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The Coming of Christianity
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The Coming of Christianity
Although little is known of the way in which the Britons had been converted to Christianity under the Roman rule, yet there is no doubt that many of them had become Christians. We hear of Alban, the first man to die for the Christian faith in England, who gave his name to St. Albans, and of three British bishops who visited a Council at Aries in 314. Indeed, when the Roman Emperor Constantine accepted Christianity, it was natural that it should be adopted in Britain. Not the least terrible thing about the Saxons in British eyes was that they were heathens. Britain, as a Christian Roman province, had felt itself a part of Europe; when it was overwhelmed by hordes of savage pagans it sank back into outer darkness. Its history, its religion, its life seemed all alike to have been swallowed up in the wave of invasion Nothing shows more clearly the horror and loathing which the Britons felt for the Saxons than the fact that for so many years they made no attempt to convert them. It was not that there were no British missionaries; to their abiding honour, there was no lack of them. David preached in South Wales; St. Patrick converted Ireland; St. Ninian spread the Gospel in Galloway; St. Columba built the great monastery in Iona, whence for centuries flowed a stream of missionary enterprise. Yet none of them attacked the heathen Saxon. St Columban and St. Gall even passed them by on the other side in order to labour on the Continent.
What they left undone, Rome did. Everyone knows how the first impulse was supplied; how the little fair-haired boys from Deira attracted the notice of the abbot Gregory in the slave market at Rome; how he declared they were "not Angles, but Angels", fit to be rescued from "the wrath" (In Latin, de Ira) to come; and vowed, when he heard the name of their king, AElla, that "Alleluia shall be sung in the realm of AElla". Years passed by, and Gregory, now made Pope, was able to keep his promise. It happened that King Ethelbert of Kent had married Bertha, a Christian princess from France. Gregory seized the chance thus offered to him. He sent Augustine, with forty followers, to preach the Gospel in heathen England.. They landed in the year 597 at Ebbsfleet, the very landing place to which, a hundred and fifty years before, the first band of Jutes had come. A fresh Roman conquest was to begin; this time, however, it was not to be made by Roman legions for a Roman Emperor, but by Roman missionaries for the Roman Church.
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Chronology
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