Fouracre P. The New Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. 1: c. 500-c. 700
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Christianity amongst the Britons, Dalriadan Irish and Picts 443
and Alet had survived, though the latter’s foundation was now attributed to
aWelsh ascetic, St Malo, while another bishop was based at nearby Dol, a
monastery founded by the Welsh St Samson. In the west, the former territory
of the Osismii now had two bishops, at St Pol-de-L
´
eon in the north, and at
Quimper in the south.
81
Only in the case of Dol do we have any evidence from a
pre-Carolingian source, the Life of St Samson.Even this is uninformative about
Samson’s continental career apart from his visit to King Childebert, discussed
below. We can, however, say that Dol was founded as a monastery; that Samson,
its founder, was already in episcopal orders when he arrived from Britain; and
that Dol seems to have continued to have bishops after Samson’s death, since
the Life mentions a later bishop, Leucherus, while its dedicatee is Bishop
Tigernomaglus.
82
But whether these bishops exercised episcopal oversight over
a territorial diocese, as was normal on the continent, or whether they simply
had pastoral oversight over Dol’s scattered dependent churches, we cannot
know. In the case of Paul Aurelian, the reputed founder of St Pol, the Life of
the founder-saint appears to give more circumstantial evidence about his career
in Brittany, including a local chief’s gift of a deserted fort for his episcopal see,
and an account of its authorisation by King Childebert. However, although
some earlier written material may have been available, the author of this Life
wrote only in 884,bywhich time convincing origin legends were required for
propaganda purposes.
83
We therefore cannot trust its details; and the same goes
for the other Breton saints’ Lives, which are ninth-century or later.
At the local level, there was a generous network of churches by the ninth
century: each community, or plebs (whence Breton ploue), had its own church,
staffed by a small group of priests. These ploue churches may have formed
the basic building blocks of the Breton church, preceding the formation of
territorial bishoprics in the ninth century; but we must be wary of too much
speculation on this.
84
In addition, Brittany had both hermitages, often on
offshore islands,
85
and coenobitic monasteries. St Samson, who founded the
monastery of Dol, and indeed ‘many monasteries throughout virtually the
whole province’, is represented as going to King Childebert in Neustria to
intercede for the Breton prince, Judwal. He succeeded in this; and, after
expelling a dragon (!) he was given land near the Seine mouth to found another
monastery, that of Pentale. The dragon story is patently a recurring myth; but
the monastery of Pentale was real enough, and an enclave around it remained
81
Smith (1992), pp. 15, 70, 153–6.Cf.Ch
´
edeville and Guillotel (1984), pp. 142–4.
82
Vita Samsonis Preface 1; and ii.1, 2, 15.
83
Merdrignac (1993), pp. 14, 91–2;Jackson (1953), pp. 41–2;cf.Ch
´
edeville and Guillotel (1984),
pp. 139–40.
84
SeeWendy Davies (1983); Ch
´
edeville and Guillotel (1984), pp. 126–9.
85
Cf. Ch
´
edeville and Guillotel (1984), pp. 121, 125–32;Giot (1982).
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444 clare stancliffe
in Dol’s possession down to the French Revolution.
86
Contact was apparently
maintained by sea; and the whole story is important in showing that the Breton
church was not wholly cut off from the Frankish mainstream. Confirmation
of this also comes from the fact that the synod of Paris, held c.562, includes
aSamson, probably our Samson, amongst its signatories.
87
Some sixty years
later Judwal’s grandson, King Judicael of Brittany, was summoned to Dago-
bert’s court. He refused to eat with the king, ‘for he was religious and full of
the fear of God’; but he did consent to eat with the referendary, Audoenus,
who belonged to the circle influenced by Columbanian monasticism. Accord-
ing to late Lives, Judicael eventually retired to the monastery of St M
´
een,
in the middle of the Breton forest, while his young brother travelled north
and founded what eventually became the monastery of St Josse-sur-Mer (near
Montreuil).
88
In all this, the limitations of the sources are painfully evident. Looking back
from the ninth century, the sixth and early seventh centuries were seen as ‘the
age of the saints’. These saints were all portrayed as ascetics; and most of them
are represented as coming from South Wales, crossing through Cornwall to
Brittany, and founding hermitages and monasteries; though Winwaloe, the
alleged founder of the monastery of Land
´
evennec, is represented as having
been born in Brittany of immigrant British parents.
89
The British origin of
most of these ‘saints’ is attested by their names, while their cults frequently
span the English Channel.
90
Buthow should the late hagiographical evidence
about monastic founder-saints be assessed against our sixth-century evidence
of the letter to Lovocat and Catihern, and our ninth-century evidence of small
communities of clerics? There certainly were some ascetics in sixth-century
Brittany: one, called Winnoch, who ate only uncooked herbs, went to Tours
in the late sixth century, intending to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem – though
he came to a sorry end in Tours through drink.
91
It could be that Lovocat and
Catihern belong to the pre-ascetic period of British Christianity, the church
denounced by Gildas in his De Excidio; and that the ascetic peregrini like
Samson form part of the great monastic revival which is deducible from Gildas’
Fragments.
92
Since peregrinatio overseas was seen as an ascetic ideal, it could
well be that Brittany did attract a number of ascetics in addition to Samson;
and many of their foundations could well have evolved into small groups of
priests by the early ninth century. Alternatively, however, the ploue churches
may represent the successors of churches founded by small groups of secular
86
Vita Samsonis i.52–9;cf. Flobert (1997), pp. 12–13;cf. Merdrignac (1993), pp. 95–8.
87
Concilia Galliae, ed. de Clercq (1963), p. 210;cf. Pontal (1989), pp. 151–5.
88
Fredegar, Chronicle iv.78; Chadwick (1969), pp. 288–9;Merdrignac (1991), p. 129.
89
Wrdisten, Vita S. Winwaloei i.1–3.
90
Bowen (1969), pp. 92–8, 160–90.
91
Gregory, Hist. v.21 and viii.34.
92
Sharpe (1984a), pp. 199–202.
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Christianity amongst the Britons, Dalriadan Irish and Picts 445
priests, like Lovocat and Catihern. It could be, therefore,that the ninth-century
Lives give a misleading impression in portraying all founder-saints as ascetics.
This could have arisen either because they simply selected and wrote up vitae
of those saints who were ascetics; or because they wrote up all church founders
as ascetics – that being how in the ninth century, influenced by the Life of St
Samson, they chose to portray them.
Despite all our uncertainties, however, some points do emerge. First, the
incoming Britons brought their own Christian traditions with them, rather
than being absorbed by those that they found in Armorica. They appear to
have brought or evolved the ploue churches, the monastery bishops, and a tra-
dition of insular hermitage sites such as we find in western Britain and Ireland,
while continued close contact with the Insular world is apparent in the script
and content of manuscripts.
93
Secondly, continental Britons were involved
in Columbanus’ mission, and Irish/Breton contacts were maintained: a disci-
ple of Columbanus founded a monastery at Coutances in an area of strong
Breton influence just outside what later came to be regarded as Brittany;
94
and the monastery of Land
´
evennec in western Brittany still retained its Irish
tonsure and rule in 818, when Louis the Pious ordered it to conform to the
Rule of St Benedict.
95
Third: despite this, there is no evidence that the Breton
church was viewed as schismatic in our period. Gregory of Tours had no
qualms about ordaining a devout Breton pilgrim, and bishops were regularly
used as emissaries between the Bretons and the Franks.
96
Around 600, the
Bretons presumably kept the ‘Celtic’ Easter, rather than that of Victorius of
Aquitaine; but there was still some divergence within Francia, and since the
Bretons lived in their own discrete area, it may not have caused much trouble.
We may assume that they had conformed well before 818 – perhaps in the
years following Luxeuil’s conformity at the synod of M
ˆ
acon (626/7). Despite
some such idiosyncracies, we should not view the Breton church as having
been wholly isolated from the Frankish church. Although it was not under
the effective control of the metropolitan bishop of Tours, links were forged
by monks with a reputation for sanctity: Samson of Dol and Pentale, and
St Josse, Breton founder of the hermitage which later took his name; mean-
while Carantocus in Burgundy and Gonotiernus at Senlis were either Britons
or Bretons – the distinction cannot be made at this period. Thus, our final
point is that British churchmen were not confined to Brittany in these cen-
turies, but settled sporadically elsewhere on the continent as well, though
these have tended to be forgotten in comparison to the better-known Irish
peregrini.
93
Smith (1992), pp. 167–77.
94
Jonas, Vita Columbani i.21;cf. Fleuriot (1980), p. 151.
95
Wrdisten, Vita S. Winwaloei ii.12–13.
96
Gregory, Hist. v.21; v.26; ix.18.
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446 clare stancliffe
the british church, the anglo-saxons, and
the roman mission
Major changes befell the Britons after the mid-sixth century, perhaps following
on from climatic disturbance and plague. The expansion of the Anglo-Saxons
restricted the areas they controlled to the less Romanised, less fertile lands of
Dumnonia, Wales and the kingdom of Strathclyde, while in 597 the arrival
of Augustine to convert the Anglo-Saxons threatened them with ecclesiastical
subordination. Augustine’s mission marks the beginning of historical records
for the Anglo-Saxons. At the same time, one result of the dislocation and
defeat experienced by the Britons is that almost nothing survives from their
side. The effect of this is to make us view the confrontation of the two Christian
traditions throughthe eyes of the Romans and Anglo-Saxons, and, in particular,
through the eyes of the Northumbrian historian Bede. Bede takes over Gildas’
portrayal of the Britons as sinners, but adds an additional charge: that they
never preached to the Anglo-Saxons. He portrays the Britons as an introverted
group, who, when challenged by Augustine to drop their idiosyncrasies, accept
his leadership and join his mission, spurned him. In effect, they preferred their
own customs to those of the universal church; and so un-Christian were they
that even when the Anglo-Saxons received Christianity from others, they failed
to respect this. Indeed, they carried on refusing to be in communion with the
Anglo-Saxons.
97
Bede’s interpretation has been enormously influential, but it is flawed. His
accusation that the Britons never preached to the Anglo-Saxons probably rests
upon his misunderstanding of a text; and his other criticisms arise from a
readiness to generalise, misleadingly, from individual cases.
98
In reality, the
Britons’ missionary record was creditable by the standards of the day.
99
As
regards their refusal to join Augustine, the prior issue here is why Pope Gregory
ignored the existence of the British church when he first sent Augustine, and
why he provocatively laid down that the British bishops should be treated
as Augustine’s inferiors, not colleagues. He appears to have thought in terms
of integrating the British church into the new church he was establishing
among the English, rather than vice versa.
100
Thus, while it is true that the
Britons did refuse to give up their traditional calculations for the date of
Easter and join Augustine’s mission, the real obstacles to agreement were the
fact that Augustine demanded unequivocal submission to his authority, while
simultaneously coming as the bishop of an Anglo-Saxon king, and offering no
safeguards for the British. The latter would understandably have feared that
97
Bede, HE i.14, 22; ii.2, 20; v.22.
98
Stancliffe (1999), pp. 108–10.
99
Above, pp. 400, 432–5;Davies, chapter 9 above, and Thacker, chapter 17 below. Thompson (1963).
100
Bede, HE i.27.vii and 29;Stancliffe (1999).
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Christianity amongst the Britons, Dalriadan Irish and Picts 447
ecclesiastical subordination to a bishop based in Canterbury would jeopardise
their future independence from the Anglo-Saxons.
Although the Britons did not join Augustine’s mission, it is likely that they
did in fact play some part in converting the Anglo-Saxons. This has been
suggested for the Hwicce and the Magonsætan, peoples settled around the
lower Severn between (approximately) Bath and Much Wenlock. Bede has no
conversion narrative for them, but the Hwicce in particular appear in his text
as a Christian people of many years’ standing, and burial evidence implies
that they were Christian throughout the seventh century. In addition, a strong
case has been made for seeing St Helen’s, Worcester, as a British church in
origin that pre-dates the Anglo-Saxon cathedral of c.680, and the same may
well go for other churches in the area.
101
A similar pattern of unobtrusive
conversion by the British population together with Anglo-Saxon takeover of
pre-existing British churches has been argued for western parts of Wessex,
and the origins of such churches as Wells and Sherborne, while a British
contribution to the church of Northumbria can also be postulated for some
areas north of the Tweed and west of the Pennines.
102
Whether anything similar
occurred further east is much less likely, though continuity of cult site can be
argued for St Albans and perhaps St-Paul-in-the-Bail, Lincoln.
103
Our only
explicit written reference to Britons converting Anglo-Saxons is a riddling
claim that a Briton, Rhun, baptised Edwin of Northumbria and his people.
The source is late, and appears to be contradicted by Bede’s earlier account;
but this section of the source draws on earlier material and contains some
accurate information, which is not in Bede, so we should not dismiss out
of hand the idea that Rhun may have had something to do with Edwin’s
conversion.
104
Collaboration is likely to have occurred at least in some areas and some cir-
cumstances. In part this will have arisen out of the complexity and untidiness
of the situation, which would have made total separation between ‘Celt’ and
‘Roman’ difficult – particularly in the mission-field. One reason for the com-
plexity is that alongside the Britons and the Roman mission, a third party was
also involved as major players: the Irish mission to Northumbria led by Aidan,
a monk from the monastery of Iona in Irish-colonised D
´
al Riada (Argyll). At
this date there was no significant difference between the Christian practices of
Iona and those of the British church; and yet, Bede himself tells us that Aidan
101
Bede, HE iv.13;Sims-Williams (1990), pp. 54–91, esp. 75–9, 83–6;Bassett (1992), esp. pp. 15–26.
102
Yorke (1995), pp. 177–81;Loyn(1984), pp. 13–15;Stancliffe (1995), pp. 76–80;cf.Barrow (1973),
pp. 7–68, esp. 26–7, 64–5 and Gelling (1978), pp. 96–8.
103
Morris (1989), pp. 35–9;Jones (1994); cf. also Stancliffe (1999), pp. 121–2.
104
Historia Brittonum c.63;cf. Chadwick (1964); Jackson (1964).
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448 clare stancliffe
was respected by bishops of the Roman party, despite his Easter allegiance.
105
Equally, there must in practice have been recognition of the other’s Chris-
tian allegiance between the Iona-converted Northumbrian king, Oswiu, and
his Roman-converted wife from Kent. All this implies mutual recognition
between the Ionan Irish missionaries and the Roman party prior to the Synod
of Whitby in 664; and since the former held to the same practices as the Britons,
there was scope for considerable co-operation between them in the areas they
evangelised, primarily Northumbria and Mercia. Confirmation that such co-
operation did sometimes occur can be found in the fact that c.665 two British
bishops collaborated with an Anglo-Saxon bishop to consecrate Chad.
106
While a first reason for the complexity of the situation arises from the fact
that the Irish were involved as well as Britons and the Roman party, a second
reason is that whereas in 600 all the British and Irish churches were at one in
the customs that marked them off from continental Christians (such as how to
calculate the date of Easter), different areas conformed to the Roman Easter at
different times: the southern Irish, c.632; much of midland Ireland between 640
and 690; Anglo-Saxon areas evangelised by the Irish, in 664; many Dumnonian
Britons, c.675;other Britons (perhaps those of Strathclyde), together with the
rest of Ireland apart from the churches of the Columban federation, c.700; the
Picts and the Columban federation headed by Iona, c.716; and the Welsh in
768.Ontop of this, the continental traditions and practices brought by various
missionaries to the Anglo-Saxons were themselves not uniform: in addition to
missionaries from the papacy, there were others from elsewhere in Italy and also
from Burgundy, who probably came from Irish circles on the continent; and
there was more than one continental system of calculating the date of Easter.
107
Thus, while none of the continental missionaries was still using the ‘Celtic’
reckoning of Easter, some of them may well have felt more sympathetic to it
than was Augustine – or Bede; and the same was probably true of those Irish
who had already conformed to the Roman Easter.
The foregoing paragraphs will not have made easy reading; but they should
have conveyed a sense of the complex cross-currents involved in the Easter
controversy in Britain before 664. These will have made it as impossible for
them as it should be for us to see all this in terms of a simple polarisation between
‘Roman’ and ‘Celt’. In the 660s, however, three events occurred; between them,
these were to lead to just such a polarisation. The first was the Synod of Whitby
in 664,atwhich the Northumbrian king decided to accept the Roman Easter
and to eject those who refused to conform. The second was the appointment
of the Romanising Wilfrid as Northumbrian bishop; and the third, the arrival
105
Bede, HE iii.25 (p. 296).
106
Bede, HE iii.28.
107
Campbell (1986), pp. 57–9; Charles-Edwards (2000), pp. 405–11.
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Christianity amongst the Britons, Dalriadan Irish and Picts 449
in Canterbury of the papally appointed Theodore as ‘Archbishop of the island
of Britain’
108
in 669.Asaresult, an attempt was made to enforce the view
that British and Irish adherents of their traditional Easter calculations and
tonsure were heretics, whose orders were invalid. However devout their ascetics
might be, they were not to be honoured as saints: rather, their relics should
be burnt.
109
Much bitterness and mutual antagonism resulted from this, and
still affected Bede’s view of the British in 731, although in practice it is likely
that relations varied according to the personalities holding power. For instance,
Eata and Cuthbert took a more conciliatory view than Wilfrid, as bishops; and
Aldfrith differed from his predecessor, Ecgfrith, as king of Northumbria.
110
On
the British side, also, there were varying attitudes to Anglo-Saxon Christians.
Most extreme were those of the clergy of Dyfed. According to Aldhelm’s letter
to the king of Dumnonia, written c.675, they compelled visiting Anglo-Saxons
to spend forty days in penance before admitting them to communion. On the
other hand, the implication is that the British clergy in Dumnonia did not go
to these lengths.
111
conclusion
Given the scarcity of our sources, it is difficult to paint an accurate picture of
the British church in this period. Perhaps the most fundamental point to bear
in mind is that that church varied enormously. In the first half of the sixth
century, it belonged to a sub-Roman world in contact with the continent; but
by 700 it had been restricted to the least Romanised parts of Britain, while
its refusal to participate in the Augustinian mission to the Anglo-Saxons had
had the effect of distancing it from the mainstream church.
112
The British
church also contained much variety within itself at one time. Thus the worldly
clergy attacked by Gildas co-existed with the ascetic minority, who pioneered a
spiritual revival. We should therefore beware of fastening simultaneously upon
the corruption of the clergy at the time of the De Excidio, and the rigorist,
stand-offish approach of the Dyfed clergy in Aldhelm’s time, as though the
same group was involved both times. Instead we should realise that the latter
was an extreme development out of the ascetic revival, which itself arose in
reaction to the clerical corruption attacked by Gildas; and also that its extremes
had been criticised by none other than Gildas himself.
113
108
Bede, HE iv.17, and see also Thacker, chapter 17 below.
109
Bede, HE iii.25; iii.28–iv.2. Penitential of Theodore i.v and ii.ix; Stephanus, Vita Wilfridi, chs. 10,
12, 14–15; Aldhelm, Epistulae iv.
110
Cf. Kirby (1995).
111
Aldhelm, Epistulae iv;cf. trans. Lapidge and Herren (1979), pp. 140–3, 155–60.
112
Cf. Campbell (1996), esp. pp. 94–6.
113
Gildas, Fragments 3;Stancliffe (1999), p. 110.
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450 clare stancliffe
The criticisms of Gildas and Bede are well known. They should be offset
against some of the positive achievements of the British church that are often
associated not with it but with the Irish, Welsh or ‘Celtic’ churches; their roots,
however, lie in the British church of our period. Of prime importance was the
sixth-century ascetic revival, for this underlined many of the most significant
developments of the Celtic churches.
114
One can instance the high value set
on holiness of life, seen from an ascetic perspective; this gave God-centred
ascetics equal authority with those holding the highest ecclesiastical office, and
led to interesting ways of combining the two callings.
115
A second development
was the peregrinatio tradition, which may have been as responsible for the
journeying overseas of the Britons who established a community in Galicia as it
was for the pilgrimages of Samson, Columbanus and many others.
116
Thirdly,
the British appear to have been at the root of the development of ‘private’,
repeatable penance, which did much to develop a Christian conscience and
render people’s Christianity something that was lived, rather than seeing it
simply as adherence to a set of rules; Uinniaus, the author of the earliest
penitential, was probably a sixth-century Briton.
117
In all of this the British church appears innovative, rather than conservative.
Similarly there is good evidence that at least some in the British church had a
concept of mission, and felt called to bring the Gospel to other peoples, rather
than turning their backs on their neighbours in the way that Bede portrays it.
The prime example here is Patrick’s mission to the Irish; and although Patrick
was criticised by the conservative church establishment of fifth-century Britain,
in the longer term his vision inspired other British missionaries to follow him.
We seldom know their names, but the linguistic evidence unambiguously
points to Britain as the chief source of Ireland’s conversion.
118
Similarly in
northern Britain, the Britons appear to have spread Christianity not simply to
their fellow Britons, but to the southern Picts as well.
119
All this means that we
should not assume that the British church was, from the start, too xenophobic
ever to have considered joining Augustine’s mission to the Anglo-Saxons, if
only it had been set up in a way that did not appear to threaten them with
subordination to their political rivals.
120
As well as its spiritual vitality, the British church may also have had greater
cultural achievements to its credit than we customarily assume: Gildas used a
114
Cf. Sharpe (1984a), esp. pp. 199–202.
115
Bede, HE ii.2;Stancliffe (1999), pp. 131–3; Cogitosus, Vita S. Brigitae,preface; Charles-Edwards
(2000), pp. 264–81;Stancliffe (1989), pp. 39–40.
116
Charles-Edwards (1976); cf. Stancliffe, chapter 15 above, pp. 405–6.
117
Frantzen (1983), pp. 4–60;Dumville (1984c).
118
Stancliffe (2004); Greene (1968), pp. 78–85;Sharpe (1990), esp. pp. 92–3;Dumville et al.(1993),
pp. 139–45.
119
SeeStancliffe below, pp. 451–4.
120
See further Stancliffe (1999).
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Christianity amongst the Britons, Dalriadan Irish and Picts 451
colourful rhetorical style for his De Excidio, and the same correct, but flowing
and expressive style was later used by Columbanus; presumably the Irish learnt
it from the Britons.
121
At least one memorial inscription from South Wales is in
hexameter verse.
122
The British may well have written letters, history, possibly
even saints’ Lives, which have not come down to us.
123
On the artistic side,
arguments have recently been put forward for seeing a late antique illuminated
manuscript, the Roman Vergil, as a product of sub-Roman Britain.
124
Perhaps
we should also learn to look at some of the British hanging bowls as artistic
achievements, rather than just archaeological objects. All this should make us
view this ‘dark age’ of British history with new eyes.
NORTHERN BRITAIN
(INCLUDING MODERN SCOTLAND)
Northern Britain, with its upland expanses and mountain ranges impeding
communication between east and west, had a character of its own long before
the emergence of Scotland and England as coherent political entities. The
reason for preferring the term ‘northern Britain’ to ‘Scotland’, however, is
not simply to avoid anachronistic nomenclature: it is not just that Scotland
was then inhabited by Britons, Dalriadan Irish (Scoti in Latin, whence Scots),
Picts and – as our period progresses – Anglo-Saxons, each with their own
language and political and cultural identity (see map 5). A more subtle point
is that northern Britain is an elastic term which can be stretched to include
everything north of the Humber, contracted somewhat to focus on the area
north of Hadrian’s Wall along the Tyne/Solway line, or contracted again to
focus more precisely on the area north of the short-lived Antonine Wall along
the Forth/Clyde line. This elasticity is helpful, for the Anglo-Saxons and the
Britons between the Humber and the Forth/Clyde line faced both south and
north simultaneously, and thus played a key role in transmitting religious and
cultural influences between the north and the south of Britain.
northern britons and southern picts
In the fifth and sixth centuries, as we have seen, Christianity spread north
from the Roman-ruled area to the British peoples living between the two
walls: this is implied by Patrick’s letter against Coroticus, by the distribution
of Eccles place-names, and by the scatter of Christian Latin inscriptions from
Whithorn and Chesterholm as far north as the Catstane, which stood in a
121
Cf. Winterbottom (1976); Wright (1984) and (1997), pp. 82–7;Kerlou
´
egan (1987).
122
Nash-Williams (1950), p. 77,no.62;cf. also no. 139.
123
Cf. Jackson (1964); Hughes (1980), pp. 68–73, 88–94;Sims-Williams (1998); Stancliffe (1999),
pp. 124–9.
124
Dark (1994), pp. 184–91.
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452 clare stancliffe
fifth- to seventh-century long-cist cemetery near Edinburgh.
125
Some 50 kilo-
metres east of the latter lies Traprain Law, an important stronghold of the
(British) Votadini (or Gododdin); and here excavations have revealed the
foundations of a building which has been plausibly identified as a church.
126
ABrittonic poem, The Gododdin, portrays the Votadini warriors attacking
the Anglo-Saxons as Christians (though it must be recognised that the poem
reached its written form some centuries later, and details could thus have been
altered).
127
What, however, of the peoples of northern Britain taken in its narrowest
sense, the Picts and the Dalriadan Irish north of the Forth/Clyde isthmus?
Unfortunately, very little literary evidence survives from the Picts themselves;
we therefore have to fall back on information gleaned from their Anglo-Saxon
and Dalriadan neighbours (both of whom sought to dominate the Pictish
church at different stages of its development), together with archaeology and
place-name evidence. First, Bede’s account:
In the year of our Lord 565 ...there came from Ireland to Britain a priest and abbot
namedColumba...topreach the word of God to the kingdoms of the northern
Picts...ThesouthernPictswholiveonthissideofthemountains had, so it is
said, long ago given up the errors of idolatry and received the true faith through the
preaching of the Word by that reverend and holy man Bishop Ninian, a Briton who
had received orthodox instruction at Rome in the faith and the mysteries of the truth.
Hisepiscopalsee...iscommonlycalledWhithorn.
128
Thus according to Bede, the Picts were converted in two stages: the southern
Picts (i.e. those between the Forth and the Grampians) by the Roman-trained
British bishop, Ninian; and the northern Picts by the Irish monk, Columba. It
can be inferred that Bede was here drawing on a Pictish, not a Columban source
of information;
129
and Bede will also have derived information on Ninian from
Whithorn.
Bede’s account, written long after the events he was describing, arouses var-
ious misgivings. First, the picture seems too tidy, with two separate missions to
two separate political groupings amongst the Picts. Historical reality was prob-
ably more complex: for instance, an early source alludes to Columba preaching
to the tribes of the Tay, i.e. the southern Picts.
130
Secondly, Bede misrepresents
Columba as coming to Britain specifically as a missionary: Adomn
´
an’s Life of St
Columba shows that although he did preach to particular Pictish households,
this was not his sole concern. Perhaps Bede has distorted the career of Ninian,
for whom our sources are poor, in much the same way: his evangelisation of
125
Thomas (1991–2), p. 4;Dalland (1992), pp. 203–4.Cf.pp. 429–35 above.
126
Smith (1996), pp. 25–6.
127
Wendy Davies, chapter 9 above.
128
Bede, HE iii.4.
129
Cf. Kirby (1973), pp. 21–4;Duncan (1981).
130
See p. 458 below.