eBookThird (Third)
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
This authoritative account of the Church in England covers its history from earliest times to the late twentieth century—including chapters on the Roman, Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, Norman, and Medieval periods before a description of the Reformation and its effects, the Stuart period, and the Industrial Age, with a final chapter on the modern church through 1972.
After shedding light on how the faith spread during ancient times with historical tales of conversion and persecution, and revealing the details behind figures like St. Patrick, his interactions with pagan Irish tribes, and the monasteries he founded, the book goes on to cover the conversion of England, including the legendary stories of St. Gregory the Great and the Anglian boys and Augustine’s baptism of over ten thousand people in the area of Canterbury on a single Christmas Day. Moving on through the centuries, it tells of scholars like Aldhelm, Bede, and Alcuin; Viking invasions; kings, popes, and power struggles; and the translation of the Bible. It conveys the impact of world-changing individuals like Henry VIII and Martin Luther and the breach with Rome; then moving toward the modern period tells of the evolution of the Church of England, the early Evangelicals, and the social and cultural changes of the twentieth century.
With fascinating detail on the church’s role in everything from art and architecture to education, this is a wide-ranging look at British history through the perspective of religion.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780819220950 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Church Publishing Inc. |
| Publication date: | 06/01/1980 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 512 |
| Sales rank: | 1,015,065 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
A HISTORY OF THE CHURCH IN ENGLAND
By JOHN R. H. MOORMAN
Church Publishing Incorporated
Copyright © 1980 John Richard Humpidge MoormanAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8192-2095-0
CHAPTER 1
THE CHURCH IN BRITAIN BEFORE 597
i. The Coming of the Faith
The exact date when the Christian message first came to England is unknown. At the time when the Christian Church was gradually extending its influence in the countries on both sides of the Mediterranean, England was in process of being colonized by Rome. Roman legionaries were marching along their own well-made roads, Roman officers were bringing the old British tribes to heel, Roman law was being administered, and one more province was in process of being absorbed into the great Roman Empire which now dominated the known world.
Among those who came from Rome, whether soldiers, administrators, traders or camp-followers, there may well have been some who had heard and accepted the message of the Christian Church and who secretly prayed to the Christians' God while their fellows did homage to the old gods of the State, or to Mithras or Isis or one of the gods of the mystery religions. But of this we have no certain knowledge. If there were such, they have left no record behind them. But where history is silent, legend and tradition have produced strange and wonderful stories of journeys to this island made by S. Paul or S. Philip or S. Joseph of Arimathea and of the founding of a Christian church at Glastonbury.
The first mention of any Christians in Britain is in Tertullian's tract against the Jews, written about 200, in which he spekks of parts of Britain, inaccessible to the Romans, which had yet been conquered by Christ; while Origen, writing about forty years later, includes Britain among the places where Christians are to be found. It seems clear, then, that about the year 200 the Christian world was becoming aware of the fact that there were believers in Britain, and it has been suggested that, when the savage persecutions broke out in Gaul in 177, a number of Christians fled northwards and that some may have found their way to these shores.
For the next century or so little is known of these Christians in Britain. The third century was, on the whole, a time of great advance for the Church for, apart from the persecutions of Decius and Valerian (249–60), it was an age of comparative peace and security when books were written, churches built and schools founded. In Britain some organization was being set up, for, by the year 314, there were several bishops in the country, three of whom —Eborius of York, Restitutio of London and Adelphius probably of Colchester—attended the Council of Aries. This shows a considerable advance in the establishment of the Church on a diocesan basis, and implies that the scattered Christians of the third century had by now organized themselves into a definite Church. No British bishops are known to have answered the Emperor's summons to Nicaea in 325, but Athanasius expressly states that the British Church accepted the decisions of that Council.
The first Christian in Britain whose name is recorded was Alban who, according to Bede, was a layman of the Roman city of Verulamium who gave shelter to a Christian priest fleeing from his persecutors. While the priest lay hid, Alban learnt of the Christian faith and was converted; and when the soldiers came to arrest the fugitive, Alban, dressed in the priest's cloak, gave himself up, was condemned to death, and martyred on the hill where the abbey church of S. Alban's now stands. The date is generally assumed to have been 304, during the persecutions of Diocletian.
With the passing of the Edict of Milan in 312 the Christian Church entered upon a new phase of its history. For three centuries the Christian faith had been classed among the 'illicit religions'; it had always been to some extent unpopular; and the shadow of persecution had lain over it. By this decree Constantine removed the ban, and for the first time in history the Christian was free to declare his faith openly without fear of a cruel death. From this time onwards a great and rapid advance was made.
Such an advance must have been made in Britain, but still our evidence is very scant. In 359 some British bishops again attended one of the great councils of the Church, the Council of Rimini; but they were so poor that three of them were driven to accept the imperial offer of money to pay their expenses, though all the other bishops present had refused to do so in order to preserve their independence. This would suggest that the Church in Britain, though becoming more organized, was as yet poor, and no doubt many of its members were drawn from among the semi-Romanized natives who were far from being the most prosperous members of the community. Yet that there were Christians among the richer Romans is proved by the appearance of Christian symbols, such as the Chi-Rho sign, among the mosaic pavements which adorned their villas.
Apart from such decorations the Christians of the period of the Roman occupation have left little trace of their handiwork. The chief exceptions are the little Christian chapel at Lullingstone in Kent, built about 360 and decorated with mural paintings, and the chapels at Silchester and Hinton St. Mary of about the same period. The chapel at Silchester was a small building, only about 42 feet in length, with an apse at the western end of the nave, aisles, transepts and narthex. The altar appears to have been of wood and the priest celebrated facing west with his back to the congregation. Outside the church was a stone trough where the faithful washed before entering the church. No doubt there were other churches in different parts of the country, but few traces of them have so far been found.
ii. Pelagius, Germanus, Ninian
Although the Christian Church by the end of the fourth century had existed in Britain for close on two hundred years, our knowledge of any individual Christians (with the exception of S. Alban) is extremely limited. From this point onwards Church History takes on a new aspect. We leave the mists of conjecture and anonymity and enter into the clearer light in which real personalities can be distinguished.
The first of these was a heretic—Pelagius—the man who roused the fiercest passions of S. Augustine and who has given us the heresy which to this day holds so strong an attraction for the British people. Pelagius was a Romanized Briton and a monk, well-educated, urbane, highly civilized. About the year 380, when he was quite a young man, he left Britain never to return. For the rest of his life he travelled about the Mediterranean world, 'an elusive and gracious figure, beloved and respected wherever he goes ... silent, smiling, reserved', and he appears to have ended his days in Syria. Pelagius, like some other Christians, had been shocked by the hard and rigid doctrines of S. Augustine, which seemed to him to deny the moral courage and dignity of man. He found it difficult to believe in Original Sin, and so great was his faith in man that he believed it possible for man to reach perfection without the intervention of supernatural grace. It was this which aroused the indignant fervour of Augustine and led to his condemnation.
Pelagius never taught in Britain, but his doctrines found a footing here through the teaching of one Agricola early in the fifth century. To counteract this the bishops in Gaul invited two bishops to come to Britain—Germanus, Bishop of Auxerre (418–48) and Lupus, Bishop of Troyes (427–79). These two arrived in Britain in 429 and immediately made their presence felt. Germanus had been a soldier and man of action before becoming a bishop, and was obviously a man of great force of character. Finding the British timid and lacking in self-confidence he organized them as a fighting force and, with wild yells of 'Alleluia', led them to victory against a marauding army of Picts, probably near Mold in Flintshire. Wherever Germanus went, he encouraged and strengthened the British against their opponents, whether pagan Picts or Pelagian heretics. Striding through the country with a bag of relics round his neck Germanus, by his preaching and by his miracles, convinced all gainsayers and put new life and courage into the British Christians.
Meanwhile, further north, a more gentle apostle of Christ was at work in the valleys of Cumberland and southern Scotland. This was Ninian who, after studying the monasticism of S. Martin at Marmoutier, came to Britain, apparently as a solitary missionary, perhaps as early as the year 397. At Whithorn in Galloway he founded a monastery built of stone and whitewashed so that it might be the most conspicuous object in the district. This came to be known as the White House, or Candida Casa, and became the base from which Ninian and his monks set out on their evangelistic journeys. These seem to have taken them not only among the savage Pictish tribes in the neighbourhood of the Roman Wall but also up the east coast of Scotland. Whithorn continued to act as a centre of evangelistic enterprise for some time, one of its most famous members being S. Kentigern who worked in Scotland, northern England and Wales early in the sixth century.
iii. S. Patrick
While Ninian was at work in Galloway there was growing up in the west of England a small boy who was soon to make his mark on the history of the expansion of the Church. This was Patrick, the son of a British 'decurion' or local administrator called Calpornius who was a deacon and the son of a priest. The family, who lived somewhere near the sea, were one day attacked by a gang of pirates young men into slavery, among them Patrick now about fifteen years of age. He was taken to Ireland, where he was kept in captivity as a swineherd; but after six years he escaped, and perhaps spent some time in Gaul where he may have come into contact with the monastic movement under the leadership of S. Martin of Tours. While he was undergoing his training he conceived a desire to return to the scenes of his captivity in order that he might preach the Gospel to the men among whom he had lived and suffered. After visiting his old home in Britain he was, in the year 432, consecrated as bishop for work in Ireland and immediately returned there as the apostle of Christ.
For the next thirty years Patrick fought a hard battle against the paganism of the Irish tribes, and his life was often in danger. He travelled widely in Ireland and made many converts, baptizing them by the thousand and ordaining clergy everywhere. He attempted to introduce the diocesan system which he had studied in Gaul, but it failed chiefly through lack of any cities which could form the centres of government. The only diocese which had any kind of permanence was that of Armagh where Patrick himself ruled. But if the diocesan system failed, the monasteries which Patrick founded became the chief feature of the Irish Church. The Irish monasteries were quite unlike those of the rest of Europe, as was also the relationship between a bishop and an abbot. Whereas in the usual system the bishop had general oversight of the monasteries in his diocese, in the Celtic plan the abbot ruled supreme and often had a number of bishops among his choir-monks. The monastery, in fact, was little more than 'an ecclesiastical replica of the tribe'. The bishop generally had no territorial jurisdiction: he was raised to the episcopate because of the sanctity of his life and was invested with the powers of ordination, confirmation and consecration; but he had no administrative function. That belonged to the abbot.
As Patrick travelled about, monasteries sprang up everywhere, some of them so large as to include several thousand monks. There was no one rule which all obeyed, for each monastery had its own. Many of them were very harsh, for the Christianity of some of the monks had not yet gone very deep and nothing less than a rigorous and strict discipline could control the large numbers of recently converted pagans. But the monasteries were much the most important element in the early life of the Irish Church, and it was from them that the missionaries went out with the message of Christ.
iv. The Anglo-Saxon Invasions
While in Ireland Christianity was advancing, in England it had been forced to retreat. Early in the fifth century the Romans abandoned their hold on England and the country was rapidly overrun by the invading armies of the Jutes, Angles and Saxons. The British were either conquered and absorbed into the new society or they fled westwards and settled in the mountains of Wales or among the Cornish tors. The invaders largely destroyed the Christian Church in the parts which they conquered, and for 150 years the faith was practically extinct in England. Its place was taken by a form of Teutonic heathenism which the conquerors brought with them.
In the strongholds of the West, however, the Church continued to exist. Our knowledge of it comes chiefly from Gildas who wrote in Wales about 535. He is severely critical of the British clergy whom he describes as 'unworthy wretches, wallowing, after the fashion of swine, in their old and unhappy puddle of intolerable wickedness'. But though Gildas has little that is good to say of the British Church, and though it may well have deteriorated in its isolation, his picture is not one of chaos. There is organization. There are bishops holding synods to which their clergy are summoned. There are monasteries where some kind of rule is kept.
The British Church also had its saints, among whom the most famous was S. David, the only one of the four patron saints of these islands who was a native of the country which he represents. David (c. 520–88) was a typical Celtic abbot-bishop, an evangelist and founder of monasteries, and he was ably supported by other saints —S. Illtyd his teacher, S. Deiniol and others.
Thus while, in England, Wodin and Thor had usurped the place of Christ, in Wales the Christian Church kept the light of the faith burning. Cut off though it*tended to be from the rest of Christendom it still managed to hold out against the pressure of paganism both from within and from without. But it paid the penalty of isolation. It tended to become insular and self-absorbed; and, as Bede complained, it made no attempt to convert the Saxons. For missionary zeal in the sixth century we must look mainly not to Wales but to Ireland.
v. S. Columba
After the death of S. Patrick about 461 church life continued to develop in Ireland, the monastery being still the centre of organization and activity. It is in the school attached to one of these monasteries, Moville, that we first meet Columba, son of Phelim, of the royal house of Niall of the Nine Hostages. The boy, who had been born in 521, was known as Colum the dove, but his character had more of the eagle than the dove about it. Tall, broad, vigorous, tempestuous, with a voice of thunder, he could strike terror into the heart of any who opposed him. He has been described as 'a typical Irishman, vehement, irresistible: hear him curse a niggardly rich man or bless the heifers of a poor peasant; see him follow a robber who had plundered a friend, cursing the wretch to his destruction, following him to the water's edge, wading up to the knees in the clear, green sea-water, with both hands raised to heaven'.
So violent a nature, especially in one of royal blood, was almost bound to be implicated sooner or later in Irish tribal politics and feuds. About the year 560 a petty dispute over the ownership of a manuscript developed into a quarrel in which whole tribes were involved and led to the battle of Culdreihmne in which Columba led his forces to an overwhelming victory, leaving three thousand of the enemy dead upon the field. But Columba had gone too far. The Church turned against him, and he was obliged to leave the country.
In 563 Columba left Ireland with twelve companions in an open boat and sailed northwards, landing finally at Hy or Ioua, now called Iona, a small island off the west coast of Scotland. Having discovered that they were out of sight of Ireland, and therefore less likely to be tempted to return, they buried their boat and decided to make this island their home. On the eastern shore of the island, immediately opposite Mull, they built a monastery of the usual Celtic pattern—a church and refectory of wood, a group of bee-hive huts, and an encircling wall protecting the whole enclosure. The life which they lived was that to which they had been accustomed in Ireland. It was hard, simple and austere. Much time was spent in tilling the soil of the island, fishing in its waters, copying manuscripts and in performing the daily round of prayer and praise. Nor was their work confined to the cloister. Iona soon became a centre from which missionary journeys were undertaken both to the mainland of Scotland and to the islands of the Hebrides.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from A HISTORY OF THE CHURCH IN ENGLAND by JOHN R. H. MOORMAN. Copyright © 1980 John Richard Humpidge Moorman. Excerpted by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
PART I: THE ROMAN AND ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD....................
I. THE CHURCH IN BRITAIN BEFORE 597.................... 3
II. THE CONVERSION OF ENGLAND (597-664).................... 12
III. CONSOLIDATION AND ADVANCE (664-793).................... 23
IV. CHAOS AND RECONSTRUCTION (793-988).................... 37
V. THE EVE OF THE CONQUEST (988-1066).................... 47
PART II: THE MIDDLE AGES....................
VI. ENGLAND UNDER THE NORMANS (1066-1109).................... 59
VII. THE STRUGGLE FOR POWER (1109-1216).................... 74
VIII. THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY (1216-1307).................... 91
IX. THE AGE OF WYCLIF (1307-1400).................... 115
X. THE CLOSE OF THE MIDDLE AGES (1400-1509).................... 137
PART III: THE REFORMATION AND AFTER....................
XI. HENRY VIII (1509-1547).................... 161
XII. ACTION AND REACTION (1547-1558).................... 180
XIII. QUEEN ELIZABETH I (1558-1603).................... 199
XIV. THE EARLY STUARTS (1603-1649).................... 221
XV. COMMONWEALTH, RESTORATION AND REVOLUTION (1649-1702)................... 243
XVI. THE EARLY EIGHTEENTH CENTURY (1702-1738).................... 269
PART IV: THE INDUSTRIAL AGE....................
XVII. THE AGE OF WESLEY (1738-1791).................... 293
XVIII. FROM WESLEY TO KEBLE (1791-1833).................... 315
XIX. THE OXFORD MOVEMENT AND AFTER (1833-1854).................... 338
XX. THE MID-VICTORIANS (1854-1882).................... 362
XXI. THE TURN OF THE CENTURY (1882-1914).................... 393
XXII. THE CHURCH IN WAR AND PEACE (1914-1945).................... 416
XXIII. THE MODERN CHURCH (1945-1972).................... 435
Additional Note on Books.................... 460
Index.................... 461