36 FOUKTH PERIOD. A. D. 590 TO 1049.
willing to compromise with heathen customs, but demands abso lute submission from all other forms of Christianity, and hates independence as the worst of heresies.
The Britons preferred their own traditions. After much use less contention, Augustin proposed, and the Britons reluctantly accepted, an appeal to the miraculous interposition of God. A blind man of the Saxon race was brought forward and restored to sight by his prayer. The Britons still refused to give up their ancient customs without the consent of their people, and demanded a second and larger synod.
At the second Conference, seven bishops of the Britons, with a number of learned men from the Convent of Bangor, appeared, and were advised by a venerated hermit to submit the Saxon archbishop to the moral test of meekness and humility as required by Christ from his followers. If Augustin, at the meeting, shall rise before them, they should hear him submissively; but if he shall not rise, they should despise him as a proud man. As they drew near, the Roman dignitary remained seated in his chair. He demanded of them three things, viz. compliance with the Roman observance of the time of Easter, the Roman form of baptism, and aid in efforts to convert the English nation; and then he would readily tolerate their other peculiarities. They refused, reasoning among themselves, if he will not rise up before us now, how much more will he despise us when we shall be subject to his authority? Augustin in dignantly rebuked them and threatened the divine vengeance by the arms of the Saxons. " All which," adds Bede, " through the dispensation of the divine judgment, fell out exactly as he had predicted." For, a few years afterwards (613), Ethelfrith the Wild, the pagan King of Northumbria, attacked the Britons at Chester, and destroyed not only their army, but slaughtered several hundred1 priests and monks, who accompanied the sol diers to aid them with their prayers. The massacre was followed
1 Bede mentions twelve hundred, but the Saxon chronicle (A. D. 607) only two hundred.
\ 12. CONVERSION OF THE OTIIEK KINGDOMS. 37
by the destruction of the flourishing monastery of Bangor, where more than two thousand monks lived, by the labor of their hands.
This is a sad pieture of the fierce animosity of the two raees and rival forms of Christianity. Unhappily, it continues to the present day, but with a remarkable difference: the Keltic Irish who, like the Britons, once represented a more independent type of Catholicism, have, since the Norman conquest, and still more since the Reformation, become intense Romanists; while the English, once the dutiful subjects of Rome, have broken with that foreign power altogether, and have vainly endeavored to force Protestantism upon the conquered race. The Irish pro blem will not be solved until the double curse of national and religious antagonism is removed.
§ 12. Conversion of the Other Kingdoms of the Heptarchy.
Augustin, the apostle of the Anglo-Saxons, died A. D. 604, and lies buried, with many of his successors, in the venerable cathedral of Canterbury. On his tomb was written this epitaph : " Here rests the Lord Augustin, first archbishop of Canterbury, who being formerly sent hither by the blessed Gregory, bishop of the city of Rome, and by God's assistance supported with miracles, reduced king Ethclbert and his nation from the wor ship of idols to the faith of Christ, and having ended the days of his office in peace, died on the 26th day of May, in the reign of the same king.7' l
He was not a great man ; but he did a great work in laying the foundations of English Christianity and civilization.
Laureutius (604-619), and afterwards Mellitus (619-624) suc ceeded him in his office.
Other priests and monks were sent from Italy, and brought with them books and such culture as remained after the irrup tion of the barbarians. The first archbishops of Canterbury and York, and the bishops of most of the Southern sees were foreign-
1 Bede II., c. 3 ; Iladdan and Stubbs, III. 53.