End of the Celtic Heresy. — Adamnan, Egbert, St. Aldhelm (part 1 of 2)

The King of the Picts requests Ceolfrid to send him architects, and arguments in favor of Roman unity. — Answer of Ceolfrid, in which he quotes from Plato. — The Picts abandon the Celtic peculiarities.— The monks of lona leave their monasteries rather than adopt the Roman ritual. — Their abbot, Adamnan, biographer of Columba, and the last great personage of the Celtic Church. — His relations with King Aldfrid and the Abbot Ceolfrid. — He attempts in vain to lead the monks of lona back to Roman rule, but has more success in Ireland, where he dies. — lona is brought back to Catholic unity by the Anglo-Saxon Egbert, the head of a colony of Saxon monks in Ireland— His austere and holy life. — He loseS his most intimate friend, who reproaches him for desiring to survive him. — He uses bis influence with the Anglo-Saxons to send them as missionaries to Germany. — After thirteen years' struggle, he overcomes the resistance of lona, and dies on the very day when the feast of Easter is celebrated by both parties together. — Ireland and Caledonia having been thus brought back to Catholic unity, only the Britons of Cambria and Cornwall remain outside its pale, by reason of their national antipathy for the Saxon conquerors. — Note upon Bede's injustice to them. — Attempt of St. Aldhelm to bring them in. — His royal birth, and education — half Celtic, half Roman — at Malmesbury and Canterbury. — He becomes Abbot of Malmesbury. — His literary fame greater than his merit; his vernacular songs; intellectual development of Anglo-Saxon cloisters. — Extent and variety of his studies. — His continual solicitude for souls His great monastic character. — His zeal for preaching. — He interferes in favor of Wilfrid. —He goes to Rome to obtain the privilege of exemption for Malmesbury, the monks of which persist in retaining him as abbot, even after his promotion to the episcopate. — Anecdote about the importation of Bibles. — Death of Aldhelm. — His exertions for bringing back Celtic dissenters. — His letter to the King of Cornwall. — The Britons of Cambria, who had resisted all the efforts of Roman and Saxon missionaries, adopt the Roman ritual by the influence of one of their own bishops. — Their pilgrimages to Rome. — End of the struggle. — Opinion of Mabillon. — Resistance proportioned to the dangers which beset the special nationality. — Union the work of Benedictines. — In the Britannic Isles, as among the Gauls, Celtic monasticism conquered and eclipsed by the Benedictine order.

The memory of Ceolfrid, along with that of his faithful English, has faded out of the country in which he died. But he belongs nevertheless to the general history of the Church by the direct influence which he exercised upon the conclusion of that great struggle between Celtic Christianity and Eoman unity which had agitated the British Isles for more than a century, and which had caused so many holy monks, from Augustin to Wilfrid, so much anxious thought and effort. Ceolfrid, trained in the school of Wilfrid, had the glor}'- of giving the last blow to that species of schism which Wilfrid to his cost had conquered; and this supreme victory was won at the very time when Wilfrid concluded in obscurity his long and laborious career.

A year after the death of Wilfrid, Nechtan, the king of those Picts who occupied the north of Caledonia, the successor of that Bruidh who received the great Celtic apostle Columba, wrote to Abbot Ceolfrid a memorable letter. This tributary king was not only a Christian, but greatly occupied by religious questions. He meditated much on the Holy Scriptures, and was thus led to understand, and to regret, the advantages of Catholic unity, from which his nation was to a certain extent separate by the paschal question. He resolved to lead back his people to the Roman rule, notwithstanding the obstinate resistance of the monks of lona, the sons of St. Columba, who continued the apostolical work of their patriarch. To overcome their opposition, he determined, in one of the singular revolutions of mortal affairs, to address himself to that Northumbria which had been evangelized by Celtic missiouarics from lona, imbued with the traditional error

ments in />!• ii-iii

01 their race, but which he knew to have already conformed to the rules of the Roman Church. At ~^^" the same time, in seeking the aid of the Anglo- Saxon Church, he did not apply either to the bishops who had divided among themselves Wilfrid's spoil, nor even to the great Monastery of Lindisfarne, which had been so long the point of junction between the two races. Instead, he knocked at the door of the new sanctuaries on the banks of the Wear and Tyne, to which Benedict Biscop had given the highest place in public veneration; he asked the aid of Abbot Ceolfrid, who for twenty years had worthily occupied the place of the holy traveller. He sent to him a special embassy to ask of him good arguments, set forth in writing, with which to refute the partisans of Celtic ritualism in respect to Easter and the tonsure; ^-*^ and at the same time prayed the abbot to send him architects to build him a church of stone, like the Romans, promising to dedicate the church, when built, to the honor of St. Peter, and to follow with all his people the observances of the Roman Church as much as the distance and difference of language permitted them to do.i27

Ceolfrid sent him architects, who were, without doubt, monks of his community, and whose mission thus gives us the exact date of the introduction of Christian architecture into Scotland, where up to that moment the churches Were made of wood, or osiers, in the Irish fashion. jJq wrote at the same time to the Pictish king a

¹²⁶ "ifaiton... admonitus ecclesiasticarum frequenti meditatione scripturarum.... Quasivit auxilium de gente Anglorum quos jamdudura ad exemplum S. Romanse et Apostolicae Ecclesiaj suam religionem instituisse cognovit.... Postulans ut exhortatorias sibi litteras mitteret, quibus potentius confortare posset eos qui Pascha non suo tempore observare praesumerent.... Sed et architectos... qui juxta morem Romanorum ecclesiam de lapide in gente ipsius facerent." — Bede, Hist. JEccles., v. 21.

'" " In quantum dumtaxat tam longe a Romanorum loquela et natione gegregati nunc ediscere potuissent." long letter which Bede has preserved to us, and iu ^^'^'t^g^^^ which he begins by quoting, not the Scriptures or I'lato. the Fathers, but Plato, in that well-known passage in the Republic where it is said that, for the happiness of the world, it is necessary that kings should be philosophers, or philosophers kings. In the legitimate glory of the greatest thinker of antiquity there is, perhaps, no ray purer or more precious than that invocation of his name and authority, more than a thousand years after his death, by a Saxon prelate to a Celtic king, both sprung from races totally unknown to Greece and her great men. " But," adds Ceolfrid, " if a man of the world was right in thinking and speaking thus, in what concerns the philosophy of this world, how much more ought the citizens of the celestial country, exiled here below, to desire that the great ones of this earth should apply themselves to know the laws of the Supreme Judge, and, by their example and authority, to make these laws observed. Thus we take it as a mark of heavenly favor bestowed on the Church each time that the masters of the world apply themselves to know, to teach, or to keep the truth." ^^s Thereupon he enters into' a theological and astronomical discussion, in which, passing in review the text of the Pentateuch, and the various cycles used from the time of Eusebius to that of Denis the Little, he proves that Easter ought to be celebrated, according to the usage of the Catholic Church, intbe third week of the first lunar month, and always on Sunday. As for the tonsure, he admits that it is, in itself, an indifferent matter; but he insists upon the fabulous tradition, which all the orthodox then held as an article of faith, by which the Roman tonsure, in the form of a crown, was attributed to St. Peter, and the Irish tonsure, in which the front of the head was shaven, to Simon the Magician.

The letter of the Northumbrian abbot, which appears to modern readers long and wearisome, was completely successful. It was read publicly to the Pictish king, 1nax\lc\v in presence of all the wise men of the country, trans- lloJfth.f^' lated verbally into their language. As soon as he had heard it, he rose, and, in the midst of the nobles by whom he was surrounded, knelt down and thanked God to have been so fortunate as to have received such a present 123 ft Vere omnino dixit quidam secularium scriptorum.... Quod si de philosophia hujus mundi vere intelligere et de statu hujus mundi uicrito dicere potuit homo hujus mundi, quanto magis coelestis patriaj civibus." —Bede, ibid.

518 CONTEMPORARIES AND SUCCESSORS

from England. " 1 knew well," he said, " that this was the true way of celebrating Easter. But now I see the reason so clearly that I seem to have understood nothing about it before. For this cause, I take you all to witness, all you who sit with me here, that I will henceforward keep Easter thus, with all my people, and I ordain that all the clerks in my kingdom assume this tonsure.^^^ The ordinance was immediately put in operation, and the messengers of the king carried into all the provinces copies of the paschal calculation, with orders to efface the ancient tables. The monks and other ecclesiastics had also to receive the tonsure according to the Roman custom. Bede affirms that the change was received with universal joy in the Pictish nation. Nevertheless, the monks who had come fromlona — those oH\x& family of Colwmb-lcill, the Columhites, as Ceolfrid calls them— acted as The monks their brethren at Ripon and Lindisfarne had acted ?e^e'their ^^^^ years before. They preferred to leave their establishments, colonies founded more than a century rlther than before by their patriarch and his disciples, rather than Roman^^ togivo up their insular tradition. A single line, short but expressive, in the annals of Ireland, bears witness to their fate. It is thus summed up— " King Nechtan expels the family of lona from the country beyond the dorsum BritannimJ^ i"*^

The country now called Scotland was then divided, as has been seen, between the Picts in the north and east, the Scots in the west, the Britons in Strathclyde, and the Northumbrians in the south. The supremacy of the Northumbrian kings, up to the downfall of Egfrid, over all the districts south of the Clyde and Forth, had been sufEcient to secure in that part of the country, the observance of the Roman ritual, represented by such men as Wilfrid and Cuthbert. The conversion of the Picts, under King Nechtan, to the Roman rule, in respect to Easter, established liturgical and theological unity throughout the northern part of Great Britain, with the exception of the isle of lona and the

¹²⁹ " Epistola, prsesente rege Naitono, multisque viris doctioribus lecta ac diligenter ab lus qui intelligere potuerant in linguam ejus propriam interpretata... exsurgens de medio optimatum sacro in consessu. ... In tantum modo rationem hujus teniporis observandi cognosce, ut parum milii omnino videar de his antea intellexisse." — Bede, Hist. Eccles., v. 21.

¹³⁰ u Expulsio faniiliae le trans dorsum Britannise a Nectano rege."— Annales Tigernachii, ad ann. 717. See above, p. 50, for the description of the mountain-range called dorsum Britannice.

OF ST. WILFRID. 519

little kingdom of the Dalriadian Scots, which probably to the last extremity remained faithful to the ritual and traditions of their national sanctuary.

Yet, notwithstanding, a very eminent Irish monk — Adamnan, himself Abbot of lona, and the most illustrious of Columba's successors— had long attempted to lead back the mother community, mistress of all the Caledonian Church, and always influential in the Church of Ireland, to the unity of Rome. If our readers have retained in their recollection our narrative of St. Columba, they will pardon us for dwelling a little upon his biographer, of all the Irish monks the one to whom posterity is most indebted, for his revelation to us, not only of that great man, the immortal honor of the Celtic Church — but also of the spirit, general and individual, and the private and local life of that whole Church. He was the countryman and near relative of his holy predecessor, sprung, like him, from the sovereign race of the Nialls. "When he was but a scholar, having been dedicated from his childhood to monastic life, ho had, according to the legend, gained the favor of a powerful chief— Finnachta the Feaster or Banqueter. While begging, according to the usage of the time, for himself and his five companions, each of whom took it in turn to seek the daily nourishment, he met the cavalcade of the chief, and in running out of the way struck against a stone, fell, and broke the milk-jar which he carried on his back, and which contained all he had collected. ^si u g^ ^^^ sad,'' said the chief, '' I will protect thee." "When Finnachta became monarch of all Ireland, Adamnan was his Anmacliara or spiritual counsellor; and this fact explains the important part he played in Ireland during his whole life. After having been a monk at lona under three abbots, he was himself elected abbot in 679. Aldfrid, the Northumbrian prince, brother and successor of Egfrid, then an exile in Ireland, had taken refuge in lona, and had become the friend aud the disciple of Adamnan: and when, after Egfrid's downfall, the exile became King of Northumberland, the abbot went to his former guest to reclaim the captives, men and women, whom the soldiers of Egfrid had carried away in the previous year, after their .cruel and bloody invasion of Ireland.^^^ His mission was not entirely

'^' Reeves, Append, ad Praf... p. xlii.

"2 See p. 400. without success; for he obtained from his friend the restitution of sixty prisoners, whom he himself accompanied Lack to Ireland. He returned on more than one occasion to visit King Aldfrid, whose literary tastes resembled his own. He dedicated to him his description of the holy places, which he compiled from the narratives of a Gallo-Frankish bishop called Arculfe, who, returning from Palestine by sea, had been shipwrecked on the coast of Ireland, from whence he had gone to visit the still celebrated sanctuary of lona. Thanks to the liberality of the learned King Aldfrid, whose taste for geographical studies we have already remarked, a great number of copies were made of this treatise, that it might be largely distributed and read even by the lower classes.^33

It was during these journeys to and fro that the cultivated and fervent abbot,^^ learned to understand the new customs introduced into the Anglo-Saxon Church by the efforts of Wilfrid, and although there is no trace in his life of any actual encounter between him and the great champion of Roman unity, it is certain that Adamnan, while in Northumbria, was so thoroughly moved by the spirit there diffused by Wilfrid, that he left the country with the resolution of henceforward preferring the rites of the universal Church to those of a little nation at the end of the world.^^^ Ceolfrid did much to enlighten him on this point; in bis letter to the King of the Picts he relates the visit of Adamnan to Wearmouth, and their conferences on the subject of the tonsure. " Holy brother," said the Northumbrian abbot to the Irish prelate, " you aspire to an immortal crown, why do you wear on your head so imperfect an image of it? and if you desire the society of St. Peter, why do you bear the tonsure of him who anathematized St. Peter? " " Beloved brother," answered Adamnan, '' if I bear the tonsure of Simon the Magician, according to the custom of my country, do not think that I detest the less the Simoniacal heresy. I desire to follow with my best powers the footsteps of the Prince of Apostles."

133 <i Per gjus eis largitionem etiam minoribus ad legendura contraditus."—Bede, v. 15. Bede has inserted many extracts of this description in his History; Mabillon publishes it entire at the end of vol. iv. of his Acta Sanctorum.

¹³⁴ u j^j-at vir bonus et sapiens et scientia scripturarum nobilissirae instructus... abbas et sacerdos Columbiensiura egregius." — Ibid., v. 16, 21.

135 " Cum videret ritus ecclesiffl canonicos... in ecclesiis Anglorum... cum suis paucissimus et in extreme mundi angulo positis... mutatus mente est."— Ibid., c. 15.

" I believe it," said Ceolfrid, " but in that case it would be best to wear openly the mark of the Apostle Peter which you have in your heart." '^^^ It is apparent by this that the leader of the Irish Church did not even dispute the imputed origin, at once fabulous and injurious, of his national custom.

But when, on his return to lona, he attempted ^j^^^ to lead the children of St. Columba to his new con- tempts in viction and to the Roman rule, he encountered an back the*' unconquerable resistance. To be treated as bar- ^na'to"*^ barians and rustics ^^' by the Northumbrian monks Roman and doctors troubled them little; they were aware that their spiritual ancestors had been initiated into the Christian faith two centuries before the Anglo-Saxons, who for the most part had been drawn out of the darkness of paganism only by the apostolic self-devotion of those whom their descendants disdained. The Celts, accordingly, adhered obstinately to the traditional rites of their glorious ancestors. When they saw their chief return with the Roman tonsure, the surprise and indignation of the monks of lona were such that they have found form in an Irish legend.^^ The difference between the superior and the community became so painful that Adamnan, who was of a humble and peaceable character, could not hold head against it. Without abdicating, he yet ceased to live in his monastery, and passed a great part of the remainder of his life in Ireland.^-^^ He dedicated himself with ardor to the work of reunion, meetingthere with much greater success than in his own community. Southern Ireland, as has been seen, had already returned to Roman unity, even before Wilfrid undertook his great work

"^ " Scias pro certo... quia etsi Simonis tonsurara ex consuetudine patria habeam, simoniacam tamen perfidlam tota mente detestor ac respuo." — Bede, v. 21.

»" Ibid., in. 4.

'^® Mac Firbis or Forbes. — Irish Amials, MS. quoted by Reeves, p. xli. "' The annals of Ireland give his presence there in 692 and 697. At the latter date he gave forth the Law of Innocents, or of Adamnan (see above, p. 128). His books were written in the midst of his journeys and pastoral cares, as he says in the preamble of his treatise Be Locis Sanctis •' Qua; et ego, quamlibet inter laboriosas et prope insustentabiles tota die undique conglobatas ecclesiasticas soUicitudines constitutus, vili quamvis sermone descripens declaravi." lie wrote his Life of St. Columba between his two journeys from Ireland, from 692 to 697. He says nothing in it of his difference with his own monks in respect to Easter, but he mentions the prophecy of Columba at Clonmacnoise upon discord: " Quaj post dies multos o'.i diversitatem Paschalis festi orta est inter Scotia; ecclesias." He remained in Ireland probably from 697 to 703, a period at which, according to Bede, he was still there. It was not too much for the difficult task he had to fulfil. in England. Adamnan was the means of bringing back central and northern Ireland to the same rule. He procured the triumph specially of the Roman Easter and the orthodox tonsure, except in the communities directly under the sway of his own monastery at lona. This victory was not won without great difficulty, but his gentleness and modesty triumphed over all.^*'' He died the same year as his friend, the wise King Aldfrid. Before his death, ^^^ after having celebrated in Ireland the canonical Easter, he made a last attempt to win over the family of Columba, which he had governed for thirty years. It was in vain; all his entreaties were repulsed; but God graciously granted, says Bede, that this man, who loved unity and peace above everything, should attain to eternal life before the return of the paschal solemnity made the discord between himself and his disobedient monks notorious.i*i lonais, The victory which Adamnan, the countryman ^^^ successor of St. Columba, could not gain, was reserved for a man of another race but equal holiness— the Anglo-Saxon Egbert. The life of this monk is an example of the numerous and salutary relations which existed between the Irish Celts and the Anglo-Saxons, and which had been so odiously disturbed by the inexcusable invasion of the Northumbrian king Egfrid. It is in connection with this invasion that the name of Egbert has already appeared in this narrative.!^ He was one of the many English who crossed the sea in numbers so considerable as to fill entire fleets, and who threw themselves upon the Irish shore like flights of bees, to enjoy the hospitality, both inteflectual and material, of the Irish monasteries; while, on the other hand, the Greek Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury and Primate of England, lived, by a happy exchange of brotherly kindness, surrounded by a crowd of young Irish monks. Some of the Anglo-Saxons, who sought a superior ascetic education in the Irish monasteries, returned to England, frequently filling places of the highest dignity there, and edifying their countrymen by their knowledge and vir-

14U u Prsedicans eis modesta exhortatione... pene omnes qui ab Hiiensiura dominio erant liberi, ab errore avito correctos ad unitatem reduxit catholicam." Bede, v. 15.

'*' Adamnan bas always been venerated as a saint. See the article upon him, BoLLAND., vol. vii. Sept., 24th, and the Breviary of Aberdeen. It is asserted that he ate only twice in the week— Sunday and Thursday. — Ajui. des Quatre Maitres, ap. Reeves, p. Ivii.

"2 See p. 401. tue; ^1*3 while others remained, casting in their lot forever with the monastic ranks of Ireland.

Egbert stood in the first rank of those numerous scions of the Anglo-Saxon nobility who in their 3'outh became voluntary exiles for Christ, in order Egbert in to devote themselves in Ireland, far from their re- llf.^^^; lations and their possessions, to a life of penitence, and, above all, to the study of the Holy Scriptures.^** He was only twenty-five when the terrible pestilence broke out which, immediately after the first triumph of Wilfrid at the conference of Whitby, made such cruel ravages in the British Isles. He was then with several of his countrymen, in a monastery, the site of which is at present represented by the picturesque ruins of Mellifont; he saw his companions dying around him daily, and when at last he was himself affected by the contagion, he had strength enough to leave the infirmary, and withdraw to a solitary place to review his life and weep over his sins. He had even the courage to pray God to spare his life until he had expiated the faults of his youth by good works, and made a vow if his prayer was granted to remain an exile forever and return to England no more. He then went in and lay down again, beside another young man, his closest and most intimate friend, who was mortally stricken, and lay in a sleep that was almost death. All at once the young sufferer awoke. " Ah, brother Egbert, what j^g jog^s have you done?" he said. '• I hoped so that we should have entered eternal life together; and now friend, who you let me die without you: know at least that your prayer is granted." The young man died that night; but Egbert survived for sixty-five years, and became a model of all monastic virtues. Not only did he call forth the affectionate admiration of his Anglo-Saxon countrymen, but even in Ireland, so fertile in marvels of holiness, he appeared an eminent saint. He emulated the most illustrious in his zeal for knowledge, in his eagerness to distribute to

"^ Among others, Ceadda, the first rival of Wilfrid at York, and J^dihvin, of whom Bede says: " Ipse Hiberniam gratia legcndi adiit, et bene instructus patriam rediit, atque cpiscopus in provincia Lindissi factus, multo ccclesiam tempore nobilissime rexit." — Hist. Eccles., iii. 27. See what has been already said (p. 50G, note) of the elder brother of Abbot Ceolfrid of Yarrow,

'" " In Ilibornia diutius exulavcrat pro Christo... doctissinius in scripturis ct Ionj,'ai vitaj perfectione eximius.... De nobilibus Angloruni.... Quem peregrinam ducere vitam pro adipisceuda in coelis patria retulimus." —Mist. Eccles., v. 9. the poor the gifts lavished upon him by the rich, and in the austerities of his hfe. The great historian of the Christian glories of the Anglo-Saxon race has not disdained to inform us that during Lent, and even for forty days after Christmas, and fifty days after Whitsuntide, his entire nourishment consisted of a little bread, with milk from which the cream had been carefully removed. It was at this price that the right of speaking with authority to the nations, and of walking before them in the way of salvation, was purchased. ^^^ He uses his He employed his influence over the two races oveMUe^ which rivalled each other in honoring his holiness, ^"^^ ^°^ their good, their honor, and the general Welfare of the Church. Though he did not succeed, notwithstanding his entreaties, in turning Egfrid, ^q king of his native Northumbria, from the crime of his abominable invasion of Ireland, he was more fortunate with others of his countrymen, whom he transformed into missionaries of the faith to the Germans. In his ascetic exile in Ireland he was the first of the Anglo-Saxons to conceive the generous, the divine idea of sending to the help of the mother-country, to Germany, which still belonged to Satan, the sons of her Britannic colony to show her the path of virtue and of life.!"^^ He knew w^ell whence it was that his Anglo-Saxon ancestors had come, and that they had left behind them in darkness a crowd of other tribes, of the same stock and language, whose image stole upon his imagination, as did that of the little Irish children whose plaintive voices St. Patrick heard in his dreams, and whose visionary appeals decided that saint, once a slave, to become the apostle of their country.^*''

¹⁴⁵ a Egressus est tempore matutino de cubiculo in quo infirmi quiescebant... finitis lacrymis, precibus et votis.... Expergefactus sodalis respexit eum.... frater Ecgbert, O quidfecisti? Sperabam quia pariter ad vitam ffiternam intrarcmus.... Unde et genti sua? et illis in quibus exulabat nationibus Scottorum sive Pictorura exemplo vivendi •.. multum profuit.... Quod lac pridie novum in phialia ponere solebat, et post noctem ablata superficie crassiore, ipse residuum cum modico pane bibebat." — Bede, iii. 27. Bede, who is always careful to cite his authorities, informs us that he gathered all these particulars from a priest, " veracissiraus etvenerandse canitiei," to whom Egbert had narrated his life. Bede, who was born in 673, was more than fifty when Egbert died.

146 II jjj Germania plurimas noverat esse nationes, a quibus Angli vel Saxones qui nunc Britanniam incolunt, genus et originem duxisse noscuntur.,., Sunt autem Fresones, Rugini, Dani, Huni, antiqui Saxones, Boructuarii.... Christi miles circumnavigata Britannia disposuit si quos forte ex illis ereptos Satanse ad Christum transferre valeret." — Bede, v. 9.

'*^ See vol. i. p. 544.

Faithful to the vow which forbade him to land, even in passing, upon the soil of his native island, Egbert chartered a ship to take him direct from Ireland to Friesland, on the northern coast of Germany. But as he was about to embark, one of his travelling companions, who had been a monk at Melrose, lying down to sleep after matins, saw in a dream the prior Boswell, the tender friend of Cuthbert,^*^ and beloved master of the novices at Melrose, one of the great saints of the Celtic Church in Northumbria, who charged him to warn Egbert that the will of God ordained him to give up his Germanic mission, and to devote himself, willingly or unwillingly, to the instruction and conversion of the Columbite monasteries. '' Their ploughs do not go straight," said the prior to his former pupil; " they must be put back into the right furrow."' ^^^ ^'[jjg dream, though twice repeated, made no impression upon Egbert; but his ship having been cast ashore, he acknowledged the will of God, and gave up his cherished project, so far as related to himself. As many, however, of the fervent and zealous monks among his own countrymen whom he could move to such a determination he sent in his place; when any returned discouraged by their want of success, he sought and found others more capable or more fortunate; and it was thus the beginning made by Egbert that gave to Germany Vicbert, Willibrord, Swidbert, the two Ewalds, and other holy bishops or abbots, whose names are justly venerated by Germany as her apostles, and whom we shall find again in the history of that country if it is permitted to us to pursue our task so far.

It was in the year of Ceolfrid's death, eleven ^^^^^j.^ years after the death of Adamnan, and seven years after that of Wilfrid, that the Alglo-Saxon Egbert succeeded in overcoming the most obstinate strong-, hold of Celtic dissidcnce, and procured the triumph J|t°™f_°, of Roman unity in the monastic metropolis which had been founded by the most illustrious saint of the Celtic Church. A stranger of an alien and often hostile race thus accomplished the task in which Adamnan had failed. He was from the first received by the monks of lona with the

'^5 See pp. 450 and 4G9.

'" "Cum expletis hymnis matutinalibus in lectulo membra posuisscm... apparuit maj^ister quondam meus et nutritor amantissimus.... Vadc et die illis quia, velit nolit, debet ad monasteria Columbse venire, quia aratra eorum non recte incedunt." — Bede, v. 9. greatest respect; and, employing no means but those afforded him by the delightful suavity of his disposition, the soft and persevering influence of his conversation, and, above all, the example of a life so perfectly conformed to his doctrine, he triumphed over the inveterate dislike of the sons of St. Columba for that innovation which was to reunite them to the rest of Christendom. It is not probable that he succeeded at once, since he lived for the thirteen last years of his life at lona, in the long famous island which he hoped to crown with a new glory by bringing it back into the orbit of Catholic unity. But his victory was complete and final.

S® ^^®d ^^ *^^® ^o® *^f ninety on Easter-day, the regular celebration of which had preoccupied, excited, and agitated so many saints before him. It ^^^'

fell, in the year of his death, on the 24th April — that is to say, on a day when it had never been and never could be observed, according to the computation followed by the Irish. After having commenced, along with his brethren whom he had the joy to lead back to Catholic unity, to celebrate on earth the greatest solemnity of the liturgical year, he went to complete it in heaven with our Lord, the holy Apostles, and all the citizens of the celestial country, where the eternal celebration ceases no more.^^^

All the monasteries subordinate to lona followed the example of their metropolitan community in the adoption of the Roman Easter and the orthodox tonsure. There is ground for believing that they accepted at the same time the Benedictine rule, since none of the numerous monks and missionaries sent forth by them into France, and specially into Germany, carried any other rules with them than those of the order of St. Benedict.i^i

Ireland thus found itself entirely brought under the laws of Roman discipline. It was by her action, and in her southern provinces, that the first movement of return to unity ^^^ — a movement carried out by Adamnan with, except in lona and its dependencies, universal success — had been begun 150 li Doctor suavissimus... libenter auditus ab universis, immutavit piis ac sedulis exhortationibus inveteratara illam traditionem parenturn eorum. ... In insula quam ipse velut nova quadam relucente gratia ecclesiasticae societatis et pacis Christi consecraverat... gaudium summse festivitatis quod cum fratribus quos ad unitatis gratiam converterat, inchoavit, cum Domino et apostolis cseterisque coeli civibus complevit, immo idipsum celebrare sine fine non desinit." — Bede, v. 22.

'^' Mabillon, in PrcBfat. III. Sec. Bened., No, 16.

^15* See p. 316. by the Council of 634. The country most distant and least accessible to Roman influence, withdrawn behind Wales and the sea, which made a double rampart for her, was thus the first conquest of the principle of unity .^^^ Caledonia, the modern Scotland, represented by the Picts, the farthest north and most untamable of all the populations of the British Isles, soon followed. And, finally, lona herself yielded, increasing, by all the numerous family of Columb-kill, the crowded ranks of faithful and obedient children in the Roman Church.i^^

The Britons of Cambria alone resisted; they, the The Britons nearest of all, exposed ev^ery day to the example, of Cambria efforts, and persuasions of the orthodox, alone per- mahf obstisisted in the customs which they had refused to swlitin^' sacrifice to Augustin. Bede, the illustrious con- respect to temporary of those last struggles, grows indignant over this insurmountable obstinacy. He contrasts it with the docility of the Irish and Scotch, and attempts to explain the causes of the difference.^-^^ " The Scottish nation," he says, " communicated frankly and generously to the Anglo- Saxons, by the ministrations of Aidan and other missionaries, the truth as far as she knew it; in return, she owes to the Anglo-Saxons the perfect order and regularity which were wanting to her. But the Britons, who had never wished to reveal the Christian religion to the Anglo-Saxons, bury themselves deeper and deeper in their error, now that the English are initiated into all the verities of the Catholic faith. They hold high their tonsured heads, but not in the form of a crown; and they profess to celebrate the Christian solemnities while separating themselves from the Church of Christ." ¹⁵⁶

'=' Vakin, Memoir already quoted.

'''* It must bo acknowledged that from this moment the influence of this celebrated sanctuary went on diminishing, though it still remained much beyond that of the rest of the Celtic Church.

'" He admits, however, that in the time of Adamnan the example of Ireland was contagious for a certain number of Britons, v. 17: " Plurima pars Scottorum in Ilibcrnia, et noiinulJa etiam dc Britonibus in Britannia, ecclesiasticum paschalis observantisG tempus susccpit." The Britons of Cumberland and of Strathclyde, who were more directly under the influence and authority of Northumbrian kings and pontiffs, are probably referred to in this passage.

¹⁵⁶ ujpsi adhuc inveterati et claudicantes in semitis suis, et capita sine corona prastendunt et solemnia Christi sine Eeclesije Christi societate venerantur." — Bede, v. 22.

Real mo- A little reflection ought to have been sufficient tiid/?e- to convince the honest Bede that some other mosistance. tjyg than prejudice or religious passion had to do with the infatuated resistance of the Britons; it was the patriotic sentiment which the Anglo-Saxons had mortally wounded, and which Bede himself, like a true Englishman, does not seem to have been able to comprehend as existing in the victims of Saxon invasion. The Anglo-Saxons had never attacked Ireland Before the passing incursion of Eg- They fought only by intervals, or held themselves upon the defensive against the Picts and Scots of Scotland; while against the Britons war and conflict were perpetual. This war dated from the first landing of the Saxons. It had begun long before the mission of Augustin, and had lasted for three centuries when Bede wrote.^^^ It was not then the doctrines or usages of Rome, it was the ecclesiastical supremacy and moral invasion of the Saxons, which the remnant of the British nation, withdrawn within its inaccessible stronghold of Cambria, repelled with the energy of despera- For a century and a half, up to the moment of Augustin's arrival, religion and patriotism had borne an equal part in their horror for the pagan barbarians who had come first to waste, and then to take possession of their native island. They had seen, with equal distrust and repugnance, these savage invaders, whose eternal damnation seemed to them a sort of consolatory justice, gradually introduced into the fold of the Church. By maintaining their ancient customs, by celebrating Easter at a different date, by seeing on the shaven brows of their clergy the distinctive sign of their independent origin and tradition, they testified their incredulity of the Christianity of their enemies, and raised a supreme protest in favor of their own vanquished but not extirpated nationality, before God and man.^^^

'^'^ Vakin, Memoir already quoted.

'^^ This is called by Bede, in language too like that which Muscovite writers of our own day employ in respect to the Poles, a domestic and immoral hatred: " Britones maxima ex parte domestico sibi odio gentem Anglorum et totius Ecclesias catholics statum Pascha, minus recte moribusgue improbis pugnant." There is no just reason for imputing to the British Christians a lower rate of morals than those of the Saxon converts; but our venerable historian, blinded by his passions and prejudices, goes still further, and yields, as so many have done after him, to the hateful temptation of identifying the work of God with a human conquest: " Tamen et divina sibi et humana prorsus rcsistente virtute, in neutro cupitum possunt obtinere propositum: quippe qui quamvis ex parte sui sunt juris, nonnulla tamen ex parte Anglorum sunt servitio mancipati." — v. 23. He says elsewhere (v, 18) that

While Wilfrid consumed his life, in the north of ^.ttemptsof England, in a struggle against the enmities which st.Aldhelm probably fomented and aggravated the opposition of the Celts to his innovations, a celebrated monk named Aldhelm, about his own age, and who died in ^^^ the same year, distinguished himself by his efforts to lead back the Britons who Avere subjects of the kingdom of Wessex, or lived on its borders, to Roman unity, as well as to extend and consolidate the Christian faith among the Western Saxons. His fame was too great in the middle ages, and he has been too often quoted in our own day among the pioneers of literature, to be passed over by us without remark.i^^ He was descended from that powerful race of Cerdic which traced its genealogy up to Komaa the god Woden or Odin,^'^*^ and which reigned over e])!^^,^*'^*^*'; the Saxons of the West until the moment came when it united all the kingdoms of the Heptarchy under its dominion. Aldhelm, who had been devoted from his youth to religious and literary studies, was soon attracted by a school which had just risen in his native kingdom, and of which he