22 FOURTH PERIOD. A.D. 590 TO 1049.
Comp. also the relevant sections in the Histories of England, Scot land, and Ireland, by HUME (Ch. I -III.), LINGARD (Ch. L VIII.), LAPPENBERQ (Vol. L), GREEN (Vol. L), HILL BURTON (Hist, of Scotland, Vol. I.) ; MILMAN'S Latin Christianity (Book IV., Ch. 3-5); MACLEAR'S Apostles of Mediaeval Europe (Lond. 1869), THOMAS SMITH'S Mediaeval Missions (Edinb. 1880).
§ 8. The Britons.
Literature: The works of BEDE, GILDAS, NENNIUS, USSHEE, BRIGHT, PRYCE, quoted in $ 7.
.Britain made its first appearance in secular history half a cen tury before the Christian era, when Julius Caesar, the conqueror of Gaul, sailed with a Roman army from Calais across the chan nel, and added the British island to the dominion of the eternal city, though it was not fully subdued till the reign of Claudius (A. D. 41-54). It figures in ecclesiastical history from the con version of the Britons in the second century. Its missionary history is divided into two periods, the Keltic and the Anglo- Saxon, both catholic in doctrine, as far as developed at that time, slightly differing in discipline, yet bitterly hostile under the influence of the antagonism of race, which was ultimately over come in England and Scotland, but is still burning in Ireland, the proper home of the Kelts. The Norman conquest made both races better Romanists than they were before.
The oldest inhabitants of Britain, like the Irish, the Scots, and the Gauls, were of Keltic origin, half naked and painted barba rians, quarrelsome, rapacious, revengeful, torn by intestine fac tions, which facilitated their conquest. They had adopted, under different appellations, the gods of the Greeks and Romans, and worshipped a multitude of local deities, the genii of the woods, rivers, and mountains ; they paid special homage to the oak, the king of the forest. They offered the fruits of the earth, the spoils of the enemy, and, in the hour of danger, human lives. Their priests, called druids,1 dwelt in huts or caverns, amid the
1 The word Druid or Druidh is not from the Greek dpve, 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.
\ 8. THE BRITONS. 23
silence and gloom of the forest, were in possession of all educa tion and spiritual power, professed to know the secrets of nature, medicine and astrology, and practised the arts of divination. They taught, as the three principles of wisdom: "obedience to the laws of God, concern for the good of man, and fortitude under the accidents of life." They also taught the immortality of the soul and the fiction of metempsychosis. One class of the druids, who delivered their instructions in verse, were distin guished by the title of bards, who as poets and musicians accom panied the chieftain to the battle-field, and enlivened the feasts of peace by the sound of the harp. There are still remains of druidical temples — the most remarkable at Stonehenge on Salis bury Plain, and at Stennis in the Orkney Islands — that is, cir cles of huge stones standing in some cases twenty feet above the earth, and near them large mounds supposed to be ancient burialplaces ; for men desire to be buried near a place of worship.
The first introduction of Christianity into Britain is involved in obscurity. The legendary history ascribes it at least to ten different agencies, namely, 1) Bran, a British prince, and his son Caradog, who is said to have become acquainted with St. Paul in Rome, A.D. 51 to 58, and to have introduced the gospel into his native country on his return. 2) St. Paul. 3) St. Peter. 4) St. Simon Zelotes. 5) St. Philip. 6) St. James the Great. 7) St. John. 8) Aristobulus (Rom. xvi. 10). 9) Joseph of Arimathsea, who figures largely in the post-Xorman legends of Glastonbury Abbey, and is said to have brought the holy Graal —the vessel or platter of the Lord's Supper — containing the' blood of Christ, to England. 10) Missionaries of Pope Eleutherus from Rome to King Lucius of Britain.1
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, (6) British Christians in Britain, (c) Apostles or apostolic men preaching in Bri tain, 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 "gratui tous 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