, d. 1116): Annales, or Chronicon (from the building of the Babylonian tower to 1093). Continued by Niphontes (Nifon) from 1116–1157, and by others to 1676. Complete ed. in Russ by Pogodin, 1841, and with a Latin version and glossary by Fr. Miklosisch, Vindobon, 1860. German translation by Schlözer, Göttingen, 1802–’9, 5 vols. (incomplete).
J. G. Stritter: Memoriae Populorum olim ad Danubium, etc., incolentium ex Byzant. Script. Petropoli, 1771. 4 vols. A collection of the Byzantine sources.
N. M. Karamsin: History of Russia, 12 vols. St. Petersburg, 1816–29, translated into German and French.
Ph. Strahl: Beiträge zur russ. Kirchen-Geschichte (vol. I.). Halle, 1827; and Geschichte d. russ Kirche (vol. I.). Halle, 1830 (incomplete).
A. N. Mouravieff (late chamberlain to the Czar and Under-Procurator of the Most Holy Synod): A History of the Church of Russia (to the founding of the Holy Synod in 1721). St. Petersburg, 1840, translated into English by Rev. R. W. Blackmore. Oxford, 1862.
A. P. Stanley: Lectures on the Eastern Church. Lec. IX.-XII. London, 1862.
L. Boissard: L’église de Bussie. Paris, 1867, 2 vols.
The legend traces Christianity in Russia back to the Apostle St. Andrew, who is especially revered by the Russians. Mouravieff commences his history of the Russian church with these words: "The Russian church, like the other Orthodox churches of the East, had an apostle for its founder. St. Andrew, the first called of the Twelve, hailed with his blessing long beforehand the destined introduction of Christianity into our country. Ascending up and penetrating by the Dniepr into the deserts of Scythia, he planted the first cross on the hills of Kieff, and ’See you,’ said he to his disciples, ’those hills? On those hills shall shine the light of divine grace. There shall be here a great city, and God shall have in it many churches to His name.’ Such are the words of the holy Nestor that point from whence Christian Russia has sprung."
This tradition is an expansion of the report that Andrew labored and died a martyr in Scythia,134 and nothing more.
In the ninth century the Russian tribes, inhabiting the Eastern part of Europe, were gathered together under the rule of Ruric, a Varangian prince,135 who from the coasts of the Baltic penetrated into the centre of the present Russia, and was voluntarily accepted, if not actually chosen by the tribes as their chief. He is regarded as the founder of the Russian empire, a.d. 862, which in 1862 celebrated its millennial anniversary. About the same time or a little later the Russians became somewhat acquainted with Christianity through their connections with the Byzantine empire. The Eastern church, however, never developed any great missionary activity, and when Photius, the patriarch of Constantinople, in his circular letter against the Roman see, speaks of the Russians as already converted at his time (867), a few years after the founding of the empire, he certainly exaggerates. When, in 945, peace was concluded between the Russian grand-duke, Igor, and the Byzantine emperor, some of the Russian soldiers took the oath in the name of Christ, but by far the greatest number swore by Perun, the old Russian god. In Kieff, on the Dniepr, the capital of the Russian realm, there was at that time a Christian church, dedicated to Elijah, and in 955 the grand-duchess, Olga, went to Constantinople and was baptized. She did not succeed, however, in persuading her son, Svatoslav, to embrace the Christian faith.
The progress of Christianity among the Russians was slow until the grand-duke Vladimir (980–1015), a grandson of Olga, and revered as Isapostolos ("Equal to an Apostle") with one sweep established it as the religion of the country. The narrative of this event by Nestor is very dramatic. Envoys from the Greek and the Roman churches, from the Mohammedans and the Jews (settled among the Chazares) came to Vladimir to persuade him to leave his old gods. He hesitated and did not know which of the new religions he should choose. Finally he determined to send wise men from among his own people to the various places to investigate the matter. The envoys were so powerfully impressed by a picture of the last judgment and by the service in the church of St. Sophia in Constantinople, that the question at once was settled in favor of the religion of the Byzantine court.
Vladimir, however, would not introduce it without compensation. He was staying at Cherson in the Crimea, which he had just taken and sacked, and thence he sent word to the emperor Basil, that he had determined either to adopt Christianity and receive the emperor’s sister, Anne, in marriage, or to go to Constantinople and do to that city as he had done to Cherson. He married Anne, and was baptized on the day of his wedding, a.d. 988.
As soon as he was baptized preparations were made for the baptism of his people. The wooden image of Perun was dragged at a horse’s tail through the country, soundly flogged by all passers-by, and finally thrown into the Dniepr. Next, at a given hour, all the people of Kieff, men, women and children, descended into the river, while the grand Duke kneeled, and the Christian priests read the prayers from the top of the cliffs on the shore. Nestor, the Russian monk and annalist, thus describes the scene: "Some stood in the water up to their necks, others up to their breasts, holding their young children in their arms; the priests read the prayers from the shore, naming at once whole companies by the same name. It was a sight wonderfully curious and beautiful to behold; and when the people were baptized each returned to his own home."
Thus the Russian nation was converted in wholesale style to Christianity by despotic power. It is characteristic of the supreme influence of the ruler and the slavish submission of the subjects in that country. Nevertheless, at its first entrance in Russia, Christianity penetrated deeper into the life of the people than it did in any other country, without, however, bringing about a corresponding thorough moral transformation. Only a comparatively short period elapsed, before a complete union of the forms of religion and the nationality took place. Every event in the history of the nation, yea, every event in the life of the individual was looked upon from a religious point of view, and referred to some distinctly religious idea. The explanation of this striking phenomenon is due in part to Cyrill’s translation of the Bible into the Slavic language, which had been driven out from Moravia and Bohemia by the Roman priests, and was now brought from Bulgaria into Russia, where it took root. While the Roman church always insisted upon the exclusive use of the Latin translation of the Bible and the Latin language in divine service, the Greek church always allowed the use of the vernacular. Under its auspices there were produced translations into the Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, and Slavic languages, and the effects of this principle were, at least in Russia, most beneficial. During the reign of Vladimir’s successor, Jaroslaff, 1019–1054, not only were churches and monasteries and schools built all over the country, but Greek theological books were translated, and the Russian church had, at an early date, a religious literature in the native tongue of the people. Jaroslaff, by his celebrated code of laws, became the Justinian of Russia.
The Czars and people of Russia have ever since faithfully adhered to the Oriental church which grew with the growth of the empire all along the Northern line of two Continents. As in the West, so in Russia, monasticism was the chief institution for the spread of Christianity among heathen savages. Hilarion (afterwards Metropolitan), Anthony, Theodosius, Sergius, Lazarus, are prominent names in the early history of Russian monasticism.
The subsequent history of the Russian church is isolated from the main current of histoy, and almost barren of events till the age of Nikon and Peter the Great. At first she was dependent on the patriarch of Constantinople. In 1325 Moscow was founded, and became, in the place of Kieff, the Russian Rome, with a metropolitan, who after the fall of Constantinople became independent (1461), and a century later was raised to the dignity of one of the five patriarchs of the Eastern Church (1587). But Peter the Great made the Northern city of his own founding the ecclesiastical as well as the political metropolis, and transferred the authority of the patriarchate of Moscow to the "Holy Synod" (1721), which permanently resides in St. Petersburg and constitutes the highest ecclesiastical judicatory of Russia under the caesaropapal rule of the Czar, the most powerful rival of the Roman Pope.
Max Müller, Science of Language, I. 121.
The word Druid or Druidh is not from the Greek dru'", 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.
See Haddan & Stubbs, Counc. and Eccles. Doc. I. 22-26, and Pryce, 31 sqq. Haddan says, that "statements respecting (a) British Christians at Rome, (b) British Christians in Britain, (c) Apostles or apostolic men preaching in Britain, in the first century—rest upon either guess, mistake or fable;" and that "evidence alleged for the existence of a Christian church in Britain during the second century is simply unhistorical." Pryce calls these early agencies "gratuitons assumptions, plausible guesses, or legendary fables." Eusebius, Dem. Ev. III. 5, speaks as if some of the Twelve or of the Seventy had "crossed the ocean to the isles called British;" but the passage is rhetorical and indefinite. In his Church History he omits Britain from the apostolic mission-field.
It is merely an inference from the well-known passage of Clement of Rome, Ep. ad Corinth. c. 5, that Paul carried the gospel "to the end of the West" (ejpi;to;tevrmath'"duvsew"). But this is far more naturally understood of a visit to Spain which Paul intended (Rom. xv. 28), and which seems confirmed by a passage in the Muratorian Fragment about 170 ("Profectionem Pauli ab urbe ad Spaniam proficiscentis "); while there is no trace whatever of an intended or actual visit to Britain. Canon Bright calls this merely a "pious fancy" (p. 1), and Bishop Lightfoot remarks: "For the patriotic belief of some English writers, who have included Britain in the Apostle’s travels, there is neither evidence nor probability" (St. Clement of Rome p. 50). It is barely possible however, that some Galatian converts of Paul, visiting the far West to barter the hair-cloths of their native land for the useful metal of Britain, may have first made known the gospel to the Britons in their kindred Keltic tongue. See Lightfoot, Com. on Gal., p. 246.
Book I., ch. 4: "Lucius, king of the Britons, sent a letter to Eleutherus, entreating that by his command he might be made a Christian. He soon obtained his pious request, and the Britons preserved the faith, which they had received, uncorrupted and entire, in peace and tranquillity, until the time of the Emperor Diocletian." Comp. the footnote of Giles in loc. Haddan says (I. 25): "The story of Lucius rests solely upon the later form of the Catalogus Pontificum Romanorum which was written c. a. d. 530, and which adds to the Vita Eleutherus (a. d. 171-186) that ’Hic (Eleutherus)accepit epistolam a Lucio Britanniae Rege, ut Chrristianus efficeretur par ejus mandatum.’ But these words are not in the original Catalogus, written shortly after a. d. 353." Beda copies the Roman account. Gildas knows nothing of Lucius. According to other accounts, Lucius ((Lever Maur, or the Great Light) sent Pagan and Dervan to Rome, who were ordained by Evaristus or Eleutherus, and on their return established the British church. See Lingard, History of England, I. 46.
Adv. Judaeos 7: "Britannorum inaccessa Romanis loca, Christo vero subdita." Bishop Kaye (Tertull., p. 94) understands this passage as referring to the farthest extremities of Britain. So Burton (II. 207): "Parts of the island which had not been visited by the Romans." See Bright, p. 5.
Bede I. 7. The story of St. Alban is first narrated by Gildas in the sixth century. Milman and Bright (p. 6) admit his historic reality.
Wiltsch, Handbuch der Kirchl. Geogr. und Statistik I. 42 and 238, Mansi, Conc. II. 467, Haddan and Stubbs, l.c., I. 7. Haddan identifies Colonia Londinensium with Col. Legionensium, i.e. Caerleon-on-Usk.
See Haddan and Stubbs, I. 7-10.
Bede I. 21 ascribes the triumph of the Catholic faith over the Pelagian heresy to the miraculous healing of a lame youth by Germanus (St. Germain), Bishop of Auxerre. Comp. also Haddan and Stubbs, I. 15-17.
See Haddan and Stubbs, I. 36-40.
The British and Irish Christians were stigmatized by their Roman opponents as heretical Quartodecimans (Bede III. 4); but the Eastern Quartodecimans invariably celebrated Easter on the fourteenth day of the month (hence their designation), whether it fell on a Sunday or not; while the Britons and Irish celebrated it always on a Sunday between the 14th and the 20th of the month; the Romans between the 15th and 21st. Comp. Skene, l.c. II. 9 sq.; the elaborate discussion of Ebrard, Die, iro-schott. Missionskirche, 19-77, and Killen, Eccles. Hist. of Ireland, I. 57 sqq.
The chronology, is somewhat uncertain. See Lappenberg’s Geschichte von England, Bd. I., p. 73 sqq.
Quoted by Lingard, I. 62. The picture here given corresponds closely with that given in Beowulf’s Drapa, from the 9th century.
King Arthur (or Artus), the hero of Wales, of the Chronicles of Geoffrey of Monmouth, and the romances of the Round Table, if not entirely mythical, was one of the last Keltic chiefs, who struggled against the Saxon invaders in the sixth century. He resided in great state at Caerleon in Wales, surrounded by valorous knights, seated with him at a round table, gained twelve victories over the Saxons, and died in the battle of Mount Badon or Badon Hill near Bath (a. d. 520). The legend was afterwards Christianized, transferred to French soil, and blended with the Carlovingian Knights of the Round Table, which never existed. Arthur’s name was also connected since the Crusades with the quest of the Holy Grail or Graal (Keltic gréal, old French san gréal or greel), i.e. the wonderful bowl-shaped vessel of the Lord’s Supper (used for the Paschal Lamb, or, according to another view, for the cup of blessing), in which Joseph of Arimathaea caught the blood of the Saviour at the cross, and which appears in the Arthurian romances as the token of the visible presence of Christ, or the symbolic embodiment of the doctrine of transubstantiation. Hence the derivation of Grail from sanguis realis, real blood, or sang royal, the Lord’s blood. Others derive it from the Romanic greal, cup or dish; still others from the Latin graduale. See Geoffrey of Monmouth, Chronicon sive Historia Britonum (1130 and 1147, translated into English by Aaron Thomson, London, 1718); Sir T. Malory, History of Prince Arthur (1480-1485, new ed. by, Southey, 1817); Wolfram von Eschenbach Parcival and Titurel (about 1205, transl. by K. Simrock, Stuttg., 1842); Lachmann, Wolfram von Eschenbach (Berlin, 1833, 2nd ed, 1854); Göschel Die Sage von Parcival und vom Gral nach Wolfram von Eschenbach (Berlin, 1858); Paulin Paris, Les Romans de la Table Ronde (Paris, 1860); Tennyson, The Idylls, of the King (1859), and The Holy Grail (1869); Skene, Four Ancient Books of Wales (1868); Stuart-Glennie, Arthurian Localities (1869); Birch-Herschfeld, Die Sage vom Gral, (Leipz., 1877); and an article of Göschel, Gral in the first ed. of Herzog’s Encykl. V. 312 (omitted in the second ed.).
Bede (I. 22) counts it among the most wicked acts or neglects rather, of the Britons mentioned even by their own historian Gildas, that they, never preached the faith to the Saxons who dwelt among them.
History of the Norman conquest of England, Vol. I., p. 22 (Oxford ed. of 1873).
Beda (B. II., ch.1 at the close) received this account "from the ancients" (ab antiquis, or traditione majorum), but gives it as an episode, not as a part of the English mission (which is related I. 53). The elaborate play on words excites critical suspicion of the truth of the story, which, though well told, is probably invented or embellished, like so many legends about Gregory, ."Se non vero, e ben trovato."
Among these books were a Bible in 2 vols., a Psalter, a book of the Gospels, a Martyrology, Apocryphal Lives of the Apostles, and some Commentaries. "These are the foundation or beginning of the library of the whole English church."
The first journey of Augustin, in 595, was a failure. He started finally for England July 23d, 596, wintered in Gaul, and landed in England the following year with about forty persons, including Gallic priests and interpreters. Haddan and Stubbs, III. 4.
Bede I. 25.
"Non enim omnes electi miracula faciunt, sed tamen eorum omnium nomina in caelo sunt ascripta."Greg., Ad Augustinum Anglorum Episcopum, Epp. Lib. XI. 28, and Bede I. 31.
Not AEtherius, as Bede has it, I. 27, and in other places. AEtherius was the contemporary archbishop of Lyons.
Bede I. 27 sqq. gives extracts from Gregory’s answers. It is curious how the pope handles such delicate subjects as the monthly courses and the carnal intercourse between married people. A husband, he says, should not approach his wife after the birth of an infant, till the infant be weaned. Mothers should not give their children to other women to suckle. A man who has approached his wife is not to enter the church unless washed with water and till after sunset. We see here the genius of Romanism which aims to control by its legislation all the ramifications of human life, and to shackle the conscience by a subtle and minute casuistry. Barbarians, however, must be treated like children.
"Non enim pro locis res, sed pro bonis rebus loca amanda sunt. Ex singulis ergo quibusdam ecclesiis, quae pia, quae religiosa, quae recta sunt, elige, et haec quasi in fasciculum collecta apud Anglorum mentes in consuetudinem depone." Gr. Respons. ad interrogat. Aug., Ep. XI. 64, and Bede I. 27.
"Is qui locum summum ascendere nititur, gradibus wel passibus, saltibus elevatur." Ep. lib. XI. 76 (and Bede I. 30). This epistle of the year 601 is addressed to Mellitus on his way to England, but is intended for Augustin ad faciliorem Anglorum conversionem. In Sardinia, where Christianity already prevailed, Gregory advised Bishop Januarius to suppress the remaining heathenism by imprisonment and corporal punishment.
York and London had been the first metropolitan sees among the Britons. London was even then, as Bede (II. 3) remarks, a mart of many nations resorting to it by sea and land.
On the time and place of the two conferences see the notes in Haddan and Stubbs, III. 40 and 41.
Bede mentions twelve hundred, but the Saxon chronicle (a. d. 607) only two hundred.
Bede II., c. 3; Haddan and Stubbs, III. 53.
Bede III., c. 14-17; V. 24.
See the details of the missionary labors in the seven kingdoms in Bede; also in Milman l.c.; and the documents in Haddan and Stubbs, vol. III.
"The conversion of the heptarchic kingdom," says Professor Stubbs (Constitutional History of England, Vol. I., p. 217), "during the seventh century not only revealed to Europe and Christendom the existence of a new nation, but may be said to have rendered the new nation conscious of its unity in a way in which, under the influence of heathenism, community of language and custom had failed to do."
See a full account of this controversy in Bede, III, c. 25, 26, and in Haddan and Stubbs, III. 100-106.
The works of Theodore (Poenitentiale, etc.) in Migne’s Patrol., Tom. 99, p. 902. Comp. also Bede, IV. 2, Bright, p. 223, and especially Haddan and Stubbs, III. 114-227, where his Penitential is given in full. It was probably no direct work of Theodore, but drawn up under his eye and published by his authority. It presupposes a very bad state of morals among the clergy of that age.
See Karl Werner (R.C.), Beda und seine Zeit, 1875. Bright, l.c., pp. 326 sqq.
Beda, Hist. Eccl. Angl., IV. 24. Caedmonis monachi Paraphrasis poetica Genescos ac praecipuarum sacrae paginae Historiarum, ed. F. Junius, Amst., 1655; modern editions by B. Thorpe, Lond., 1832, and C. W. M. Grein, Götting., 1857. Bouterwek, Caedmon’s des Angelsachen biblische Dichtungen, Elberfeld, 1849-54, 2 Parts. F. Hammerich, AElteste christliche Epik der Angelsachsen, Deutschen und Nordländer. Transl. from the Danish by Michelsen, 1874. Comp. also the literature on the German Heliand, § 27.
From Bright, p. 449, compared with the dates in Haddan and Stubbs vol. III.
Agricola thought of invading Ireland, and holding it by a single legion, in order to remove from Britain the dangerous sight of freedom. Tacitus, Agric., c. 24.
Isidore of Seville in 580 (Origines XIV. 6) was the first to call Hibernia by the name of Scotia: "Scotia eadem et Ibernia, proxima Britanniae insula."
Prosper Aquitan. (a. d. 455-463), Chron. ad an. 431: "Ad Scotos in Christum credentes ordinatus a Papa Coelestino Palladius primus Episcopus mittitur." Comp. Vita S. Palladii in the Book of Armagh, and the notes by Haddan and Stubbs, Vol. II., Part II., pp. 290, 291.
He is said to have left in Ireland, when he withdrew, some relics of St. Peter and Paul, and a copy of the Old and New Testaments, which the Pope had given him, together with the tablets on which he himself used to write. Haddan & Stubbs, p. 291.
Hence Montalembert says (II. 393): "The Christian faith dawned upon Ireland by means of two slaves." The slave-trade between Ireland and England flourished for many centuries.
This fact is usually, omitted by Roman Catholic writers. Butler says simply: "His father was of a good family." Even Montalembert conceals it by calling "the Gallo-Roman (?) Patrick, son of a relative of the great St. Martin of Tours" (II. 390). He also repeats, without a shadow of proof, the legend that St. Patrick was consecrated and commissioned by Pope St. Celestine (p. 391), though he admits that "legend and history have vied in taking possession of the life of St. Patrick."
The dates are merely conjectural. Haddan & Stubbs (p. 295) select a. d. 440 for St. Patrick’s mission (as did Tillemont & Todd), and 493 as the year of his death. According to other accounts, his mission began much earlier, and lasted sixty years. The alleged date of the foundation of Armagh is a. d. 445.
Afterwards Armagh disputed the claims of Downpatrick See Killen I. 71-73.
Killen, Vol. I. 12. Patrick describes himself as "Hiberione constitutus episcopus." Afterwards he was called "Episcopus Scotorum," then "Archiapostolus Scotorum," then "Abbat of all Ireland," and "Archbishop, First Primate, and Chief Apostle of Ireland.’ See Haddan & Stubbs, p. 295.
Haddan & Stubbs, p. 294, note: "The language of the Hymns of S. Sechnall and of S. Fiacc, and of S. Patrick’s own Confessio, and the silence of Prosper, besides chronological difficulties, disprove, upon purely historical grounds, the supposed mission from Rome of S. Patrick himself; which first appears in the Scholia on S. Fiacc’s Hymn."
The probable date of foundation is a. d. 480. Haddan & Stubbs, p. 295.
The Irish was first published by Dr. Petrie, and translated by Dr. Todd. Haddan & Stubbs (320-323) give the Irish and English in parallel columns. Some parts of this hymn are said to be still remembered by the Irish peasantry, and repeated at bed-time as a protection from evil, or "as a religious armor to protect body and soul against demons and men and vices."
See Killen I. 76, note. Montalembert says, III. 118, note: "Irish narratives know scarcely any numerals but those of three hundred and three thousand.
A witty Irishman, who rowed me (in 1875) over Lake Killarney, told me that St. Patrick put the last snake into an iron box, and sunk it to the bottom of the lake, although he had solemnly promised to let the creature out. I asked him whether it was not a sin to cheat a snake? "Not at all," was his quick reply, "he only paid him in the same coin; for the first snake cheated the whole world." The same guide told me that Cromwell killed all the good people in Ireland, and let the bad ones live; and when I objected that he must have made an exception with his ancestors, he politely replied: "No, my parents came from America."
Petrie (Round Towers, p. 137, quoted by Killen I. 26) speaks of crowds of foreign ecclesiastics—Roman, Egyptian, French, British, Saxon—who flocked Ireland as a place of refuge in the fifth and sixth centuries.
Montalembert, II. 397.
See Reeves, S. Columba, Introd, p. lxxi.
Catalogus Sanctorum Hiberniae published by Ussher from two MSS, and in Haddan & Stubbs, 292-294.
Contained in the Leabhar Breac, and in the Book of Leinster.
Skene II. 22
Ammianus Marcellinus (XV. 9) describes the Druids as "bound together in brotherhoods and corporations, according to the precepts of Pythagoras!" See Killen, I. 29.
See next section. St. Patrick also is said to have been one of St. Martin’s disciples; but St. Martin lived nearly one hundred years earlier.
Angus the Culdee, in his Litany, invokes "forty thousand monks, with the blessing of God, under the rule of Comgall of Bangor." But this is no doubt a slip of the pen for "four thousand." Skene II. 56. Bangor on the northeastern coast of Ireland must not be confounded with Bangor on the westem coast of Wales.
Haddan & Stubbs, Vol. I., 170-198, give a collection of Latin Scripture quotations of British or Irish writers from the fifth to the ninth century (Fastidius, St. Patrick, Gildas, Columbanus, Adamnanus, Nennius, Asser, etc.), and come to the conclusion that the Vulgate, though known to Fastidius in Britain about a. d. 420, was probably unknown to St. Patrick, writing half a century later in Ireland, but that from the seventh century on, the Vulgate gradually superseded the Irish Latin version formerly in use.
Haddan & Stubbs, I. 192; Comp. p. 10. Ebrard and other writers state the contrary, but without proof.
First published in the Swords Parish Magazine, 1861.
See details in Lanigan and Killen (ch. vii.).
This papal-Irish bull is not found in the Bullarium Romanum, the editors of which were ashamed of it, and is denounced by some Irish Romanists as a monstrous and outrageous forgery, but it is given by, Matthew Paris (1155), was confirmed by Pope Alexander III. in a letter to Henry II. (a. d. 1172), published in Ireland in 1175, printed in Baronius, Annales, ad a. d. 1159, who took his copy from a Codex Vaticanus and is acknowledged as undoubtedly genuine by Dr. Lanigan, the Roman Catholic historian of Ireland (IV. 64), and other authorities; comp. Killen I. 211 sqq. It is as follows:
"Adrian, Bishop, Servant of the servants of God, to his dearest son in Christ, the illustrious King of England, greeting and apostolic benediction.
" Full laudably, and profitably has your magnificence conceived the design of propagating your glorious renown on earth, and of completing your reward of eternal happiness in heaven, whilst as a Catholic prince you are intent on enlarging the borders of the Church, teaching the truth of the Christian faith to the ignorant and rude, extirpating the nurseries of iniquity from the field of the Lord, and for the more convenient execution of this purpose, requiring the counsel and favor of the Apostolic See. In which the maturer your deliberation and the greater the discretion of your procedure, by, so much the happier, we trust, will be your progress, with the assistance of the Lord; because whatever has its origin in ardent faith and in love of religion always has a prosperous end and issue.
"There is indeed no doubt but that Ireland and all the islands on which Christ the Sun of Righteousness has shone, and which have received the doctrines of the Christian faith, belong to the jurisdiction of St. Peter and of the holy Roman Church, as your Excellency also acknowledges. And therefore we are the more solicitous to propagate a faithful plantation among them, and a seed pleasing to the Lord, as we have the secret conviction of conscience that a very, rigorous account must be rendered of them.
" You then, most dear son in Christ, have signified to us your desire to enter into the island of Ireland that you may reduce the people to obedience to laws, and extirpate the nurseries of vice, and that you are willing to pay from each house a yearly pension of one penny to St. Peter, and that you will preserve the rights of the churches of this land whole and inviolate. We, therefore, with that grace and acceptance suited to your pious and laudable design, and favorably assenting to your petition, hold it good and acceptable that, for extending the borders of the church, restraining the progress of vice, for the correction of manners, the planting of virtue, and the increase of the Christian religion, you enter that island, and execute therein whatever shall pertain to the honor of God and welfare of the land; and that the people of that land receive you honorably, and reverence you as their lord—the rights of their churches still remaining sacred and inviolate, and saving to St. Peter the annual pension of one penny from every house.
"If then you are resolved to carry the design you have conceived into effectual execution, study to train that nation to virtuous manners, and labor by yourself and others whom you shall judge meet for this work, in faith, word, and life, that the church may be there adorned; that the religion of the Christian faith may be planted and grow up, and that all things pertaining to the honor of God and the salvation of souls be so ordered that you may be entitled to the fulness of eternal reward in God, and obtain a glorious renown on throughout all ages."
Killen, I. 226 sq.
In Gaelic, Calyddom, land of forests, or, according to others, from Kaled, i.e hard and wild.
On Whittern and the Candida Casa, see Nicholson, History of Galloway, I. 115; Forbes, S. Ninian and S. Kentigern, 268, and Skene, II. 46.
In Welsh, Cyndeyrn means chief, Munghu dear, amiable. See Skene, II. 183.
The meeting of the two saints, as recorded by Jocelyn, reminds one of the meeting of St. Antony with the fabulous Paul of Thebes.
See Forbes, Kalendars, p. 372, and Skene, II. 197.
Forbes (p. 319) gives a list of 26.
In the Irish calendar there are twenty saints of the name Columba, or Columbanus, Columbus, Columb. The most distinguished next to Columbcille is Columbanus, the Continental missionary, who has often been confounded with Columba. In the Continental hagiology, the name is used for female saints. See Reeves, p. 248.
Montalembert, III. 112. This poem strikes the key-note of father Prout’s more musical "Bells of Shandon which sound so grand on the river Lee."
"Pro Christo peregrinare volens," says Adamnan (p. 108), who knows nothing of his excommunication and exile from Ireland in consequence of a great battle. And yet it is difficult to account for this tradition. In one of the Irish Keltic poems ascribed to Columba, he laments to have been driven from Erin by his own fault and in consequence of the blood shed in his battles. Montalembert, III. 145.
This is not an adaptation to Columba’s Hebrew name (Neander), but a corruption of Ii-shona, i.e. the Holy Island (from Ii, the Keltic name for island, and hona or shona, sacred). So Dr. Lindsay Alexander and Cunningham. But Reeves (l.c. Introd., p. cxxx.) regards Ioua as the genuine form, which is the feminine adjective of Iou (to be pronounced like the English Yeo). The island has borne no fewer than thirty names.
"No two objects of interest," says the Duke of Argyll (Iona, p. 1) "could be more absolutely dissimilar in kind than the two neighboring islands, Staffa and Iona:—Iona dear to Christendom for more than a thousand years;—Staffa known to the scientific and the curious only since the close of the last century. Nothing but an accident of geography could unite their names. The number of those who can thoroughly understand and enjoy them both is probably very small."
"Hither came holy men from Erin to take counsel with the Saint on the troubles of clans and monasteries which were still dear to him. Hither came also bad men red-handed from blood and sacrilege to make confession and do penance at Columba’s feet. Hither, too, came chieftains to be blessed, and even kings to be ordained—for it is curious that on this lonely spot, so far distant from the ancient centres of Christendom, took place the first recorded case of a temporal sovereign seeking from a minister of the Church what appears to have been very like formal consecration. Adamnan, as usual, connects his narrative of this event, which took place in 547, with miraculous circumstances, and with Divine direction to Columba, in his selection of Aidan, one of the early kings of the Irish Dalriadic colony in Scotland.
" The fame of Columba’s supernatural powers attracted many and strange visitors to the shores on which we are now looking. Nor can we fail to remember, with the Reilig Odhrain at our feet, how often the beautiful galleys of that olden time came up the sound laden with the dead,—’their dark freight a vanished life.’ A grassy mound not far from the present landing place is known as the spot on which bodies were laid when they were first carried to the shore. We know from the account of Columba’s own burial that the custom is to wake the body with the singing of psalms during three days and nights before laying it to its final rest. It was then home in solemn procession to the grave. How many of such processions must have wound along the path that leads to the Reilig Odhrain! How many fleets of galley must have ridden at anchor on that bay below us, with all those expressive signs of mourning which belong to ships, when kings and chiefs who had died in distant lands were carried hither to be buried in this holy Isle! From Ireland, from Scotland, and from distant Norway there came, during many centuries, many royal funerals to its shores. And at this day by far the most interesting remains upon the Island are the curious and beautiful tombstones and crosses which lie in the Reilig Odhrain. They belong indeed, even the most ancient of them, to, in age removed by many hundred years from Columba’s time. But they represent the lasting reverence which his name has inspired during so many generations and the desire of a long succession of chiefs and warriors through the Middle Ages and down almost to our own time, to be buried in the soil he trod." The Duke of Argyll, l.c., pp. 95-98.
See a list of churches in Reeves, p. xlix. lxxi., and Forbes, Kalendar, etc. p. 306, 307; comp. also Skene, II. 127 sqq.
Montalembert’s delineation of Columba’s character assumes, apparently, the truth of these biographies, and is more eloquent than true. See Skene, II. 145.
On the regula Columbani, see Ebrard, 147 sqq.
Bede, H. E., III. 4; V. 9.
For a very full account of the economy and constitution of Iona, see Reeves, Introduction to Life of Saint Columba, pp. c.-cxxxii.
H. E. III. 4.
To Adamnan and to Bede, the name was entirely unknown. Skene (II. 226) says: "In the whole range of ecclesiastical history there is nothing more entirely destitute of authority than the application of this name to the Columban monks of the sixth and seventh centuries, or more utterly baseless than the fabric which has been raised upon that assumption." The most learned and ingenious construction of an imaginary Protestant Culdee Church was furnished by Ebrard and McLauchlan.
The word Culdee is variously derived from the Gaelic Gille De, servant of God; from the Keltic Cuil or Ceal, retreat, recess, and Cuildich, men of the recess (Jamieson, McLauchlan, Cunningham); from the Irish Ceile De, the spouse of God (Ebrard), or the servant of God (Reeves); from the Irish Culla, cowl, i.e. the black monk; from the Latin Deicola, cultores Dei (Colidei), worshippers of God the Father, in distinction from Christicolae (Calechrist in Irish), or ordinary Christians (Skene); from the Greek kellew'tai, men of the cells (Goodall). The earliest Latin form is Kaledei. in Irish Keile as a substantive means socius maritus, also servus. On the name, see Braun, De Culdeis, Bonn, 1840, McLauchlan pp. 175 sq.; Ebrard pp. 2 sq., and Skene, II. 238.
The Duke of Argyll who is a Scotch Presbyterian, remarks (l.c. p. 41): "It is vain to look, in the peculiarities of the Scoto-Irish Church, for the model either of primitive practice, or of any particular system. As regards the theology of Columba’s time, although it was not what we now understand as Roman, neither assuredly was it what we understand as Protestant. Montalembert boasts, and I think with truth, that in Columba’s life we have proof of the practice of the auricular confession, of the invocation of saints, of confidence in their protection, of belief in transubstantiation [?], of the practices of fasting and of penance, of prayers for the dead, of the sign of the crow in familiar—and it must be added—in most superstitious use. On the other hand there is no symptom of the worship or ’cultus’ of the Virgin, and not even an allusion to such an idea as the universal bishopric of Rome, or to any special authority as seated there."
Cunningham, Church Hist. of Scotland, p. 100.
Skene, II. 418.
The usual spelling. Better: Wulfila, i.e. Wölflein, Little Wolf.
In his testamentary creed, which he always held (semper sic credidi), he confesses faith "in God the Father and in his only begotten Son our Lord and God, and in the Holy Spirit as virtutem illuminantem et sanctificantem nec Deum nec Dominum sed ministrum Christi." Comp. Krafft, l.c. 328 sqq.
With the oil of the miraculous cruise of oil (Ampulla Remensis) which, according to Hincmar, a dove brought from heaven at the confirmation of Clovis, and which was destroyed in 1794, but recovered in 1824.
Vol. I. p. 394, quoted by Montalembert.
Montalembert, Vol. II. p. 230.
Tolbiacum Zülpich.
Ozanam, Etudes Germaniques, II. 54.
Montalembert II. 235. Comp. also the graphic description of the Merovingian house in Dean Milman’s Lat. Christ., Bk. III, ch.2 (Vol. I., p. 395, Am. ed.).
The brotherhood of St. Maur was founded in 1618, and numbered such scholars as Mabillon, Montfaucon, and Ruinart.
The legendary history of monasticism under the Merovingians is well told by Montalembert, II. 236-386.
Also called Columba the younger, to distinguish him from the Scotch Columba. There is a second St. Columbanus, an abbot of St. Trudo (St. Troud) in France, and a poet, who died about the middle of the ninth century.
The date assigned by Hertel, l.c., and Meyer von Knonau, in "Allg. Deutsche Biographie," IV. 424 (1876).
The date according to the Bollandists and Smith’s Dict. of Chr. Biogr. Ebrard puts the emigration of Columbanus to Gaul in the year 594.
There is a considerable difference between his Regula Monastica, in ten chapters, and his Regula Coenobialis Fratrum, sive, Liber de quotidianis Poenitentiis Monachorum, in fifteen chapters. The latter is unreasonably rigorous, and imposes corporal punishments for the slightest offences, even speaking at table, or coughing at chanting. Ebrard (l.c., p. 148 sqq.) contends that the Regula Coenobialis, which is found only in two codices, is of later origin. Comp. Hertel, l.c.
For a full account of this quarrel see Montalembert, II. 411 sqq.
"Roma orbis terrarum caput est ecclesiarum, salva loci Dominicae resurrectiois singulari praerogativa."
Montalembert, II. 436.
See the anonymous Vita S. Galli in Pertz, Monumenta II. 123, and in the Acta Sanct., Tom. VII. Octobris. Also Greith, Geschichte der altirischen Kirche … als Einleitung in die, Gesch. des Stifts St. Gallen (1857), the chapter on Gallus, pp. 333 sqq.
aiJejntai'" Germanivai"iJdrumevnaiejkklhsivai. Adv. haer. I. 10, 2
Comp. besides the Letters of Boniface, the works of Neander, Rettberg, Ebrard, Werner and Fischer, quoted below.
One that wins peace. His Latin name Bonifacius, Benefactor, was probably his monastic name, or given to him by the pope on his second visit to Rome. 723.
The juramentum of Boniface, which he ever afterwards remembered and observed with painful conscientiousness deserves to be quoted in full, as it contains his whole missionary policy (see Migne, l.c., p. 803):
"In nomine Domini Dei Salvatoris nostri Jesus Christi, imperante domino Leone Magno imperatore, anno 7 post consulatum ejus, sed et Constantini Magni imperatoris ejus filii anno 4, indictione 6. Promitto ego Bonifacius, Dei gratia episcopus, tibi, beate Petre, apostolorum princeps vicarioque tuo beato Gregorio papae et successoribus ejus, per Patrem et Filium, et Spiritum Sanctum, Trinitatem inseparabilem, et hoc sacratissimum corpus tuum, me omnem fidem et puritatem sanctae fidei catholicae exhibere, et in unitate ejusdem fidei, Deo operante, persistere in quo omnis Christianorum salus esse sine dubio comprobatur, nullo modo me contra unitatem communis et universalis Ecclesiae, quopiam consentire, sed, ut dixi, fidem et puritatem meam atque concursum, tibi et utilitatibus tiae Ecclesiae, cui a Domino Deo potestasligandi solvendique data est, et praedicto vicario tuo atque successoribus ejus, per omnia exhibere. Sed et si cognovero antistites contra instituta antiqua sanctorum patrum conversari, cum eis nullam habere communionem aut conjunctionem; sed magis, si valuero prohibere, prohibeam; si minus, hoc fideliter statim Domino meo apostolico renuntiabo. Quod si, quod absit, contra hujus professionis meae seriem aliquid facere quolibet modo, seu ingenio, vel occasione, tentavero, reus inveniar in aeterno judicio, ultionem Ananiae et Saphirae incurram, qui vorbis etiam de rebus propriis fraudem facere praesumpsit: hoc autem indiculum sacramenti ego Bonifacius exiguus episcopus manu propria, ita ut praescriptum, Deo teste et judice, feci sacramentum, quod et conservare promitto."
With all his devotion to the Roman See, Boniface was manly and independent enough to complain in a letter to Pope Zacharias of the scandalous heathen practices in Rome which were reported by travellers and filled the German Christians with prejudice and disobedience to Rome. See the letter in Migne, l.c. p. 746 sqq.
In Migne, l.c., p. 870. A German translation in Cruel, Geschichte der deutschen Predigt im Mittelalter (1879), p. 14.
Othlo, Vita Bonif., c. 26 (Migne, l.c. fol. 664).
The description he gives of their immorality, must be taken with considerable deduction. In Ep. 49 to Pope Zacharias (a. d. 742) in Migne, l.c., p. 745, he speaks of deacons, priests and bishops hostile to Rome, as being guilty of habitual drunkenness, concubinage, and even polygamy. I will only quote what he says of the bishops: "Et inveniuntur quidem inter eos episcopi, qui, licet dicant se fornicarios vel adulteros non esse, sed sunt ebriosi, et injuriosi, vel venatores, et qui pugnant in exercitu armati, et effundunt propria manu sanguinem hominum, sive paganorum, sive Christianorum."
Condensed translation from Epist. 75 in Migne, fol. 778.
See "Fulda und seine Privilegien" in Jul. Harttung, Diplomatisch-historische Forschungen, Gotha, 1879, pp. 193 sqq.
The chief source is the Vita Sturmi by his pupil Eigil abbot of Fulda, 818 to 822, in Mabillon, "Acta Sanct. Ord. Bened." Saec. VIII. Tom. 242-259.
"Jetzt war Sachsen besiegt," says Giesebrecht (l.c., p. 117), "und mit Blutgesetzen worden das Christenthum und das Königthum zugliech den Sachsen aufgedrungen. Mit Todesstrafen wurde die Taufe erzwungen, die heidnischen Gebräuche bedroht; jede Verletzung eines chistlichen Priesters wurde, wie der Aufruhr gegen den König und der Ungehorsam gegen seine Befehle, zu einem todeswuerdigen Verbrechen gestempelt."
Neander III. 152 sqq. (Germ, ed.; Torrey’s trnsl. III. 76). It seems to me, from looking over Alcuin’s numerous epistles to the emperor, he might have used his influence much more freely with his pupil. Merivale says (p. 131): "Alcuin of York, exerted his influence upon those Northern missions from the centre of France, in which he had planted himself. The purity and simplicity of the English school of teachers contrasted favoably with the worldly, character of the Frankish priesthood, and Charlemagne himelf was impressed with the importance of intrusting the establishment of the Church throughout his Northern conquests to these foreigners rather than to his own subjects. He appointed the Anglo-Saxon Willibrord to preside over the district of Estphalia, and Liudger, a Friesian by birth, but an Englishman by his training at York, to organize the church in Westphalia; while he left to the earlier foundation of Fulda, which had also received its first Christian traditions from the English Boniface and his pupil Sturm, the charge of Engern or Angaria. From the teaching of these strangers there sprang up a crop of Saxon priests and missionaries; from among the youths of noble family whom the conqueror had carried off from their homes as hostages, many were selected to be trained in the monasteries for the life of monks and preachers. Eventually the Abbey of Corbie, near Amiens, was founded by one of the Saxon converts, and became an important centre of Christian teaching. From hence sprang the daughter-foundation of the New Corbie, or Corby, on the banks of the Weser, in the diocese of Paderborn. This abbey received its charter from Louis le Debonnaire in 823, and became no less important an institution for the propagation of the faith in the north of Germany, than Fulda still continued to be in the centre, and St. Gall in the South."
See Ed. Sievers, Heliand, Halle, 1878.
Epist. 13, in Monumenta Alcuiniana, Ed. Jaffé.
Mabillon: Act. Sanct. Bened. Ord. IV. 2, p. 124.
Si dignus essem apud Deum meum, rogarem quatenus unum mihi concederet signum, videlicet ut de me sua gratia faceret bonum hominem." Vita by Rimbert, c. 67 (Migne 118, p. 1008).
Passio S. Adalberti, in Scriptores Rerum Prussicarum I., and Vita S. Adalberti in Monumenta German. IV.
Missale proprium regum Poloniae, Venet. 1629; Officia propria patronorum regni Poloniae, Antwerp, 1627.
Grimm: Deutsche Mythologie, II. 733.
See the letter from Bishop Pilgrin of Passau to Pope Benedict VI. in Mansi, Concil. I.
134 Euseb. III. 1.
135 The Varangians were a tribe of piratical Northmen who made the Slavs and Finns tributary.