mission. The Scots left Lindisfarne, and their disciples generally
adopted the Roman usages. The Scots were admirable missionaries,
holy and self-devoted, and building partly on Roman
foundations and elsewhere breaking new ground, they and their
English disciples, as Ceadda (St Chad), bishop of the Mercians,
and Cuthbert, bishop of Lindisfarne, who were by no means
inferior to their teachers, almost completed the conversion of the
country. But they practised an excessive asceticism and were
apt to abandon their work in order to live as hermits. Great as
were the benefits which the English derived from their teaching,
its cessation was not altogether a loss, for the church was passing
beyond the stage of mission teaching and needed organization,
and that it could not have received from the Scots.
Its organization like its foundation came from Rome. An archbishop-designate who was sent to Rome for consecration having died there, Pope Vitalian in 668 consecrated Theodore of Tarsus as archbishop of Canterbury. The Scots had no diocesan system, and the English Organiza-tion of the English Church. bishoprics were vast in extent, followed the lines of the kingdoms and varied with their fortunes. The church had no system of government nor means of legislation. Theodore united it in obedience to himself, instituted national synods and subdivided the over-large bishoprics. At his death, in 690, the English dominions were divided into fourteen dioceses. Wilfrid, who had become bishop of Northumbria, resisted the division of his diocese and appealed to the pope. He was imprisoned by the Northumbrian king and was exiled. While in exile he converted the South Saxons, and their conversion led to that of the Isle of Wight, then subject to them, in 686, which completed the evangelization of the English. After long strife Wilfrid, who was supported by Rome, regained a part of his former diocese. Theodore also gave the church learning by establishing a school at Canterbury, where many gained knowledge of the Scriptures, of Latin and Greek, and other religious and secular subjects. In the north learning was promoted by Benedict Biscop in the sister monasteries which he founded at Wearmouth and Jarrow. There Bede (q.v.) received the learning which he imparted to others. In the year of Bede’s death, 735, one of his disciples, Ecgbert, bishop of York, became the first archbishop of York, Gregory III. giving him the pallium, a vestment which conferred archiepiscopal authority. He established a school or university at York, to which scholars came from the continent. His work as a teacher was carried on by Alcuin, who later brought learning to the court and Frankish dominions of Charlemagne. The infant church, following the example of the Irish Scots, showed much missionary zeal, and English missionaries founded an organized church in Frisia and laboured on the lower Rhine; two who attempted to preach in the old Saxon land were martyred. Most famous of all, Winfrid, or St Boniface, the apostle of Germany, preached to the Frisians, Hessians and Thuringians, founded bishoprics and monasteries, became the first archbishop of Mainz, and in 754 was martyred in Frisia. He had many English helpers, some became bishops, and some were ladies, as Thecla, abbess of Kitzingen, and Lioba, abbess of Bischofsheim. After his death, Willehad laboured in Frisia, and later, at the bidding of Charlemagne, among the Saxons, and became the first bishop of Bremen. Religion, learning, arts, such as transcription and illumination, flourished in English monasteries. Yet heathen customs and beliefs lingered on among the people, and in Bede’s time there were many pseudo-monasteries where men and women made monasticism a cloak for idleness and vice. In the latter part of the 8th century Mercia became the predominant kingdom under Offa, and he determined to have an archbishop of his own. By his contrivance two legates from Adrian I. held a council at Chelsea in 787 in which Lichfield was declared an archbishopric, and seven of the twelve suffragan bishoprics of Canterbury were apportioned to it. In 802, however, Leo III. restored Canterbury to its rights and the Lichfield archbishopric was abolished.
The rise of Wessex to power seems to have been aided by a
good understanding between Ecgbert and the church, and his
successors employed bishops as their ministers. Æthelred, who
was specially under ecclesiastical influence, went on a pilgrimage
to Rome, and before his departure made large grants for
pious uses. His donation, though not the origin of tithesLater
Anglo-
Saxon
times.
in England, illustrates the idea of the sacredness of
the tenth of income on which laws enforcing the
payment of tithes were founded. His pilgrimage
was probably undertaken in the hope of averting
the attacks of the pagan Danes. Their invasions fell heavily
on the church; priests were slaughtered and churches sacked
and burnt. Learning disappeared in Northumbria, and things
were little better in the south. Bishops fought and fell in
battle, the clergy lived as laymen, the monasteries were
held by married canons, heathen superstitions and immorality
prevailed among the laity. Besides bringing the Danish
settlers in East Anglia to profess Christianity in 878, Alfred
set himself to improve the religious and intellectual condition
of his own people (see Alfred). The gradual reconquest
of middle and northern England by his successors was
accompanied by the conversion of the Danish population. A
revival of religion was effected by churchmen inspired by the
reformed monasticism of France and Flanders, by Odo, archbishop
of Canterbury, Oswald, archbishop of York, and Dunstan
(see Dunstan), who introduced from abroad the strict life of the
new Benedictinism. King Edgar promoted the monastic reform,
and by his authority Bishop Æthelwold of Winchester turned
canons out of the monasteries and put monks in their place.
Dunstan sought to reform the church by ecclesiastical and secular
legislation, forbidding immorality among laymen, insisting on the
duties of the clergy, and compelling the payment of tithes and
other church dues. After Edgar’s death an anti-monastic
movement, chiefly in Mercia, nearly ended in civil war. In this
strife, which was connected with politics, the victory on the
whole lay with the monks’ party, and in many cathedral churches
the chapters remained monastic. The renewed energy of the
church was manifested by councils, canonical legislation and
books of sermons. In the homilies of Abbot Ælfric, written for
Archbishop Sigeric, stress is laid on the purely spiritual presence
of Christ in the Eucharist, but his words do not indicate, as some
have believed, that the English Church was not in accord with
Rome. The ecclesiastical revival was short-lived. Renewed
Danish invasions, in the course of which Archbishop Alphege was
martyred in 1012, and a decline in national character, injuriously
affected the church and, though in the reign of Canute it was
outwardly prosperous, spirituality and learning decreased.
Bishoprics and abbacies were rewards of service to the king, the
bishops were worldly-minded, plurality was frequent, and simony
not unknown. Edward the Confessor promoted foreign ecclesiastics;
the connexion with Rome was strengthened, and in 1062
the first legates since the days of Offa were sent to England by
Alexander II. A political conflict led to the banishment of Robert,
the Norman archbishop of Canterbury. An Englishman Stigand
received his see, but was excommunicated at Rome, and was
regarded even in England as schismatical. When William of
Normandy planned his invasion of England, Alexander II., by
the advice of Hildebrand, afterwards Gregory VII., moved
doubtless by this schism and by the desire to bring the English
Church under the influence of the Cluniac revival and into closer
relation with Rome, gave the duke a consecrated banner, and the
Norman invasion had something of the character of a holy war.
Before the Norman Conquest the church had relapsed into deadness: English bishops were political partisans, the clergy were married, and discipline and asceticism, then the recognized condition of holiness, were extinct. The Conqueror’s relations with Rome ensured a reform; Norman times. for the papacy was instinct with the Cluniac spirit. In 1070 papal legates were received and held a council by which Stigand was deposed. Lanfranc, abbot of Bec, was appointed archbishop of Canterbury and worked harmoniously with the king in bringing the English Church up to the level of the church in Normandy. Many native bishops and abbots were deposed, and the Norman prelates who succeeded them were generally of good character, strict disciplinarians, and men of grander ideas. A council of 1075 decreed the removal of bishops’ sees
