Page:The Saxon Cathedral at Canterbury and The Saxon Saints Buried Therein.djvu/53

THE ROMANO-BRITISH AND SAXON CHURCH the celebrated Epistle of the Gallican Churches Lugdunum and Vienna imply that at this time, A.D. 177, there was a close and intimate connection between the Churches of Asia Minor and Gaul. Constant intercourse was kept up and many of the converts in Gaul would probably have relations in Asia Minor, as Marseilles was originally an ancient Colony of Phocæa.

The great ecclesiastical centre at this time was Lyons (Lugdunum), and in 177 Lyons and Vienna regarded Ephesus as their mother Church, and wrote that wonderful Epistle to their Asiatic brethren recounting the acts of their glorious martyrs during the terrible persecution in Gaul in the second century.

This letter was read from the altars of all the Churches in Asia Minor, and we can hardly doubt but that it was read also to all the Christians then residing in Britain, as at about this time Central and Southern Britain are believed to have received Christian missionaries from Lyons, as had France and Spain; and later on Ireland, Scotland and part of Northern Italy.

The Librarian at Karlsruhe in 1850, a Mr. E. J. Mone, collected fragments of eleven Gallican Liturgies from Palimpsest MSS., one of which he considered to have been contemporary with the issue of the Epistle of the Gallican Churches in 177, and one such fragment is in the possession of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. This Liturgy went out of use about the year A.D. 800, and except for fragments it was thought to have entirely disappeared; but in the seventeenth century four Gallican sacramentaries were discovered, one of which was in the Monastery of Bobbio in North Italy, and was published by Mabillon in 1687. This Monastery was founded by the Irish Missionary, St. Columbanus (540-612) who is believed to have taken a copy of the Gallican Liturgy with him from Gaul to Lombardy. The Henry Bradshaw Society in 1917-1924, published a facsimile of this Gallican Mass-Book found in this Monastery; it is entitled "The Bobbio Missal or Sacramentarium Gallicanum," with text and notes (MS. Paris, Lat. 13246) a copy of which is in the Cathedral Library. The Editors are of opinion from internal evidences that the home of the missal was rather towards some part of France than Italy.

Mabillon and other experts place its date somewhere in the seventh century; Dr. E. A. Lome, who edited The Palæography of the Bobbio Missal (H.B.S.), thinks it to be of about the eighth century, and that it was written in France. It must therefore be getting on for twelve hundred years old; it consists of 300 folios of parchment measuring 7 X 3&#x2153; inches, with about 22 lines to a page. The ink with which it is written is remarkable. The script is what is called majuscule in the body of the Missal, and uncial in the inserted Mass pro princip, which was written by another scribe. The learned editor suggests that the writer, from the shakiness of the writing, was probably suffering from illness or old age; and suggests that it was the work 23