Sun worship.

In religion the Anglo-Saxons were heathen and worshiped the old Teutonic gods, particularly Woden, the god of wisdom and warfare. Originally the Germanic peoples worshiped the bright sky and more especially the shining sun. In time various phases of this heathen worship came to be looked upon as having separate existence and the number of deities increased. Three of these attained a general preeminence. The fire of the sun was again seen in the flash of the lightning and the result was the worship of Thunor (Thor), the god of strength. In the fury of the The gods. tempest that accompanies the thunder-clap, the Teutons recognized another god, Woden, whose power was also manifest in the fury of the battle rush. It is likely that the Anglo-Saxons also worshiped the god Frey, the sun as the giver of life and growth to the fields and the forests. The names of these three divinities appear in Thursday, Wednesday, and Friday; Tuesday and perhaps Saturday are also named in honor of the old gods. The gods were given peculiar honor on certain great festive occasions in which the entire population joined, when bloody and repulsive rites were performed and

Festivals.

human sacrifices probably offered. Among the Teutonic peoples three such great festivals were commonly celebrated: the first late in autumn to secure the return of the receding sun; the second early in January in joyful recognition of the lengthening days; and the third at the opening of spring when sacrifices were offered in honor of the god that gave life and growth and vegetation. It is likely that the Angles and Saxons had corresponding festivals.

16. British Christianity. In the western part of the island among the Britons, the Christian religion had retained its vigor. One of these Welsh Christians, Saint Patrick, a con

St. Patrick in Ireland.

temporary of the heathen Hengist, whose home

seems to have been somewhere in the Severn valley, even took up missionary work in Ireland and gave new vigor to the feeble Irish church. A century later a new mission field was opened on the western coast of modern Scotland. Saint

THE CELTIC MISSIONARIES

15

Columba, a Celt from northern Ireland and an exile from his native land, repaired to an Irish settlement in St. Columba; modern Argyle, and there, on the little island of Iona. Iona, founded a celebrated monastery which became the center of an active missionary movement that extended even to the Continent. But for a century and a half after the coming of the Anglo-Saxons we know of no effort on the part of the dispossessed Britons to convert their Anglo-Saxon enemies.

Great.

17. Roman Christianity: the Mission of St. Augustine. In the days of Saint Columba, however, a man of unusual tact and abilities ascended the papal throne, and the Gregory the Roman church began to prepare for further conquest. Pope Gregory the Great had long been interested in the Anglo-Saxon tribes, and in 596 sent a missionary force of forty monks under the leadership of Saint Augustine to win the people for Christianity. The following year, Saint Augustine and his party arrived in Kent and were cordially Mission of received by King Ethelbert, who was not wholly St. Augustine. ignorant of the Christian faith, as his queen, Bertha, was a Frankish princess, who worshiped Christ according to Catholic standards. This was the year of Saint Columba's death in Iona (597).

1

597.

Canterbury.

At Canterbury, which was the royal residence, Saint Augustine founded a monastery which became the ecclesiastical center of all England and has remained the capital of the Anglican church to this day. An effort was made not only to christianize the English, but also to bring the British church under the control of Canterbury, but in this Saint Augustine failed. A conference was held with the Welsh bishops at "Augustine's Oak," somewhere near the Bristol Channel; but to no purpose: the Welshmen refused to modify their rites and practices and found submission to the bishop of Kent too odious to be seriously considered.

18. The Celtic Missionaries. A generation after their arrival in Canterbury, the Roman missionaries succeeded in

1 Cheyney, Nos. 31-32; Innes, I, 1-4; Robinson, No. 18.

16

Council of

THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGLAND

converting Edwin, king of the Northumbrians and the mightiest ruler on the island.1 The north country, however, soon relapsed into heathendom and the honor of converting the Angles beyond the Humber belongs to Celtic misWhitby. 664. sionaries from Iona. By the middle of the seventh century it had become a matter of doubt whether Christianity of the Celtic or of the Roman type was to dominate in the British Isles. The situation disturbed the king of Northum

bria, and in 664 he summoned a council at Whitby to debate the merits of the two churches.2

During two centuries of independence and isolation, the Celtic church had developed certain peculiarities that were of practical importance. The Britons were inclined to regard Saint John as superior to Saint Peter; but this belief could not be tolerated by the Catholics of Rome, as it struck at the foundations of

Peculiar characteristics of the Celtic church.

1 Cheyney, No. 33; Innes, I, 5-7; Kendall, No. 4; Robinson, No. 19.
2 Gardiner, 49-50.

THEODORE OF TARSUS

17

papal authority, which rested on the belief that Saint Peter had once been bishop of Rome. The churches also celebrated Easter at different times: this was important, as it was almost necessary that the Lenten season should begin for all at the same time; otherwise one faction might be celebrating the joys of Easter, while the other was deep in the sorrows of Pas

THE CHURCH AT ESCOMB, DURHAM

This church is one of the oldest in England; it was built about 700.

sion Week. The Celts, as a half nomadic people, emphasized the monastery as a center of religious worship, while the Roman church was organized on a parish basis, each village or group of neighboring villages having its own church and priest. The king finally decided in favor of the Roman system.

19. Theodore of Tarsus: Organization of the Church. The organization of the church among the Anglo-Saxons was chiefly the work of a Greek monk, Theodore of Tarsus, who came to England as archbishop of Canterbury five years after the council of Whitby. Up to this time the work had remained in the missionary stage with a missionary bishop directing the work in each kingdom. But some of the kingdoms, like North

18

THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGLAND

umbria and Mercia, were clearly too extensive for a single bishop; there was danger, too, that under separate heads the churches in these kingdoms might become independent of Canterbury. Archbishop Theodore therefore broke up these large dioceses into smaller ones, and definitely established the supremacy of Canterbury over all the other dioceses. The parish system, too, was put on a more definite footing:

The new dioceses.

The parish

monasteries founded. A hundred years after the arrival of Saint Augustine the new faith was firmly rooted in English soil.

20. The Old English Monasteries. An important institution within the Catholic church was the monastery, a community of monks or nuns who wished to withdraw from the attractions of a sinful world and devote their lives to the pursuit of holiness. Every monastic community was an organized brotherhood governed by a Organization chief called an of monasteries. abbot, and lived according to a set of regula

tions known as the Benedictine Rule which were drawn up by Benedict of Nursia, an Italian abbot who flourished in the first half of the sixth century. No monk or nun could marry or possess any property except the merest necessities, and all were