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The Coming of Christianity
The Coming of Christianity; Part 3

The Coming of Christianity; Part 3

Edwin no doubt was sincere enough, but headlong zeal like that of Coifi and sudden wholesale conversions such as those of the Northumbrians did not amount to much. Those who abandon one faith for another so readily are not likely to be very firm in holding to any faith. If a time of persecution comes they will fall away again. This is exactly what happened in Northumbria. Edwin went to war with Penda, King of Mercia, and was slain at Heathfield. Paulinus and Ethelburga fled. Penda was a heathen, and his heathen warriors overran Northumbria. Many of the hasty Northumbrian Christians hastily gave up their Christianity.

This is made clear by the fact that Oswald, who came to the throne some years later, had to get teachers to preach Christianity afresh. This time, however, he got help from a Celtic source. While Penda had been ravaging Northumbria, Oswald had taken refuge amongst the Picts: from them he had learnt of Columba and his monks at Iona. Accordingly he applied to Iona. The first monk who was sent returned saying that the heathen were too stubborn to be converted. "Was it their stubbornness or your harshness?" enquired one of his brother monks named Aidan. "Did you forget to give them the milk first and then the meat"? Aidan was at once chosen to take the other's place. He speedily showed that he would not make the same mistake. By his efforts Northumbria was again converted. It is true that so long as Penda reigned, the new faith was always in danger. He struck down Oswald in battle as he had slain Edwin. Not until Penda himself fell, in 655, by the River Winwed, near Leeds, was Christianity in Northumbria secure. The old Mercian king had indeed been no savage persecutor of the Christians. "He only hated and scorned", says Bede, "those whom he saw not doing the works of the faith they had received." Yet so long as he was alive, the cause of the old gods was not lost. When he died it perished with him. After that even the Mercians were converted, and soon the whole island was Christian. Sussex was the last to receive the faith.

A new trouble speedily arose. Some of the Saxons had been converted by Roman missionaries, others by Celtic. Wessex was converted by Birinus from North Italy, East Anglia by a Burgundian, Northumbria and Mercia by Irishmen, Essex and Sussex by Cedd and Wilfred. Each, of course, followed what their teachers taught them. Unfortunately, the teachers themselves were not agreed. The island, though one in faith, seemed likely to be divided in practice.

The difficulty indeed was not a new one. Even Augustine himself had met the British bishops and tried to persuade them to adopt Roman practices, and they had refused. In his time it was not so serious a matter, since it was the Britons who held to their own practice and the Saxons to the Roman teaching. But when the Saxons became a house divided against themselves there was grave danger. Accordingly in 664 a Synod was held at Whitby to settle the points of difference.

Chronology

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