A History of Christianity in England

E.O. James

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000601305
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia británica

First published in 1949, A History of Christianity in England is a kaleidoscopic view of the religious situation in England for readers and students who wish to eventually take it up as a serious study. The author asserts that the influence of the Church and the State in the development of the English national life and character has also led to the growth of a unique English Christianity. English religion appears neither completely Catholic, properly Protestant nor consistently Liberal, rendering itself an enigma. The author believes that the confusion of its various discordant parts can be resolved by situating English Christianity within a historical continuum. This book will be of interest to students of theology, history and Christianity.

CHAPTER I THE BEGINNINGS OF THE CHURCH IN BRITAIN

DOI: 10.4324/9781003297574-1

WHEN St. Paul was establishing Christian communities in the cities of Asia Minor and Greece, and finally in Rome, the British Isles were in process of becoming an integral part of the Roman Empire, which extended from the Euphrates to the North Sea and from North Africa to the Danube and the Rhine. Long before the arrival of Julius Caesar on the beaches of Kent near Deal, on 25th August, in the year 55 B.C., Britain, however, had been in very intimate contact with the Continent and had been the home of an advanced culture. Therefore, so far from the Roman legions encountering hordes of wild and savage “ancient Britons” with bodies painted with woad and armed with primitive weapons, they endeavoured to gain a foothold in a country that for more than 2,000 years had been virtually part of the European continent with which it was in line in its cultural equipment.

PRE-ROMAN BRITAIN

Since about 2,500 B.C., when the first invaders spread over the chalk and limestone hills of Kent, Sussex and Wessex, and their extensions in East Anglia and Yorkshire, introducing a simple agricultural economy based on the cultivation of corn and the rearing of sheep and cattle, waves of Continental people from the earliest centres of civilization in the Middle East made their way to Britain from Brittany, Portugal and Spain. Another stream came from Central Europe along the Rhine to the Low Countries and Northern France and thence to East Anglia and the adjacent region, bringing with them the culture they had acquired in their original homes. Intermarrying with the native primitive population of the island, they collectively produced a civilization which was almost indistinguishable from that of the rest of Europe, except for certain characteristics which are peculiarly “British.” Continental penetration, in fact, never succeeded in absorbing the indigenous culture, which to a remarkable degree revealed a combination of persistency and receptiveness. The final product was neither wholly Continental nor merely insular. Moreover, having enriched what it had acquired, it made its own independent contribution to Western civilization; exporting its wares and later its institutions and ideas, as well as importing what it required, or what was foisted upon it by invaders. This feature of British culture, deeply laid in the pre-Roman history of the islands, throws a good deal of light on the peculiar nature and characteristics of the Church in England as these emerged in later ages.

GLASTONBURY LAKE-VILLAGE AND ITS LEGEND

In the years immediately preceding the arrival of Julius Caesar more and more refugees were driven to seek shelter in the camps and on the hill-tops of Britain, and in the lake-villages at Meare and Glastonbury in Somerset, as the Roman conquests on the mainland increased. A ridge of solid ground connected Glastonbury with a spur of the Mendips along which ran the main upland system of trackways leading to Wessex and Sussex. The Cornish tin mines were within easy reach of the adjacent coasts, as were Brittany and the Loire basin. Through the Bristol Channel only twelve miles away it is not improbable that immigrants from Brittany played a part in the foundation of this accessible and easily protected settlement, the influence and prosperity of which survived into the Christian era, when this part of Somerset was included by the Romans in their Belgic province.

As an important centre of commercial activity in close contact with both the Continent and the camps and hill-forts on the adjacent uplands of Britain, Glastonbury was well adapted for the development and diffusion of new religious ideas and customs. It is significant, therefore, that this ancient lake-village should have become the traditional cradleland of British Christianity. Around it gathered a legend and a cultus in which the heroes of ancient folk-tales, such as King Arthur, Merlin and Percival, found their place in a Grail Romance associated with Avalon, the mysterious magic Isle of the Blest of Celtic mythology identified with Glastonbury and its famous Tor. These native traditions in due course were perhaps exploited by the monks of the great Benedictine abbey erected at the reputed burial place of King Arthur (i.e., Glastonbury equated with Avalon) as an offset to the parallel Grail romance connected with the relic of the Holy Blood of Christ current at the rival monastic house at Fescamp in France. In this way may have arisen the story related by William of Malmesbury between about 1129 and 1139, in which it is affirmed that in the year a.d. 63, at the instigation of St. Philip, Joseph of Arimathea with eleven companions arrived in Britain from Gaul and were given an island surrounded by woods and marshes, called by the inhabitants Ynys-Vitrin, and traditionally associated with Avalon and Glastonbury. There they built a church of timber and wattles at the foot of the tor in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary. A century later this structure was discovered by two missionaries who were sent to Britain by Pope Eleutherius, and repaired by them to be used as a hermitage in memory of the original apostolic founders. The community, in fact, is alleged to have continued to occupy the site until the arrival of St. Patrick from Ireland in 433, who became the abbot and died at Glastonbury.

Another version of the story, which occurs in an ancient manuscript found in the Vatican and quoted by Baronius in Ecclesiastical Annals, brings Joseph of Arimathea with Lazarus, Mary Magdalene and Martha, in a mysterious boat from Palestine, like that which, in the Compostela legend, was said to have conveyed the body of St. James from Joppa to Padron, in Galicia in north-west Spain and made Santiago the most important centre of pilgrimage in medieval Europe. The company are said to have landed at Marseilles and proceeded through France to Britain, following doubtless the familiar overland trade route to the north-west as an alternative to that used by the Phoenicians via Portugal and Scillies to the tin region, as in the case of the Malmesbury tradition.

“THE THREE PERPETUAL-CHOIRS”

The significance of these twelfth-century stories lies in the fact that they single out Glastonbury from all the great monastic churches of the period for the incident recorded. As we have seen, on archaeological grounds there is good reason to surmise that this important lake settlement would be a very likely spot for Christianity to reach Britain from the Continent as a result of culture contact with the Middle East. Moreover, tradition also tells us that from time immemorial the worship of God was carried out unceasingly day and night before the coming of St. Augustine at the “Three Perpetual Choirs” situated at Glastonbury, Llantwit Major, in Glamorganshire, and at Amesbury, in Wiltshire. Now each of these three places happens to have been a very important centre in pre-Roman Britain, exactly where it might be expected that traders would congregate on their arrival in the island and disseminate new ideas and beliefs.

Glastonbury certainly fulfils these conditions, and Llantwit Major, or Caerworgan, as it was then called, was a similar site. The name Caerworgan suggests that it was originally one of the Caers, a title indicating a camp, fort or city, and this is supported by the fact that below the Norman church a Romano-British building has been found, together with ancient British encampments, dolmens and barrows. Furthermore, a network of trackways connect it with other extensive earth-works in the neighbourhood known to have been employed in the manufacture and trading of bronze and iron implements in pre-Roman times. There are also traces of the entrance to an ancient harbour which doubtless was the scene of numerous arrivals and departures from and to the Continent. The presence of coins of Claudius, Nero, Vespasian, Domitian, Trajan and Carausius at Llantwit, and in the neighbouring district, shows that the region was in contact with the mainland of Europe, and these connections were continued into the Christian era since St. Illtyd, the first abbot of the great monastic foundation of Llantwit Major (who has given his name to the place, i.e., Llanilltyd), was a Breton who is said to have been given sanctuary at this spot on the Glamorganshire coast and facilities for building a church and a stone wall above a fosse. Before he took up his abode there, according to one tradition he had joined the Court of King Arthur, and after he was converted to Christianity by St. Cadoc he collected round him such devoted disciples as Gildas, Samson and St. David. There are also references to Llanilltyd, or Llantwit, being an island which was united with the mainland by his miraculous intervention. Thus, in legend as well as in historical association, Llantwit Major and Glastonbury have much in common as ancient centres of the Church in Britain.

Similarly, Amesbury, the third of the “perpetual choirs,” was situated in the heart of one of the most important regions in pre-Roman Britain, which since the erection of Stonehenge at the beginning of the Bronze Age, some 2,000 years before the commencement of our era, had been a hive of religious and secular activity with many comings and goings from and to the Continent. The famous stone circle on Salisbury Plain, less than two miles from Amesbury, in the first instance was the work of an early metal-using people, commonly known as the Beaker Folk (because of their use of a distinctive drinking cup). These people during the opening centuries of the second millennium B.C. settled on the chalk downs of Wessex, having come mainly from Holland and the Rhineland with contingents in all probability from Brittany. In addition to their continental contacts they and their successors had commercial intercourse with Ireland by way of Wales, and with the west of England, to obtain the valuable Cornish ores. During the whole of the Bronze Age and the succeeding Celtic Iron Age, in the third and second centuries B.C., the prosperous farming lands of Wessex continued to attract relays of invaders from Brittany and to have trade relations in all directions, extending from the Eastern Mediterranean, Spain, Central Europe and Denmark to Ireland. Stonehenge was rebuilt in its present magnificence, some of the sacred stones having been brought from as far distant as the Presely Mountains, in Pembrokeshire. When Druidism flourished in the first century B.C. this mysterious and greatly distorted Celtic priesthood which came to Britain from Gaul, may have used the ancient sanctuary for its rites, and so perhaps arose the popular error that the prehistoric monument was of Druid origin. In any case, at the time of the Roman invasion Amesbury was in the centre of a district which for 2,000 years had been a strategic point in the development of English civilization and religious practice. Furthermore, like Glastonbury and Llantwit Major, it was in close touch with continental influences and their cults, for Stonehenge was essentially a temple, as was Avebury, twenty miles away.

THE COMING OF CHRISTIANITY TO BRITAIN

It is, therefore, a locality in which it would be natural to expect an infiltration of a faith that was making its way westwards from the Middle East as part of a stream of culture following long established trade routes extending from the Mediterranean to Britain.

Thus, taking the evidence collectively, the ancient tradition of the “Three Perpetual Choirs” may be based on a historical fact, namely that Christianity was first introduced into England from Europe by traders, merchants, adventurers, invaders, and possibly persecuted converts seeking a refuge in the island, who established Christian communities in places like Glastonbury, Llantwit Major and Amesbury, where from time immemorial new cultural traits, religious ideas and forms of worship had become incorporated in British civilization. With the Romanization of the country soldiers and civilians who had embraced the faith also doubtless contributed their quota to the process.

It is only in a few isolated towns, however, that Christianity has left any tangible evidence of its presence in Roman Britain. A small rectangular building with aisles and a porch found at Silchester in Hampshire, dated in the fourth century, is thought to represent the remains of a very ancient church, as is an oblong structure with apse and narthex at Caerwent, in Monmouthshire. According to the Venerable Bede (673–735) “while the Romans were yet in the land” at Verulamium a church was erected of “admirable workmanship and worthy of the martyrdom” of St. Alban, that somewhat nebulous saint who has given his name to the Hertfordshire city in which he is alleged to have been the first Christian in Britain to lay down his life for the faith. At Canterbury, Christchurch is mentioned as having been in existence when St. Augustine arrived in Kent in 597, together with the church dedicated to St. Martin which the king, Ethelbert, is said to have given to his Christian bride, Bertha, at their marriage.

That the Romans continued to worship in their customary-pagan manner in the towns they built and inhabited is clear from the altars, statues, inscriptions, representations of gods on coins and the remains of temples (including possibly subterranean mithrae, or temples of the Oriental mystery divinity Mithras) belonging to this period. The worship of the Graeco-Egyptian goddess, Isis, in a temple in London is attested by an inscription, and the veneration of the Roman emperor Commodus as Hercules, and of cults of Mother-goddesses, are revealed by coins, statuettes and votive figures. The prevalence of paganism is also reflected in the widespread practice of cremation, and when inhumation became more common, the construction of the graves and the objects in them, follow along the lines of pre-Christian burials in the Mediterranean countries. Christianity, therefore, made very little impression on Roman Britain though from the third century it grew in strength until at length it became the best organized authority in the country.¹

1 The Early Christian Father Tertullian about A.D. 206 affirms that “in districts inaccessible to the Romans people called Britanni had become subject to Christ,” while in the previous century a rhetorical remark of Justin Martyr to the effect that every country known to the Romans contained those who professed the faith might be supposed to include their province in Britain.

CELTIC CHRISTIANITY

Outside the Roman province Druidical and other Celtic rites were performed apparently in association with ancient stone monuments like Stonehenge and Avebury, and as Christianity gradually penetrated into this region it was doubtless at the local sanctuaries that Christian services were held until in course of time in all probability simple buildings were erected in wood and wattle and daub to serve as churches and oratories. But being made of perishable materials they have left behind no traces of their existence. Bede mentions a church of stone called Candida casa at Whithorn, in Galloway, erected in 397 “after a fashion unfamiliar to the Britons.” This was the work of Ninian, a Scot who had been trained and consecrated in Rome, and who employed masons from Tours, in France, the home of St. Martin, to erect both this church and the monastery he founded there on the model of the continental religious house set up by St. Martin at Marmoutier in Gaul.

Although this monastic centre does not seem to have been a great success until it was refounded in the sixth century, there must have been a fairly vigorous Christian community in Galloway in the fourth century if, as is alleged, St. Patrick, the apostle of the Irish, was born and bred in the district about 372. In Ireland some progress had been made in the establishment of the faith, partly through intercourse with Britain, but also by direct contact with Gaul and the Mediterranean. Thus, the celebrated antagonist of St. Augustine of Hippo, Pelagius, was a Celtic monk whose heretical teaching had a profound influence in the country, and perhaps for this reason it was felt necessary to send a mission to restore the position. After an abortive attempt on the part of Palladius in 432, Patrick, a son of the sister of St. Martin, who had been trained at Lerins and Tours, landed and began his great work. Heterodoxy may not have been very deeply rooted but the struggle with paganism was long and bitter. So successful, however, was Patrick that not only did he lay the foundations which have stood the test of time, but he gave to Celtic Christianity as a whole fresh vigour and a new lease of life. Thus, from the fifth century the Church of the North-west was essentially the Church of Ireland and the adjacent British coastal region, linked with Brittany and the Loire by its Celtic affinities of culture, race, language, and monastic organization.

THE ANGLO-SAXON INVASION

When the Romans gradually abandoned Britain in the fourth and fifth centuries, the part of the country they had occupied slowly returned to prehistoric conditions. The towns became increasingly insecure, the hill-forts were refortified, and even Hadrian’...