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Christianity in Roman Britain Author(S): Henry H Christianity in Roman Britain Author(s): Henry H. Howorth Source: Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Vol. 2 (1885), pp. 117-172 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Royal Historical Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3677866 Accessed: 27-06-2016 10:54 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Royal Historical Society, Cambridge University Press are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Transactions of the Royal Historical Society This content downloaded from 131.247.112.3 on Mon, 27 Jun 2016 10:54:05 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms TRANSACTIONS OF THE ROYAL HISTORICAL SOCIETY. CHRISTIANITY IN ROMAN BRITAIN. BY HENRY H. HOWORTH, F.S.A., F.R. Hist. S. IT would be difficult to find a subject illustrating the benefits and drawbacks of religious controversy to historical inquiry more completely than the Early British Church. The zeal and vigour with which the struggle on either side was fought out at the Reformation had the effect of focussing a fierce light upon all available evidence referring to primitive times; and of spurring the diligence of controversialists. Every by-way of history was explored for some fresh matter with which to point the arguments of that critical warfare. To this we owe such monuments of industry as Archbishop Ussher's 'Primordia,' the works of Stillingfleet, Father Parsons, and others. Since they wrote, the interest in the subject has continued most lively; and while new materials have not been forthcoming in any great number, the old ones have been sifted and resifted with a care and perseverance which prove that something beyond the facts has been at issue, and that a fight of principles was going on behind the screen. This has not been a mere empty parade to the historian. For him it has done the most useful of all work, and that N.S.-VOL. II. K This content downloaded from 131.247.112.3 on Mon, 27 Jun 2016 10:54:05 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 118 TRANSACTIONS OF THE ROYAL HISTORICAL SOCIETY. which has been most neglected till late years, namely, pass- ing through the crucible of criticism the raw ore of evidence, and by repeated refinement extracting the pure metal which is alone likely to live. So long as the battle was fought on the old lines, little more than this was done, and the evidence, even when sifted out, has been used on either side with that distorted leaning, that want of balance, which marks the conclusion of the partisan rather than of the impartial judge. This distortion forms the other aspect of the picture; the drawback to the otherwise most useful side of religious con- troversy. There has now come a time when it is easier to be fair, when the heat and rancour of opponents have cooled down, and when it is possible for a traveller, who has not taken a decided part in the struggle, to survey the battlefield, and to see clearly that the victims and the trophies are not all on one side, and that the struggle has been in many respects a drawn fight. We propose making such a survey, with the help of several recent writers who have considerably cleared up the misty and difficult problem, notably Messrs. Haddan and Stubbs. Our aim is limited to a survey of the history of the British Church from the earliest times to the end of the Roman domination in Britain, an epoch which forms a very natural frontier to our subject, since after that event the Church, under such missionaries as St. Augustine among the Saxons, and the followers of St. Martin among the Celts, took an essentially new departure. While we shall see that it is impossible to postulate for Britain in those days a Church independent of that of the Continent, leading a separate and substantive life of its own, apart from Continental traditions as was the fond dream of several patriotic and over-sensitive partisans of the Reformed Doctrines; while we shall see that, as was otherwise most natural, this little corner and outpost of the great Roman realm differed no more in its religious than it did in its civil administration from the rest of the Empire, and, so long as it was attached to that Empire, shared its phases of opinion as it shared its laws and institutions; we This content downloaded from 131.247.112.3 on Mon, 27 Jun 2016 10:54:05 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms CHRISTIANITY IN ROMAN BRITAIN. 119 shall see also that in those early times there was not that centralised and rigid hierarchical system which prevailed in later days; there was not that gathering of the threads of authority together in one hand, that dependence on one arbiter which distinguished a later period, and made Rome a veritable 'umbilicus mundi' to the religious world. That while it is a mistake to treat the Early British Church as either antagonistic to, or as separated from, the Continental Church, it is no less a mistake to survey these early centuries as if we had reached the days of Hildebrand, and to exagge- rate the influence and power of the senior Bishop of the West. Quite a formidable literature has grown up round the initial stages of Christianity in Britain, and credulity and partisanship have vied with each other in painting fantastic and utterly imaginary pictures out of distorted hints and misunderstood allusions in trustworthy authors, no less than out of the palpable inventions of spurious and legendary authorities. Thus not only has Christianity been claimed as a British heritage in Apostolical times, which is in itself quite inadmissible, but the Apostles themselves have been credited with the Evangelisation of the island, and the honour has been assigned to at least five of them. It is not unpro- fitable to glance at some of these theories. First, as to St. Paul having been in Britain. In a letter written by St. Clement to the Corinthians he entreats them to imitate the example of St. Peter and St. Paul, the latter of whom taught righteous- ness to the whole world, having gone to the Tr'ppa or boun- dary of the West, and borne testimony before the governors. By the phrase 'term of the West' Dr. Burgess and others will have it that Britain, and Britain only, is meant; but the language is assuredly vague enough to cover almost any conclusion, and may mean Spain or the western coast of Italy, or even Rome itself, as distinguished from the Eastern world, as it has been held to do by Dr. Lingard. Dr. Light- foot, the latest commentator on St. Clement, understands Spain to be meant. It is assuredly quite gratuitous to apply the phrase to Britain. K2 This content downloaded from 131.247.112.3 on Mon, 27 Jun 2016 10:54:05 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 120 TRANSACTIONS OF THE ROYAL HISTORICAL SOCIETY. St. Basil says 'that St. Paul went all over the inhabited world evangelising.' This again is assuredly a very general phrase. We are next referred to St. Jerome, who in one passage 2 says that St. Paul preached from Jerusalem to Illyricum; and that, wishing not to build on another's found- ation, he directed his route towards Spain, running, in imita- tion of his Lord the Sun of Righteousness, his course from the Red Sea, or rather from ocean to ocean, 'ab oceano usque ad oceanum.' In another passage of the same Father,3 in explaining 2 Tim. iv. 17, we are told that God's design in liberating Paul from Rome was that the Gospel might be preached by him in the western parts also (' ut evangelium in occidentis quoque partibus pradicaretur'). These passages again are vague and general, and cannot be applied to Britain rather than to other countries. St. Chrysostom uses phrases of a similar vague tendency, and says St. Paul went from Illyricuti to the further limit of the earth. Eusebius and Theodoret mention Britain as Christianised before their day, but do not state by whom; the former merely urging as a proof of the vitality of ' The Word' how Christians had penetrated into all parts, some having even crossed the ocean to those called the British Isles. Here again there is no mention of St. Paul. Theodoret in one passage 4 speaks generally of the wonderful fact that fisher- men and publicans and tentmakers should have persuaded not only the Romans and those subject to them, but also Scythians and Sauromatae, Indians and Seres, Hyrcanians and Bactrians, Britons, Cimbrians and Germans, and in fact every nation and tribe of men, to receive the precepts of the Crucified One.5 Here we see that the language (if not de- scribing after-events) is merely that of rhetoric, for we have mention made of Scythians and Seres, i.e. Chinese. In another place he speaks specifically of St. Paul having arrived in Italy, and having proceeded thence to Spain, ex- tending his aid to the islands which are in the sea,6 but the St.
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