RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Celtic Church
differed in some respects from the Roman Church of Gregory's time, the most important divergences being the form of the tonsure and the method of computing Easter [cf.
5. Relations with.
Borne Hummer's Bede, ii. 348-354; Bright, pp. 86-93, 224-225]. In 604 Augustine's successor, Laurence, with his fellow bishops, Mellitus and Justus, sent a letter to Ireland exhorting to conformity to Roman usage, but without success (Bede, ii. 4). A party favorable to conformity gradually arose through visits of Irish clerics to Gaul and Rome, and partly perhaps through influence of the Anglo-Roman Church, but in 627 it was still in the minority, for the exhortation of Pope Honorius I. to conform in 628 was again unsuccessful (Bede, ii. 19). Honorius then excommunicated Ireland (Cummian's letter, 977, 11. 5-6) and in 629 the Southeast generally observed the Roman date. Farther west opinions wavered, but in 630 the abbots met in a synod at Mag Lena near Tullamore, and decided to celebrate Easter the next year with the Roman Church. Opposition, however, made another meeting necessary and the Roman party failed to win a decisive victory. They sent an embassy to Rome, which returned in 633. Through the influence of this embassy and the death (636) of Fintan, abbot of Taghmon in County Wexford (see Fintan, Saint), leader of the opposition, the Roman party finally prevailed in the South. The North held out stubbornly for sixty years longer. Cummian's letter to Seghine, abbot of Iona (634), and a letter from Pope John IV. (partly preserved by Bede, ii. 19) in 640 to the prominent abbots of the North were ineffectual. The details of the struggle are not known, but it may be assumed that the Patrick legend was not the least important of the expedients resorted to to work upon the North Irish.
It was natural for the Irish to seek for an apostle who should be to them what Columba was to the Picts and Augustine to the Saxons. In the neighborhood of Wicklow a
6. The Patrick
Lee-end certain Patricius was remembered who had called himself the " appointed bishop of Ireland." Is it unreasonable to assume that about 625 it came to be believed in the Southeast that the apostle was found in this man? The scanty history of Patrick was filled out by analogy with that of Columba and Augustine. The Irish were supposed to have been all heathen in 432 as the Picts had been in 563 and the Saxons in 597 Patrick converted the land in a brief time, established a Christian Church, and won the favor of King Laeghaire as Columba had that of King Brude and Augustine that of Ethelbert of Kent. This legend was at once utilized, if not invented, by the Roman party, as is evident from the first mention of it in Cummian's letter. He attributes to Patrick the introduction of the Dionysian cycle in Ireland, although it was not introduced in Rome till the sixth century (col. 975c).
The legend was also useful in winning over the bishop of Armagh. As the presumed successor of St. Patrick he was acknowledged in the South as metropolitan (cf. Tripartite Life, ii. 346, 11. 21-24). The claims of Armagh, however, met with violent
opposition in the eighth and ninth centuries both in Connaught and Munster. Northumbria con- 7 Con formed to Rome after the Synod of forms to Whitfc)y (q-v-) in 664, whereupon the Roman Irish returned to their native land (see Usag-e. Colman, Saint). Adamnan, ninth abbot of Iona (679-704), was persuaded to yield while visiting the court of Aldfrid in Northumbria in 686 or 687-688, but was unable to control the abbots of the dependent monasteries or his own monks at Iona when he returned home (Bede, v. 15). Then he went to North Ireland and with an Angle, Egbert (see Egbert, Saint), took the lead in efforts to win over the Irish party. The bishop of Armagh yielded in 697. The Columban monasteries continued obstinate. In 713 Naiton, king of the Picts, enlisted the services of Ceolfrid (q.v.), the distinguished abbot of Wearmouth and Jarrow; the latter wrote a long letter on the Easter question, which Naiton sent in copy to all clerics in his dominion with an order to obey (Bede, v. 21). Those who continued recalcitrant were expelled from the country in 717. In 716 Egbert persuaded the abbot and monks of Iona to celebrate Easter at the Roman date. Their compliance, however, came too late to save the position of Iona as the center of a great monastic church. It was reduced to a mere parent monastery with a few affiliated houses on the west coast of North Britain and belonging to the Irish state. Armagh, on the other hand, by timely yielding and a skilful use of the Patrick legend had prepared the way for becoming the head of an episcopal church comprising all Ireland. III. Complete Assimilation to the Roman Church, 800-1200. — 1. In Wales: The Church in Wales, having been episcopal from the first, differed from the Roman Church only in subordinate points after it had conformed in respect to Easter and the tonsure. Political conditions hastened its complete assimilation to the Roman-Saxon Church. From the time of Egbert of Wessex (d. 836) the weaker Welsh chieftains sought the protection of the English kings against their more powerful countrymen. The attacks of the Northmen also, which from 853 on were felt more and more severely in Wales, promoted friendly feelings and relations between the two nations. That the culture of its clergy was higher after the isolation of the Welsh Church was ended is evident from the appointment and position of Asser (q.v.), a nephew of Bishop Novis of Menevia, as teacher, counselor, and friend of Alfred. At the end of the tenth and beginning of the eleventh century, consecration of bishops of Llandaff by the archbishop of Canterbury seems to have been the rule, and there is some reason to believe that an earlier bishop, Cyfeiliawc (d. 927), was so consecrated. The Anglo-Norman archbishops Lanfranc (1070-89) and Anselm (1093- 1109) repeatedly interfered in Welsh matters as if the Welsh bishops stood legally under the primate of England. Disputes concerning the boundaries of the Welsh dioceses of St. David's and Llandaff and the English diocese of Hereford between 1119 and 1133 were referred to Rome. About this time the bishop of St. David's began to set up the claim to metropolitan rank. After 1187, when Arch-
Celtic Church