Comp. Ebrard’s articles Die culdeische Kirche des 6, 7 und 8ten Jahrh., in Niedner’s "Zeitschrift
für Hist. Theologie" for 1862 and 1863.
Ebrard and McLauchan are the ablest advocates of the anti-Romish and alleged semi-Protestant
character of the old Keltic church of Ireland and Scotland; but they present it in a more favorable
light than the facts warrant.
Dr. W. D. Killen (Presbyt.): The Ecclesiastical History of Ireland from the Earliest Period to the
Present Times. London, 1875, 2 vols.
Alex. Penrose Forbes (Bishop of Brechin, d. 1875): Kalendars of Scottish Saints. With Personal
Notices of those of Alba, Laudonia and Stratchclyde. Edinburgh (Edmonston & Douglas), 1872.
By the same: Lives of S. Ninian and S. Kentigern. Compiled in the twelfth century. Ed. from
the best MSS. Edinburgh, 1874.
William Reeves (Canon of Armagh): Life of St. Columba, Founder of Hy. Written by Adamnan,
ninth Abbot of that monastery. Edinburgh, 1874.
William F. Skene: Keltic Scotland. Edinburgh, 2 vols., 1876, 1877.
*F. E. Warren (Fellow of St. John’s Coll., Oxford): The Liturgy and Ritual of the Celtic Church.
Oxford 1881 (291 pp.).
F. Loofs: Antiquae Britonum Scotorumque ecclesiae moves, ratio credendi, vivendi, etc. Lips.,
1882.
Comp. also the relevant sections in the Histories Of England, Scotland, and Ireland, by Hume, (Ch.
I-III.), Lingard (Ch. I. VIII.), Lappenberg (Vol. I.), Green (Vol. I.), Hill Burton (Hist. of Scotland,
Vol. I.); Milman’s Latin Christianity (Book IV., Ch. 3–5); Maclear’s Apostles of Mediaeval
Europe (Lond. 1869), Thomas Smith’s Mediaeval Missions (Edinb. 1880).
§ 8. The Britons.
Literature: The works of Bede, Gildas, Nennius, Ussher, Bright, Pryce, quoted in § 7.
Britain made its first appearance in secular history half a century before the Christian era, when
Julius Caesar, the conqueror of Gaul, sailed with a Roman army from Calais across the channel,
and added the British island to the dominion of the eternal city, though it was not fully subdued till
the reign of Claudius (a.d. 41–54). It figures in ecclesiastical history from the conversion of the
Britons in the second century. Its missionary history is divided into two periods, the Keltic and the
Anglo-Saxon, both catholic in doctrine, as far as developed at that time, slightly differing in
discipline, yet bitterly hostile under the influence of the antagonism of race, which was ultimately
overcome in England and Scotland but is still burning in Ireland, the proper home of the Kelts. The
Norman conquest made both races better Romanists than they were before.
The oldest inhabitants of Britain, like the Irish, the Scots, and the Gauls, were of Keltic
origin, half naked and painted barbarians, quarrelsome, rapacious, revengeful, torn by intestine
factions, which facilitated their conquest. They had adopted, under different appellations, the gods
of the Greeks and Romans, and worshipped a multitude of local deities, the genii of the woods,
rivers, and mountains; they paid special homage to the oak, the king of the forest. They offered the
fruits of the earth, the spoils of the enemy, and, in the hour of danger, human lives. Their priests,