Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 63.djvu/267

Rh century of our era, a complete and organized British church, holding the: catholic faith, represented at the great church councils, and in intercourse with Palestine and Rome. This early church undoubtedly i possessed and disseminated some measure of culture in the Isle, and: when the first contact with the See of Rome came, that culture was certainly broadened, though from first to last during the Saxon period the spiritual control of Rome was specifically rejected. Augustine, the first Archbishop of Canterbury, came to Britain in 596 A. D., and to him in the year 601 A. D. Pope Gregory committed the charge of 'the Bishops of the British.' The church as reorganized by Augustine and his followers maintained the old independence, and when 1 Theodore of Tarsus, a successor of Augustine in the See of Canterbury, deposed Wilfrid, Bishop of York, Pope Agatho was unable to compel either king or archbishop to restore him to his seat. This Theodore of Tarsus is one of the earliest names in English! education. He and the Abbot Adrian, about the year 668 A. D., brought to England new means and methods of education. They made each of the greater monasteries an educational center, and it is certain that in this dark age Greek itself was taught to those who would learn. Indeed, the first important period of English culture was at hand. Bede tells us in his 'Ecclesiastical History' (Vol. IV., C. II.) that in the year 732 A. D. there were living in England disciples of Theodore and Adrian, who knew the Greek and Latin tongues as well as their own language. The use of Latin became indeed so usual that Bede speaks of it as 'the vernacular': 'The • Creed and the Our Father I have myself translated into English for the benefit of those priests who are not familiar with the vernacular.' He himself taught in the monastery school at Jarrow, and wrote small treatises on the Trivium and Quadrivium for use in monastic schools. Alcuin was born into this first spring of learning in the year 735 A. D., and he boasts of the learned men and noble libraries of England. Charlemagne did all that he could to benefit by the scholarship that existed in our island, and in securing the services of Alcuin he initiated that earliest movement of Gallic culture which resulted in the creation later of the University of Paris. The first English period died away all too soon. "The sloth of the priesthood, the unrest of the land, the red ruin of the Dane, killed it south to north, and when Alfred came all that was left were some stray vestiges of scholarship in far Northumbria. "The age was dark indeed, and despite the remarkable efforts made by the church of Rome in the ninth century for the extension of learning and the founding of schools, little could be done. Alfred did what could be done. He