THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
save in the district of his special activity; and here, in the seventh century, under the influence of a specific tendency, he was resurrected and made the apostle of the Irish, as Augustine was the apostle of the Saxons and Columba of the Picts.
It is not possible to say definitely why Patrick does not mention his consecration by Pope Celestine in the " Confession." But it may be recalled that for three hundred years the Roman Empire was a standing menace to the liberty of the Irish. Without doubt bitter feelings and hatred were still alive in 432, and the Irish were not likely to distinguish carefully between spiritual and temporal Rome. If, therefore, when Patrick arrived in Ireland he tried to impress the Christian Irish with his ordination by Celestine, he must soon have found out his mistake. With his religious feelings and views, Patrick would look upon Celestine merely as the instrument of God, who had himself appeared to him in visions and dreams and appointed him apostle to the Irish. And it was only natural that to the old man on the brink of the grave Celestine's slight and casual intervention in his life should fade away before the image of God Almighty, whose chosen one he was. (For other views concerning St. Patrick, see the article Patrick, Saint.)
3. In North Britain (Alba) : From statements by Bede (iii. 4) we know that a Briton named Nynia (St. Ninian, q.v.) founded a monastery on the peninsula of Wigtown, in the extreme Southwest of Scotland, about 400, and thence spread Christianity among the Picts south of the Grampians. The germs of the young faith seem to have been destroyed in the confusion which arose in North Britain early in the fifth century. In two passages of his letter concerning Coroticus Patrick with evident anger calls the Picts " apostates " (Haddan and Stubbs, ii. 314, 1. 13; 318, 1. 5; Tripartite Life, ii. 375, 1. 26; 379, 1. 7). Coroticus was probably a king of the Strathclyde Britons, ruling near the modern Dumbarton between 420 and 450. His subjects were Christians; and as Patrick does not reproach the Irish (Scotti), living to the northwest, with paganism, it may be that they also, like their countrymen on the opposite coast of Antrim, were Christians.
II. Development and Full Maturity, 500-800. — 1. In Britain: The British Church reappears in Wales in the second third of the sixth century, and is the direct continuation of the Church of the fourth century. That the latter consisted mainly of Roman residents of the towns while the Britons in the country remained
1. The
Church in
Wales heathen, and that the Celtic Church first arose after the withdrawal of the Romans, is an opinion based upon defective knowledge of conditions in Roman and post- Roman Britain and is disproved by the fact that the Christian missionaries to Ireland in the fourth century and the Christians who settled in Armorica in the fifth spoke British, i.e., they were native Britons, not Roman occupants of the country. The external organization of the sixth century, however, is not an uninterrupted development from the fourth. When the Britons fled from the Saxons
to the thinly populated hill-regions of the West, they found there no cities to serve as centers of ecclesiastical organization. But monasticism, which had flourished in Britain from the end of the fourth century, soon created new centers. Dioceses were formed, each based on the monastery of a clan and comprising the territory belonging to the clan. In time these were combined into larger organisms, and during the seventh century the ecclesiastical organization of Wales was definitively fixed by the constitution of four bishoprics, corresponding to the four political divisions, viz.: Bangor on Menai Straits in Gwynedd; St. Asaph in the Northeast in Powys; Menevia (St. David's) in the Southwest in Dyfed; and Llandaff in the Southeast in Gwent. They were independent of one another and based on the chief monasteries of the territories named. Abbot and bishop were generally the same. According to the Annates Cambria, the founders of the four bishoprics died in 584 (Daniel of Bangor), 601 (David of Menevia), and 612 (Dubricius of Llandaff and Kentigern of St. Asaph).
The result of Gregory's mission to the Saxons (see Anglo-Saxons, Conversion of the; Augustine, Saint, of Canterbury) was to intensify and perpetuate the isolation from which the British Church already suffered. Two conferences were held between its representatives and Augustine (602 or 603), but the Britons rejected 2. The the proposals of the Roman mis- British sionary and refused to have him for Church and archbishop (Bede, ii. 2; cf. Bright, pp. Augrustine. 86-93). Augustine's unskilful management may have contributed to the result — he is said to have offended the Britons by not rising to meet them — but he offered to overlook all other differences if the Britons on their part would accept the Roman computation for Easter, would remove divergences from Roman practise in the baptismal rite, and would join him in preaching the Gospel to the Saxons. The third requirement was probably the chief obstacle, and union was not effected because the Britons regarded the missionary as the representative of their hated foes. In his disappointment Augustine is said to have threatened the obstinate Celts with death at the hands of the English if they would not preach to them the way of life. Eight, or perhaps twelve, years after Augustine's death Ethelfrid, the heathen king of Northumbria, massacred a large company of British priests and the monks of Bangor at Chester, and the prophecy was thought to be fulfilled.
When the South Irish Church conformed to Rome, about 630, the Welsh Church was cut off on both sides, and this isolation proved fatal to its spiritual culture. Its most eminent representative in the sixth century is Gildas, and after him there is no one of greater literary merit than Nennius at the end of the eighth century. According to the Annates Cambria, Elbodug, bishop of Bangor, adopted the Roman Easter computation in 768: the Chronicle 0} Welsh Princes gives the date as 75.5 and says that South Wales followed in 777 (Haddan and Stubbs, i. 203-204). But opposition