38 FOURTH PEEIOD. A.D. 590 TO 1049.
ers, if not consecrated, at least commissioned by the pope, and kept up a constant correspondence with Rome. Gradually a native clergy arose in England.
The work of Christianization went on among the other king doms of the heptarchy, and was aided by the marriage of kings with Christian wives, but was more than once interrupted by relapse into heathenism. Northumbria was converted chiefly through the labors of the sainted AIDAN (d. Aug. 31, 651), a monk from the island lona or Hii, and the first bishop of Lindisfarne, who is even lauded by Bede for his zeal, piety and good works, although he differed from him on the Easter ques tion.1 Sussex was the last part of the Heptarchy which re nounced paganism. It took nearly a hundred years before England was nominally converted to the Christian religion.2
To this conversion England owes her national unity and the best elements of her civilization.3
The Anglo-Saxon Christianity was and continued to be till the Reformation, the Christianity of Rome, with its excellences and faults. It included the Latin mass, the worship of saints, images and relics, monastic virtues and vices, pilgrimages to the holy city, and much credulity and superstition. Even kings abdicated their crown to show their profound reverence for the supreme pontiff and to secure from him a passport to heaven. Chapels, churches and cathedrals were erected in the towns; convents founded in the country by the bank of the river or under the shelter of a hill, and became rich by pious donations of land. The lofty cathedrals and ivy-clad ruins of old abbeys
1 Bede III., c. 14-17; V. 24.
2 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.
8 "The conversion of the heptarchic kingdom," says Professor Stubbs (Con stitutional 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."
§ 13. CONFORMITY TO ROME ESTABLISHED. 39
and cloisters in England and Scotland still remain to testify in solemn silence to the power of mediaeval Catholicism.
§ 13. Conformity to Rome Established. Wilfrid, Theodore, Bede.
The dispute between the Anglo-Saxon or Roman, and the British ritual was renewed in the middle of the seventh century, but ended with the triumph of the former in England proper. The spirit of independence had to take refuge in Ireland and Scotland till the time of the Norman conquest, which crushed it out also in Ireland.
"WILFRID, afterwards bishop of York, the first distinguished native prelate who combined clerical habits with haughty mag nificence, acquired celebrity by expelling " the quartodcciman heresy and schism," as it was improperly called, from Xorthumbria, where the Scots had introduced it through St. Aidan. The controversy was decided in a Synod held at Whitby in 664 in the presence of King Oswy or Oswio and his son Alfrid. Colman, the second successor of Aidan, defended the Scottish obser vance of Easter by the authority of St. Columba and the apostle John. Wilfrid rested the Roman observance on the authority of Peter, who had introduced it in Rome, and on the universal custom of Christendom. When he mentioned, that to Peter were intrusted the keys of the kingdom of heaven, the king said : " I will not contradict the door-keeper, lest when I come to the gates of the kingdom of heaven, there should be none to open them." By this irresistible argument the opposition was broken, and conformity to the Roman observance established. The Scottish semi-circular tonsure also, which was ascribed to Simon Magus, gave way to the circular, which was derived from St. Peter. Col man, being worsted, returned with his sympathizers to Scot land, where he built two monasteries. Tuda was made bishop in his place.1
Soon afterwards, a dreadful pestilence raged through England
1 See a full account of this controversy in Bede, III., c. 2-5, 26, and in Iladdaa and Stubbs, III. 100-106.