26 FOURTH PERIOD. A..D. 590 TO 1049.
troops were withdrawn, and the country left to govern itself. The result was a partial relapse into barbarism and a demoralization of the church. The intercourse with the Continent was cut off, and the barbarians of the North pressed heavily upon the Britons. For a century and a half we hear nothing of the British churches till the silence is broken by the querulous voice of Gildas, who informs us of the degeneracy of the clergy, the decay of religion, the introduction and suppression of the Pelagian heresy, and the mission of Palladius to the Scots in Ireland. This long isolation accounts in part for the trifling differences and the bitter antago nism between the remnant of the old British church and the new church imported from Rome among the hated Anglo-Saxons.
The difference was not doctrinal, but ritualistic and discipli nary. The British as well as the Irish and Scotch Christians of the sixth and seventh centuries kept Easter on the very day of the full moon in March when it was Sunday, or on the next Sunday following. They adhered to the older cycle of eightyfour years in opposition to the later Dionysian cycle of ninety-five years, which came into use on the Continent since the middle of the sixth century.1 They shaved the fore-part of their head from ear to ear in the form of a crescent, allowing the hair to grow behind, in imitation of the aureola, instead of shaving, like the Romans, the crown of the head in a circular form, and leaving a circle of hair, which was to represent the Saviour's crown of thorns. They had, moreover — and this was the most important and most irritating difference — become practically independent of Rome, and transacted their business in councils without referring to the pope, who began to be regarded on the Continent as the righteous ruler and judge of all Christendom.
1 The British and Irish Christians were stigmatized by their Roman oppo nents 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, I. c. II. 9 sq. ; the elabo rate discussion of Ebrard, Die iro-schott. Missionskirche, 19-77, and Killen, Ecdes. Hist, of Ireland, I. 57 sqq.
g 9. THE ANGLO-SAXONS. 27
From these facts some historians have inferred the Eastern or Greek origin of the old British church. But there is no evidence whatever of any such connection, unless it be perhaps through the medium of the neighboring church of Gaul, which was partly planted or moulded by Irenseus of Lyons, a pupil of St. Poly^ carp of Smyrna, and which always maintained a sort of inde pendence of Home.
But in the points of dispute just mentioned, the Galilean church at that time agreed with Rome. Consequently, the peculiarities of the British Christians must be traced to their insular isolation and long separation from Rome. The Western church on the Continent passed through some changes in the development of the authority of the papal sec, and in the mode of calculating Easter, until the computation was finally fixed through Dionysius Exiguus in 525. The British, unacquainted with these changes, adhered to the older independence and to the older customs. They continued to keep Easter from the 14th of the moon to the 20th. This difference involved a difference in all the moveable festivals, and created great confusion in Eng land after the conversion of the Saxons to the Roman rite.
§ 9. The Anglo-Saxons.
LITERATURE.
I. The sources for the planting of Eoman Christianity among tho Anglo-Saxons are several Letters of Pope GREGORY I. (Epp., Lib. VI. 7, 51, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59; IX. 11, 103; XL 28, 29, 64, 65, 66, 76; in Migne's ed. of Gregory's Opera, Vol. III. ; also in Haddan and Stubbs, III. 5 sqq.) ; the first and second books of BEDE'S Ecclcs. Hist.; GOSCELIN'S Life of /St. Augustin, written in the llth century, and contained in the Acta Sanctorum of May 26th ; and TIIORXE'S Chronicles of St. Augustine's Abbey. See also HADDAN and STUBBS, Councils, etc., the 3d vol., which conies down to A. D. 840.
II. Of modern lives of St. Augustin, we mention MONTALEMBERT, Monks of the West, Vol. III. ; Dean HOOK, Archbishops of Canterbury, Vol. L, and Dean STANLEY, Memorials of Canterbury, 1st ed., 1855, 9th ed. 1880. Comp. Lit. in Sec. 7.
British Christianity was always a feeble plant, and suffered greatly from the Anglo-Saxon conquest and the devastating wars