Page:The Saxon Cathedral at Canterbury and The Saxon Saints Buried Therein.djvu/17



S it is impossible to fix with precision the beginning of Christianity in Britain, so it is impossible to fix the date of the earliest buildings in which that religion was practised. We are certain, however, that Christianity had made considerable progress in the country before the time of Constantine the Great (306–337). This Emperor by the celebrated Edict of Milan (A.D. 313) granted to all Christians the same liberty to live according to their own laws and regulations as that possessed by the older religions.

At this time Britain was a Roman province. The unsuccessful expeditions of Julius Caesar undertaken between fifty-five and fifty years before Christ were followed after an interval of nearly one hundred years by a further invasion under Claudius Caesar, A.D. 43. Thereafter, for nearly forty years incessant warfare took place between the legions of Rome and the Britons. At the termination of that time nearly the whole area of what we now call England, Wales and the southern part of Scotland became subject to Rome; being governed by Romans; occupied by a Roman army, by no means consisting of Italian Romans; colonized by Roman citizens and visited by Roman Emperors. This Roman civilization founded cities; built temples, palaces; villas, and baths; constructed roads and aqueducts; Britain became as highly civilized as almost any other part of the Roman Empire.

Christianity had reached Britain by way of France (then called Transalpine Gaul) before the conclusion of the second or soon after the beginning of the third century. No churches are recorded to have existed in France before the second century; we may therefore conclude that none existed in Britain until some time later, but whatever may have been the case, in the terrible persecution of Diocletian at the beginning of the fourth century all the conventicula or churches were xi