Causes for its Acceptance Harmonized with Teutonic Ideals Pope conveyed the great news that the king of Kent and ten thousand of his subjects had at once received baptism. Gradually but surely the new religion worked northward and westward, until within less than a century every corner of Britain had been brought within the pale of the Roman Church. The causes of the prompt acceptance of Christianity by these barbaric tribes are easily found. They were children of nature, almost untouched by civilization,—credulous, susceptible. The magnificent organization of the Roman Church, its solemn sacraments, its symbolism, its pomp and show, impressed them greatly. The Roman monks appealed constantly to their credulity: Bæda's history of the early English Church is almost a book of miracles. It was soon found that it was no hard thing to accept the new faith; it required no rooting-up of ageold beliefs and the substitution of new and startling ideas. The Teutonic tribes had always been serious and reflective: they had believed in a future life, and in the presiding influences of good and evil. They had ever been honest, and chaste, and loyal to friends and kin. To accept Christianity was but to change the names of their gods and their forms of worship. Christ was to them but another name for the gentle and gracious Balder; Woden was found to be after all only the earliest ancestor of their kings; and the Virgin corresponded perfectly with their ideal of true womanhood. Their great nature festivals of Yuletide and Eostratide could be easily changed into celebrations of the birth and the resurrection of Christ. But the sincerity and the purity of the early Roman missionaries were, perhaps, after all, the leading factors in the christianizing of the island. More self Humanizing Effects of Christianity Civil Effects sacrificing and courageous men never bore the gospel into heathendom. The breadth and greatness, the grandeur and high solemnity of their message, together with the purity, enthusiasm, self-sacrifice, and consistency of their own lives, would have accomplished its end among any people. This noiseless revolution, in the greatness of its results, is second to no other in English history. It was the first leaven from Roman Europe that had come into the lump of Teutonic barbarism, and, wherever it touched, it humanized and civilized. Wars went on as before, but their character was changed. There was no more extermination, no more battle for mere booty. From being out of contact with all the external world, the English now came into touch with Rome, the spiritual and intellectual center of civilization. The Roman monks and priests brought in books, and art, and culture. Monasteries began to arise,-influential centers where students gathered, where learning and art were cultivated, where perpetual peace reigned. Seldom has any one influence so transformed a people. In two centuries Britain was changed from a bloody battlefield on which shouted wild, unlettered savages, into the intellectual center of Europe, the leader of the world's best thought and civilization. The influence of Christianity in cementing the English kingdoms into a unity must not be overlooked. The Council of Whitby, which determined that the Roman and not the Celtic type of Christianity was to prevail, was the first important step. Under Theodore all England was welded into one spiritual kingdom. The head of the Church was at Canterbury. Here the ecclesiasti The Second Teutonic Conquest Barbarity of the Danes cal synods drew the kingdoms into a parliament where canons were enacted to affect England as a whole. It was, therefore, no long step from the thought of the single spiritual throne at Canterbury to that of a single temporal throne and a united England. The Supremacy of Wessex, 828-1013. 'The wars of the kites and crows, as Milton termed the two centuries of conflict for the overlordship, were brought suddenly to an end by a most unlooked-for and overwhelming disaster. The Teutonic tribes on the Baltic, in Jutland and Scandinavia, the old home of the English, after three centuries of obscurity, again turned their keels westward, and the old drama of the conquest was repeated in almost every detail. Again an era of sudden incursions, of ruthless slaughter, of wholesale pillage; again an era of conquest and settlement; and again, still later, an era of political subjugation. To realize what the three centuries on British soil had done for the Anglo-Saxon tribes, one has but to compare them with these fierce sea-wolves of the ninth and tenth centuries, who were in blood, in speech, in views of life, in religion, customs, and temperament but a repetition of the hordes that had poured into England under Hengist and Ida. "The first sight of the Northmen," says Green, "is as if the hand on the dial of history had gone back three hundred years." Northumbria was ravaged with fire and sword until almost every vestige of culture was blotted out, and then, like a swarm of locusts, the invaders turned southward. The flimsy nature of the union between the kingdoms became at once apparent. From first to last there was no united resistance. Each invaded section fought for life unaided by neighbors, just as the Welsh had done in earlier years. The Rise of Wessex Danish Supremacy A united kingdom, in the sense that we now use the term, was undreamed of. Northumbria. 874. Danes Conquer Mercia. 878. Danes Invade Wessex; Defeated by Ælfred. 912. Northmen Settle Normandy. 959. Dunstan, Arch 980. Death of Dunstan. Wessex at its Height. 994. Invasion of Danes under Swein. Submits to Swein. Slowly the black shadow of barbarism crept over the English map; but in the meantime a new force was arising in England. The close of the era 867. Danes Conquer of the kings had seen Wessex in the lead. 871-901. Ælfred. Under Ecgberht there had been for the first time a union of all English kingdoms. This powerful organizer had learned kingcraft in the court of the great Charlemagne; he was in full sympathy with the new political ideas across the Channel, and he was able to organize his domain, in accordance with these ideas, to such a degree that he could at last do the unprecedented thing of handing down the overlordship to his successors. Under 1013. All England him, despite the omnipresent Dane that 1016-1042. Danish hung like a millstone upon the island, 1042-1066. Last Engthere began a new era for England. lish Kings. Under Ælfred, a grandson of Ecgberht, Wessex took another step forward. The Danes were checked in their victorious career, and a line was drawn beyond which they might not go. The little kingdom became the head of England in every sense: it was the only section unconquered by the Danes, the only section where learning and literature and law still existed. The hearts of its people began to throb with pride and patriotism. For nearly a century after Ælfred's time the Danish movement upon the island ceased, and little by little the kingdom of Wessex wrested the north from the invaders. In time something like a national spirit began to awaken Kings. Importance of the Danish Epoch The Formative Era among all the English tribes. The tenth century witnessed the glory of Wessex, as the seventh had witnessed that of Northumbria. The two brief eras stand out in bright relief when we look down the dreary perspective of Anglo-Saxon history. The Danish Supremacy, 1013-1066. But like Northumbria two centuries before, Wessex fell at length into weak hands. Ælfred and his immediate successors had kept the Dane within bounds by vigorous action; the later kings secured immunity from attack by the payment of heavy tribute, and it became only a matter of time when the inevitable result would follow. An act of treachery precipitated the calamity. In 1013 the Northman was supreme in England; Cnut, the leader, became king, and the Danish dream of a great Scandinavian empire, embracing all the lands about the North Sea, bade fair to be realized. Until 1066, when William, himself a Northman, took possession of England, the Dane was the leading factor in English politics. The short period of Danish supremacy need not be discussed at length, yet it cannot be overlooked by the student seeking the elements that have made the English people. It was simply throwing into the crucible new masses of crude ore, of fresh raw material. It greatly retarded the process of evolution-it was a positive setback, even; but it introduced no new element, and it did not change the character of the final product. The Angles and Saxons had found the Welsh utterly different from themselves, and they had mingled with them to no appreciable degree; but the Danes found in the English a people differing from themselves only in degree of civilization, and barbarism soon yielded to the stronger |