Page:The golden days of the early English church from the arrival of Theodore to the death of Bede, volume 1.djvu/21

Rh written five volumes of closely packed matter dealing with the beginnings of the English Church during less than a century and a half of its early career.

In England we have a further good reason for adopting this method, in that here we can trace the story of the national Church, the mother Church of Germany, and of its own many offspring, to its exact starting-point. It began as a missionary Church, planted by a number of Roman monks trained and sent by a master of whom we know a great deal. We can follow his aims and plans as set out by his own pen, and we can trace the steps of his evangelists step by step. I have been blamed by some writers for devoting a whole volume to the life and career of the great Pope himself who started the English mission. I think I was right, and others were good enough to think so too. There are few characters in history who, in a career of thirteen years, did so much to alter the serious thoughts and ways of influential men as Gregory the Great, and there are very few of whose doings and thoughts we know so much at first hand. He had an almost vacant stage to play his part upon, and when he left it there was no one to fill his place for centuries. Whether for good or ill the life of the Church for many a decade followed the lines marked out largely by his strong will and stronger prejudices. He was also an experienced politician and magistrate, and held his own with the powerful Emperor and with the Lombards. He was an excellent man of