On the Ruin of Britain

Notes

1. This extract from Hibern., lii, 6, seems exceedingly doubtful as assigned to Gildas: the first four words may be his, but the remainder will be best regarded as a gloss added by the compiler of the Irish collection, at a time when the Church of Ireland had adopted Roman customs, while the British churches still held aloof.
   In the first four words of X. we hear an echo of the opening chapters of the De Excidio; the remainder repeats assertions made during the Conference at Whitby, when North Britain was won over by the influence of Wilfrid to the adoption of Roman usages; it repeats also the main argument advanced by Aldhelm of Malmesbury, in the letter which he wrote to the king and bishops of Damnonia, by the direction of the Council of Hatfield. Wilfrid, in that Conference of 664, maintains that Picts and Britons “fight with foolish toil against the whole world;” that they derive their custom (in this case their observance of Easter) from a time “when the Church was judaizing in many things” (Beda, H. E., iii, 25; Aldhelm’s letter, Mon. Germaniae Hist., Epp., iii, 231-235).
   Although the extract cannot be regarded as conveying to us any words of Gildas, it has, nevertheless, a real interest as a summary of points in which the Church of Britain was “contrary to the whole world.” From Beda’s History and Aldhelm’s letter we gather that the Britons were particularly regarded as stiff-necked, because of their unwillingness to change in three or four usages. These were, the time of the celebration of Easter, the tonsure, and their mode of administering the rites of baptism; a fourth is introduced in this Extract which may well have been included in the “alia plurima unitati ecclesiasticae contraria,” mentioned by Beda (H. E., ii, 2). This is the British Liturgy, or Missa. Compliance with Roman customs brings to the Irish Church this new conviction, that the Churches of Britain were schismatic; “the precepts of your bishops,” Aldhelm is bold to say to them, “are not in accord with the Catholic faith.” The Roman system represented a newer, better development of church life: British (and Irish) opposition, on the other hand, was in reality mainly a reluctance to break with the past, by a people tenacious in their adherence to everything old: however, after a long and bitter strife, the Irish, the North British, the Picts, and eventually the Welsh, consented to the changes required of them. Yet the conformity was but partial, as we learn from the fragments remaining to us, and particularly as to Ireland, from the Life of St. Malachias, who became Bishop of Armagh in the year 1126. If we note the chief points’ in which the British were regarded in church life as “hostile to Roman customs (moribus Romanis),” they seem to be the four following:—
   1. The British liturgy: it was in no way strange that in Britain there should be a liturgy, or missa, different from the Roman; several extant Gallic forms show that great diversity prevailed in Gaul and Germany until the time of Charles the Great. There is a Frankish capitulary of the year 742, which even ordains that every priest was to draw up for his own use a book of the altar-service, subject to the approval of the bishop. A similar diversity must have prevailed in Ireland and Britain during the sixth century; in the anonymous Catalogue of Irish Saints, the Second Order (c. A.D. 599-665) is described as having diversae missae, and also as having “received a missa from the Britons David bishop, Gillas (Gildas) and Docus” (Haddan and Stubbs, Councils, ii, pp. 492-493). Unfortunately, no documents of this peculiarly Celtic liturgy have survived; the Stowe Missal, of which Todd and MacCarthy place the authorship about seventy years after the death of Gildas, and Warren brings down to the ninth century, shows a predominant Roman character, though with numerous traces of old Celtic features; these again plainly indicate a close relationship with Gallican liturgical forms.
   2. Tonsure: this second point of difference played an important part in the schism between the British and English, that is the Roman, Churches. The British tonsure, here described as being frontal from ear to ear, and not coronal like the Roman, is also, in similar words, twice described in the Catalogue of Irish Saints, ab aure usque ad aurem. A full account of the beliefs held respecting these two, the Roman derived from St. Peter, and a symbol of the one Church, the British from Simon Magus, and a symbol of schism, will be found in the letter of Aldhelm referred to above, and in the interesting letter of Abbot Ceolfrid to Naibron, King of the Picts, reproduced at length in Beda’s History, v, 41 (p. 342 in Plummer’s edition).
   3. Celebration of Easter: the third point of difference, though not actually mentioned here, may, notwithstanding, be the real implication of the reference to Jews (cum Iudaeis). When the fourteenth day of the vernal moon fell upon a Sunday, the Roman and Eastern Churches celebrated Easter upon the following Sunday, in order to avoid holding the feast on the same day as the Jews: the Celts, however, following a more ancient usage, observed their Easter even on the fourteenth moon, provided it were the Sunday, and so appeared to act “with the Jews” (Beda, H.E., ii, 2; v, 21). One inconvenient result, in practical life, of this difference, is pointed out by Beda; that is to say, two neighbouring churches might be engaged at the same time, the one in the glad joyous services of Eastertide, the other in the severe exercise of Lenten fasts.
   4. Mode of “completing” baptism: this fourth point we find advanced by Augustine in his conference with the British bishops: one of his three final demands was, that they should complete the ministry of baptism according to the usage of the Holy Roman and Apostolic Church (ut ministerium baptizandi juxta morem sanctae Romanae et apostolicae ecclesiae compleatis). On the meaning of this compleatis one may adduce the following facts among others. In the Life of St. Brigid we read of a vision where two priests anoint the head of a girl, “completing the order of baptism in the usual way” (ordinem baptismi complentes consueto more); the Stowe Missal prescribes the anointing on the forehead (in cerebrum in fronte) with chrism, to be performed by a presbyter: St. Bernard, in his Life of St. Malachi, mentions the (to his mind) absence of the rite of confirmation in Ireland, and (as understood by him) its restoration through St. Malachi as one of the consnctudines sanctae Romanae ecclesiae (Opp., tom. i, 1473). Irish and British thus seem to have preserved an older custom, called Eastern, because it has to this day continued in Eastern Churches, wherein chrism was administered by a presbyter; that is, to revert to Augustine’s word, wherein baptism was “completed” in a non-Roman fashion.