How the Celts saved Britain - Salvation

Episode of 2 of Dan Snow's new history programme How the Celts Saved Britain, where he "blows the lid on the traditional, Anglo-centric view of history and reveals how the Irish saved Britain from cultural oblivion during the Dark Ages". My summary of episode 1 can be found here.

Mid-sixth century: The former Roman province of Britannia had reverted to an uncivilised (i.e. illiterate, pagan, iron-age, inward-looking) patchwork of warring Anglo-Saxon tribes, ruling over the native Britons. In contrast, Ireland was a civilised (i.e. literate, christian, technologically advanced, outward-looking) society, dotted with monasteries. The Irish/Gaelic kingdom of Dalriada was based at Dunadd in present-day Argyll, and the rest of Scotland was dominated by Picts.

563: Twelve Irish monks sailed from Ireland to Dunadd, led by Colum Cille (later known as Saint Columba, 521-597), a rising star of the Irish church (and descendant of the high kings of Ireland). Columba intended to spread the christian faith in Pictland, and to this end he asked the king of Dalriada to give him a piece of land to build a church. He was given the little island of Iona, on the western edge of Scotland.

Iona was to become the 'Westminster Abbey' of early medieval Scotland, a place where religious and political power came together. As a mark of this, Columba blessed the new king of Dalriada, Áedán mac Gabráin (d. 609) on Iona, in a christian ceremony. Iona also become the main cultural centre for Celtic christianity - It was on Iona that the Book of Kells (a lavishly illustrated copy of the four gospels) was created, one of the great achievements of western art.

In the late 560s, after the church on Iona was complete, Columba set out along the Great Glen, to start converting the Picts. He confronted King Bridei (d. 585) at his fortress near Inverness, impressing him with his christian 'magic' (for example, chasing off the Loch Ness monster!). Over the course of time, the Picts became christianised and subsumed into Gaelic culture and language, thus forming the race of the Scots (see the Aberlemno standing stones in Angus).

Down in England, an attempt was already being made to reintroduce christianity. In 597 Pope Gregory the Great (540-604) sent a mission, led by the Benedictine monk Augustine of Canterbury (d. 604), to the Kingdom of Kent to meet King Æthelberht (560-616), who had married a christian Frankish princess, Bertha. This was part of Gregory's imperial ambitions to reassert centralised Roman control over western European christians, and in particular to counteract the influence of the (self-governing) Irish monasteries. Æthelberht himself converted to christianity, and mission moved on to London (in the Kingdom of Essex), building St Paul's church (on the site of the present-day cathedral). However, the mission failed to make any further inroads into Anglo-Saxon Britain, and ended up being thrown out of London after 20 years or so.

In 634, King Oswald (604-642) returned to Bamburgh as King of Northumbria, the most powerful of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. He had spent the previous 18 years in exile in Ireland and Iona, where he had become a christian. Determined to turn Northumbria into a christian kingdom, he brought with him a young monk from Iona, called Aiden (d. 651). Aiden, the last of the great Irish missionaries, established the first church on Lindisfarne in 635. This was the nucleus from where Irish priests would spread the christian message across the north of England, building churches as they went (including Escomb in County Durham and Hexham Abbey, both built largely from recycled Roman stone).

Wilfrid of York was a monk trained at Lindisfarne, and one of the first to travel to Rome to meet the Pope. He went on to be instrumental in establishing written law in England, as well as establishing centralised Roman control over the English church, causing tensions with the Irish monks of Lindisfarne. Things came to a head in Bamburgh in 663, involving a clash over the correct date of Easter. King Oswiu came from the Irish tradition, his queen was from Kent and followed the Roman tradition, where Easter Sunday was one week behind. The king and queen couldn't have sex until Lent had finished, thus triggering a marital crisis! In 664 the king convened a synod at Whitby Abbey to settle the date of Easter once and for all (as well as to resolve the concomitant power struggle in the English church). This synod pitted Wilfred against the Irish monk Colman, Aiden's successor as Abbot of Lindisfarne. As a result, the king decided to join the European mainstream, probably for political reasons. Colman and his monks returned to Iona in a huff, with the remains of Saint Aiden. This was a fatal blow to the prestige of the Iona and the Irish monasteries, later symbolised by the massacre of the Iona monks by the Vikings in the late 8th century, bringing the great age of Irish christianity to a bloody end.