Early Britain—Roman Britain

E. 10.—And though such high authorities as Mr. Haddan have come to the conclusion that Christianity in Britain was confined to a small minority even amongst the Roman inhabitants of the island, and almost vanished with them, yet the catena of references to British converts can scarcely be thus set aside. They begin in Apostolic times and in special connection with St. Paul. Martial tells us of a British princess [256] named Claudia Rufina^[400] (very probably the daughter of that Claudius Cogidubnus whom we meet in Tacitus as at once a British King and an Imperial Legate),^[2] whose beauty and wit made no little sensation in Rome; whither she had doubtless been sent at once for education and as a hostage for her father's fidelity. And one of the most beautiful of his Epigrams speaks of the marriage of this foreigner to a Roman of high family named Pudens, belonging to the Gens Aemilia (of which the Pauline family formed a part):

It may have been in consequence of this marriage that Pudens joined with Claudius Cogidubnus in setting up the Imperial Temple at Chichester.^[402] And the fact that Claudia was an adopted member of the Rufine family shows that she was connected with the Gens Pomponia to which this family belonged.

E. 11.—Now Aulus Plautius, the conqueror of Britain, had married a Pomponia, who in A.D. 57 was accused of practising an illicit religion, and, though pronounced guiltless by her husband (to whose [257] domestic tribunal she was left, as Roman Law permitted), passed the rest of her life in retirement.^[403] When we read of an illicit religion in connection with Britain, our first thought is, naturally, that Druidism is intended.^[404] But there are strong reasons for supposing that Pomponia was actually a Christian. The names of her family are found in one of the earliest Christian catacombs in Rome, that of Calixtus; and that Christianity had its converts in very high quarters we know from the case of Clemens and Domitilla, closely related to the Imperial throne.

E. 12.—Turning next to St. Paul's Second Epistle to Timothy, we find, in close connection, the names of Pudens and Claudia (along with that of the future Pope Linus) amongst the salutations from Roman Christians. And recent excavations have established the fact that the house of Pudens was used for Christian worship at this date, and is now represented by the church known as St. Pudentiana.^[405] That this should have been so proves that this Pudens was no slave going under his master's name (as was sometimes done), but a man of good position in Rome. Short of actual proof it would be hard to imagine a series of evidences more morally convincing that the Pudens and Claudia of Martial are the Pudens and Claudia of St. Paul, and that they, as well as Pomponia, were [258] Christians. Whether, then, St. Paul did or did not actually visit Britain, the earliest British Christianity is, at least, closely connected with his name.

E. 13.—Neither legendary nor historical sources tell us of any further development of British Christianity till the latter days of the 2nd century. Then, however, it had become sufficiently widespread to furnish a common-place for ecclesiastical declamation on the all-conquering influence of the Gospel. Both Tertullian and Origen^[406] thus use it. The former numbers in his catalogue of believing countries even the districts of Britain beyond the Roman pale, Britannorum inaccessa Romanis loca, Christo vero subdita^[407]. And in this lies the interest of his reference, as pointing to the native rather than the Roman element being the predominant factor in the British Church. For just at this period comes in the legend preserved by Bede,^[408] that a mission was sent to Britain by Pope Eleutherius^[409] in response to an appeal from "Lucius Britanniae Rex." The story, which Bede probably got from the 'Catalogus Pontificum,'^[410] may be apocryphal; but it would never have been invented had British Christianity been found merely or mainly in the Roman veneer of the population. Modern criticism finds in it this kernel of truth, that the persecution which gave the Gallican Church the martyrs of Lyons, also sent her scattered refugees as missionaries into the less [259] dangerous regions of Britain;—those remoter parts, in especial, where even the long arm of the Imperial Government could not reach them.

E. 14.—The Picts, however, as a nation, remained savage heathens even to the 7th century, and the bulk of our Christian population must have been within the Roman pale; but little vexed, it would seem, by persecution, till it came into conflict with the thorough-going Imperialism of Diocletian.^[411] Its martyrs were then numbered, according to Gildas, by thousands, according to Bede by hundreds; and their chief, St. Alban, at least, is a fairly established historical entity.^[412] Nor is there any reason to doubt that after Constantine South Britain was as fully Christian as any country in Europe. In the earliest days of his reign (A.D. 314) we find three bishops,^[413] together with a priest and a deacon, representing^[414] the British Church at the Council of Arles (which, amongst other things, condemned the marriage of the "innocent divorcee"^[415]). [260] And the same number figure in the Council of Ariminum (360), as the only prelates (out of the 400) who deigned to accept from the Emperor the expenses of their journey and attendance.

E. 15.—This Council was called by Constantius II. in the semi-Arian interest, and not allowed to break up till after repudiating the Nicene formula. But the lapse was only for a moment. Before the decade was out Athanasius could write of Britain as notoriously orthodox,^[416] and before the century closes we have frequent references to our island as a fully Christian and Catholic land. Chrysostom speaks of its churches and its altars and "the power of the Word" in its pulpits,^[417] of its diligent study of Scripture and Catholic doctrine,^[418] of its acceptance of Catholic discipline,^[419] of its use of Catholic formulae: "Whithersoever thou goest," he says, "throughout the whole world, be it to India, to Africa, or to Britain, thou wilt find In the beginning was the Word."^[420] Jerome, in turn, tells of British pilgrimages to Jerusalem^[421] and to Rome;^[422] and, in his famous passage on the world-wide Communion of the Roman See, mentions Britain by name: "Nec [261] altera Romanae Urbis Ecclesia, altera totius orbis existimanda est. Et Galliae, et Britanniae, et Africa, et Persis, et Oriens, et Indio, et omnes barbarae nationes, unum Christum adorant, unam observant regulam veritatis."^[423]

["Neither is the Church of the City of Rome to be held one, and that of the whole world another. Both Gaul and Britain and Africa and Persia and the East and India, and all the barbarian nations, adore one Christ, observe one Rule of Truth."]

SECTION F.

F. 1.—The fruits of all this vigorous Christian life soon showed themselves in the Church of Britain by the evolution of noteworthy individual Christians. First in order comes Ninias, the Apostle of the Southern Picts, commissioned to the work, after years of training at Rome, by Pope Siricius (A.D. 394), and fired by the example of St. Martin, the great prelate of Gaul. To this saint (or, to speak more exactly, under his invocation) Ninias, on hearing of his death in A.D. 400, dedicated his newly-built church at Whithern^[424] in Galloway, the earliest recorded example of [262] this kind of dedication in Britain.^[425] Galloway may have been the native home of Ninias, and was certainly the head-quarters of his ministry.

F. 2.—The work of Ninias amongst the Picts was followed in the next generation by the more abiding work of St. Patrick amongst the Scots of Ireland. Nay, even the Continent was indebted to British piety; though few British visitors to the Swiss Oberland remember that the Christianity they see around them is due to the zeal of a British Mission. Yet there seems no solid reason for doubting that so it is. Somewhere about the time of St. Patrick, two British priests, Beatus and Justus, entered the district by the Brunig Pass, and set up their first church at Einigen, near Thun. There Justus abode as the settled Missioner of the neighbourhood, while Beatus made his home in the ivy-clad cave above the lake which still bears his name,^[426] sailing up and down with the Gospel message, and evangelizing the valleys and uplands now so familiar to his fellow-countrymen—Grindelwald, Lauterbrunnen, Mürren, Kandersteg.

F. 3.—And while the light of the Gospel was thus spreading on every side from our land, Britain was also becoming all too famous as the nurse of error. The British Pelagius,^[427] who erred concerning the doctrine of free-will, grew to be a heresiarch of the first order;^[428] and his follower Fastidius, or Faustus, the saintly Abbot of Lerins in the Hyères, the friend of Sidonius Apollinaris,^[429] was, in his day, only less renowned. He asserted the materiality of the soul. Both were able writers; and Pelagius was the first to adopt the plan of promulgating his heresies not as his own, but as the tenets of supposititious individuals of his acquaintance.

F. 4.—Pelagianism spread so widely in Britain that the Catholics implored for aid from over-sea. St. Germanus of Auxerre, and St. Lupus, Bishop of Troyes (whose sanctity had disarmed the ferocity even of Attila), came^[430] accordingly (in 429) and vindicated the faith in a synod held at Verulam so successfully that the neighbouring shrine of St. Alban was the scene of a special service of thanksgiving. In a second Mission, fifteen years later, Germanus set the seal to his work, stamping out throughout all the land both this new heresy and such remains of heathenism as [264] were still to be found in Southern Britain. While thus engaged on the Border he found his work endangered by a raiding host of Picts or Saxons, or both. The Saint, who had been a military chieftain in his youth, promptly took the field at the head of his flock, many of whom were but newly baptized. It was Easter Eve, and he took advantage of the sacred ceremonies of that holy season, which were then actually performed by night. From the New Fire, the "Lumen Christi," was kindled a line of beacons along the Christian lines, and when Germanus intoned the threefold Easter Alleluia, the familiar strain was echoed from lip to lip throughout the host. Stricken with panic at the sudden outburst of light and song, the enemy, without a blow, broke and fled.^[431]

F. 5.—This story, as told by Constantius, and confirmed by both Nennius and Bede, incidentally furnishes us with something of a key to the main difficulty in accepting the widely-spread Romano-British Christianity to which the foregoing citations testify. What, it is asked, has become of all the Romano-British churches? Why are no traces of them found amongst the abundant Roman remains all over the land? That they were the special objects of destruction at the Saxon invasion we learn from Gildas. But this does not account for their very foundations having disappeared; yet at Silchester^[432] alone have modern excavations [265] unearthed any even approximately certain example of them. Where are all the rest?

F. 6.—The question is partly answered when we read that the soldiers of Germanus had erected in their camp a church of wattle, and that such was the usual material of which, even as late as 446, British churches were built (as at Glastonbury). Seldom indeed would such leave any trace behind them; and thus the country churches of Roman Britain would be sought in vain by excavators. In the towns, however, stone or brick would assuredly be used, and to account for the paucity of ecclesiastical ruins three answers may be suggested.

F. 7.—First, the number of continuously unoccupied Romano-British cities is very small indeed. Except at Silchester, Anderida, and Uriconium, almost every one has become an English town. But when this took place early in the English settlement of the land, the ruins of the Romano-British churches would still be clearly traceable at the conversion of the English, and would be rebuilt (as St. Martin's at Canterbury was in all probability rebuilt)^[433] for the use of English Christianity, the old material^[434] being worked up into the new edifices. It is probable that many of our churches thus stand on the very spot where the Romano-British churches stood of old. But this [266] very fact would obliterate the remains of these churches.

F. 8.—Secondly, it is very possible that many of the heathen temples may, after the edict of Theodosius (A.D. 392), have been turned into churches (like the Pantheon at Rome), so that their remains may mark ecclesiastical sites. There are reasons for believing that in various places, such as St. Paul's, London, St. Peter's, Cambridge, and St. Mary's, Ribchester, Christian worship did actually thus succeed Pagan on the same site.

F. 9.—Thirdly, as Lanciani points out, the earliest Christian churches were simply the ordinary dwelling-houses of such wealthier converts as were willing to permit meetings for worship beneath their roof, which in time became formally consecrated to that purpose. Such a dwelling-house usually consisted of an oblong central hall, with a pillared colonnade, opening into a roofed cloister or peristyle on either side, at one end into a smaller guest-room [tablinum], at the other into the porch of entry. The whole was arranged thus:

It will be readily seen that we have here a building on [267] the lines of an ordinary church. The small original congregation would meet, like other guests, in the reception-room. As numbers increased, the hall and adjoining cloisters would have to be used (the former being roofed in); the reception-room being reserved for the most honoured members, and ultimately becoming the chancel of a fully-developed church, with nave and aisles complete.^[435] It may be, therefore, that some of the Roman villas found in Britain were really churches.^[436]

F. 10.—This, however, is a less probable explanation of the absence of ecclesiastical remains; and the large majority of Romano-British church sites are, as I believe, still in actual use amongst us for their original purpose. And it may be considered as fairly proved, that before Britain was cut off from the Empire the Romano-British Church had a rite^[437] and a vigorous corporate life of its own, which the wave of heathen invasion could not wholly submerge. It lived on, shattered, perhaps, and disorganized, but not utterly crushed, to be strengthened in due time by a closer union with its parent stem, through the Mission of [268] Augustine, to feel the reflex glow of its own missionary efforts in the fervour of Columba and his followers,^[438] and, finally, to form an integral part of that Ecclesia Anglicana whose influence knit our country into one, and inspired the Great Charter of our constitutional liberties.^[439] Her faith and her freedom are the abiding debt which Britain owes to her connection with Rome.

INDEX.