The Irish Missionaries In Britain
Above : Picture Of St. Columba Talking To People
The religious energy of the Irish people during these centuries was not confined to their native country. It also carried bands of devoted missionaries to preach the Gospel to the pagan tribes of Britain and the Continent. While the Irish schools gave free education to the harassed natives of the ravaged Christian countries, Irish missionaries carried the light of Christianity amongst the barbarians themselves. Other workers, no doubt, were labouring in the same fields. But the conversion of many parts of Europe was due mainly to the self-sacrificing devotion of the Irish.
Colmehille and Iona.—One of the greatest of the Irish missionaries was St. Columba or Colmchille (” the Dove of the Church “). Born at Gartan in Tirchonaill in the year 531, he belonged to one of the chief families of the Northern Ui Neill. At an early age he devoted himself to religion, and studied in many of the most famous Irish schools. For Principal Early Christian Schools founded in 6th and 7th Centuries. fifteen years he laboured in Ireland, founding many monasteries, which afterwards became celebrated. At the age of 42 he sailed with twelve companions to the west coast of what is now Scotland and on a small island there, named Iona, he established a monastery which became the great centre of Christianity in North Britain (a.d. 563).
* Near Newtownards.
Most of North Britain was then occupied by a people called the Picts. That they were different from the Gaels is shown by the fact that Colmchille found it necessary at first to use an interpreter. But the coast lying south of Iona is within sight of the Irish coast, and both shores had from the earliest times been occupied by a people called Dal Riada. A Gaelic colony from Ireland had recently crossed and settled in their territory. These new-comers were Christian and their chief was a kinsman of Colmchille’s. They were, therefore, of much assistance to the Saint in his mission amongst the pagan Picts.
From Iona St. Columba proceeded to evangelise the people of the islands and mainland. At Inverness he converted Brude, the Pictish King. Into the recesses of the Grampians and to the far islands of the Hebrides he penetrated. He sent his monks to the Orkneys. When he died, a.d. 597, all Britain north of the Clyde and Forth had been converted.
The influence of Iona did not abate on the death of Colmchille. Its Irish monks completed his work in North Britain;and carried their labours to the southern part of the island, which is now known as England.
Soon after the Romans had abandoned Britain, the southern part of that island became the prey of the Saxons, the Angles, and the Jutes. They were of the same Teutonic stock as the many other tribes who were then ravaging other parts of the Roman Empire, and, like them, they were pagan barbarians. From their original home on the coast around the mouth of the River Elbe large bodies of them continued to cross to Britain during a period of a century and a half. Forcing their way into the country at many points, they had, by the year 600, occupied nearly all of what has since been called England. Here they became grouped into a number of small Kingdoms, which were frequently at war with one another. The British on the West {page 32) still maintained their independence, but they were now in three isolated sections. Elsewhere, nearly all traces of both Celtic and Roman language and life were swept away, and with them also vanished Christianity.
The Saxon Kingdoms in the north and centre of England owed their conversion to Irish missionaries from Iona. At first only slight progress was made. At length, Oswald, King of Northumbria. having lost his Kingdom for a time, found a refuge in Iona. Upon his restoration he invited St. Aidan and other Irish monks to Northumbria (a.d. 634). They settled in the little island of Lindisfarne, which soon became an eastern Iona. From its monastery Irish monks carried the influences of Christianity into the adjoining Saxon Kingdoms and penetrated into the most remote. St. Aidan became the first Bishop of Northumbria and was succeeded in Lindisfarne by two other Irish monks.* The great central Kingdom of Mercia was next won, its first two bishops being Irish. East Anglia was also mostly converted from Lindisfarne, whose monks also readied as far as Wessex.
The Irish missionaries had brought learning as well as religion, and Northumbria became the cradle of Anglo-Saxon literature.
In the meantime the conversion of the Saxon Kingdoms in the South had been carried out by Roman missionaries from Canterbury, where St. Augustine had started his mission (a.d. 597). The conversion of England was thus complete. The decision of the Synod of Whitby (a.d. 664) regarding the Paschal Controversy was a blow to the Columban monks, and from that time the influence of Irish missionaries in England disappeared. Their labours, however, had been fruitful and had resulted in the conversion of more than half of England.
