William Blake, the 18th Century poet, employed the phrase “green and pleasant land”, when describing England, in his poem “Jerusalem”, now one of our most stirring patriotic songs. Seeing Jerusalem, in this New Testament age, as being synonymous with the Church, Blake promised:
“I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my han,
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In England's green and pleasant land”.
The idea of Britain (not merely the territory we call England today) being green, pleasant and fertile helped to make these islands one of the most sought-after locations in ancient Europe. But equally important was its wealth of precious metals, such as gold, silver, lead and tin, the latter of which was much sought-after, not least by the Romans, who left us plenty of evidence of their exploitation of our mineral wealth. In the 5th Century AD came the Anglo-Saxons, attracted by the fertile lands.
While the Romans were not the first to covet the richness of our islands, they are significant in that they were the conduit, employed in the hands of God, through which the Christian message would come to our ancient ancestors. The Romans had names for the various parts of our islands some of which are still with us today, indicating their profound influence upon our geography and culture. The area which they conquered and transformed into the Roman province, they called Britannia, while the region north of the Firth of Forth and the Clyde was named Caledonia. To the west lay Ireland, to which they gave the name Hibernia.
Before we delve into early Christian Britain, we might ask: “Where did the British come from?” An explanation finding ever-greater acceptance today is that the original Britons were Trojans, living in what is now western Turkey. Displaced into Greece after the ‘Trojan Wars’, their tribal leader, Brutus (or Bryttys as it is spelt by the Welsh) led his large tribe via the Mediterranean to both Brittany and Britain, where his landing at Totnes in Devon in about 1100 BC (around the time of Old Testament Samuel) is commemorated by the ‘Brutus Stone’. His three sons inherited various parts of Britain. The eldest, Loegr, was awarded most of what is now England. Over 3,000 years later, the Welsh still call England ‘Loegr’. The second son, Cambr, was handed most of western Britain, from where we get the names Cymru, Cambria and Cumbria. The third son, Alba, was given the northern parts of Great Britain, Alba being used as a synonym for Scotland and is now the name of Alex Salmond’s new political party. The Romans, when they came, didn’t call us by a different name, referring to these islands as ‘Britannia’.
The tribe of Brutus brought with them their religion, the ‘oak priests’, or Druids. The oak is no native to Britain, so possibly it was the Druids that brought it here. As time went on, the British race split into different kingdoms, who often quarrelled, but united in the face of an external threat. The old stone circles and altars across our landscape bear witness to this ancient society and their ritual worship which revolved around nature and the seasons. Contrary to claims that the Britons were barbarians, by the time of the Romans it had become a rich trading nation, with a trade mission in the heart of Rome. The elite of both Britain and Rome would study in each other’s universities, many Romans studying at Caerleon in Gwent, where the Britons had built a military-and-academic training college.
Julius Caesar planted the Roman standard in Kent in 55 BC, but,despite landing a force of 12,000 troops, was unable to make good his conquest. In 43 AD Claudius was determined to succeed where his famous predecessor had failed, launching an invasion force of 40,000 troops. Under the leadership of General Agricola a most successful Roman province had emerged by the end of the 1st Century. We recognise many of the leading cities in Roman Britain to this day; York, Chester, Colchester, Lincoln London, Bath, St Albans and Manchester.
Words, however, written from a 21st Century perspective, cannot begin to convey the pandemonium, the barbarity and the immense upheaval of this period in our history. While the British tribes fought back bravely, as in the most famous uprising against Colchester by Queen Boudicca, they were no match against the more disciplined Roman legions. Yet parts of Great Britain were not conquered by the Romans, notably Wales, although the Romans obtained a foothold in the British city of Caerleon. Building a major ampitheatre there for their 6,000 legionaries in 90 AD. But the rest of Wales was where the early Christian church flourished.
The early Church was mission focused. The Apostle Paul wrote about taking the Gospel to where Christ was not named, to avoid building on another man’s foundation (Romans 15:20) and he desired to visit “the regions beyond” (2ndCorinthians 10:16). There was no region further beyond than the British Isles which Tacitus, the Roman historian, described as “the ends of the earth”, in a speech he attributed to a Caledonian military leader.
It is inconceivable, knowing the heart of the early Church as we do, that early missionaries did not visit and begin the work of establishing Jerusalem in these islands. The timeline is most significant. By the time Claudius and Agricola had begun their work of conquering and then consolidating Britannia as a governable territory, the Christian Church was well established within the Empire and had survived the first terrible persecution under monstrous Nero. I would certainly argue that God raised up the mighty Roman Empire for a Gospel purpose. Just as Augustus, the first Emperor, was moved to tax his lands and so directed Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem, so the Romans with their new world order made their extensive dominion from the Middle East to Britain an easier place in which to travel. Never in history could a single message be spread with such ease,
The 17th Century Irish historian Archbishop James Ussher conjectured upon the possibility of the Apostle Paul and Joseph of Arimathea visiting Britain, but while hard facts about these alleged visits are in very short supply, we can look to the ‘Persecutions of Lyons’, 177 AD (mentioned by Dr Alan Clifford in his recent letter to BCN), for evidence of how vigorous the Christian faith was in France (Gaul) at this time. These terrible persecutions preoccupied the then Bishop of Rome, Eleutherius, who,in the very same year, received a letter from King Lucius of Britain. This letter is recorded in the Catalogus Felicianus, a volume listing the Bishops of Rome and various associated documents.
In the letter, a copy of which no longer exists, he asks Bishop Eleutherius for legal advice in connection with declaring Britain a Christian nation. Eleutherius replies (in Latin):
“By the Divine mercy, you have recently received the faith of Christ in the Kingdom of Britain. You have power in your kingdom; use these powers by the grace of God, and select the law through the council of your kingdom, for King David saith: ‘The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof…’ and again, ‘I have loved righteousness and hated iniquity, therefore God, even thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows’.” We are always free to reject the Roman law and those of Caesar, but not so the law of God”.
Whether it was Joseph of Arimathea or another who first brought the Christian faith to these shores, without question this letter indicates a very vigorous Christian faith existing when King Lucius was ruling those parts of Britain under his control.
Over 100 years later, when the Emperor Constantine called a Church Council at Arles, France, to determine a doctrinal dispute, there were so many Christians in Britain that three British Bishops attended, including the Bishop of York.
The Romans, while they did not occupy Ireland, were familiar with the Irish, as the Irish were with the Romans. General Agricola, the conqueror of Britannia, was the first to catalogue Ireland in ancient history with the name Hibernia and, most crucially, the thousands of Roman coins dug up by archaeology throughout the island intimates that much commerce was transacted with the Empire. A picture therefore emerges of the Irish prospering both materially and spiritually, as a consequence of this intercourse with the world beyond their coasts. Indeed, in the 3rd Century there is a record of Cormac MacArt, one of the leading Irish Kings, converting to Christianity, much to the displeasure of the Druids, particularly when he refused to be buried in an old pagan burial ground.
Across the Irish Sea in modern Scotland, the Romans secured territory to the north of Hadrian’s Wall, where Christian communities were formed. One of these communities would be the spiritual nursery of a boy known in the Latin as Patricius, now commonly recognised across the world as St. Patrick. As well as evangelising Ireland, Patrick interacted with the Welsh and there is an old legend claiming he was buried not in Ireland but in Glastonbury, indicating that, at the very least, his influence for Christ extended into Britannia. The Irish, however, have long contended that their famous missionary died and was buried within their shores at Downpatrick, Co Down.
While Christians in Britannia did not suffer to the same extent as their European brothers and sisters during the fiercest of the Roman persecutions, there were martyrdoms. The first of these has been attributed to a Roman Briton called Alban. As a pagan, he protected a Christian leader called Amphibalus, and was as a result converted through his faithful testimony. When the authorities came searching he deliberately and bravely took the place of Amphibalus and thereby sealed his own death.
It is a tribute to the spread of the Church in Roman Britain that she gave the Empire her first Christian Emperor. Constantine the Great’s father, as one of the co-regents responsible for Gaul and Britannia, protected God’s people from the worst excesses of Emperor Diocletian’s attempt to rid the world of Christians. It was in York that Constantine the Great was declared Emperor by his army, which eventually led to his victory over his rivals and the Treaty of Milan of 313 AD, which guaranteed freedom of religion throughout the empire. While the jury of history will continue to debate the genuineness of Constantine’s conversion and while much corruption entered the church in the following decades and centuries, we must admire the sovereignty of God in bringing respite to His persecuted flock through a man who received his Christian sympathies in Britannia.
In the British Museum today visitors can view the Mildenhall Treasure. Unearthed in East Anglia, in 1942 this beautiful set of silverware may well be the last word from Roman Christian Britain. The Christian inscriptions engraved on what was once used for tableware in a Roman home heavily feature the Chi-Rho symbol (a motif known as a Christogram, formed using the first two Greek letters of the name Christ.) which was first used by Constantine. They reveal a society which tolerated Christianity and where God’s people witnessed of their faith in an open fashion, where the Gospel was discussed over meals. Yet the treasure was buried. Times were changing, the empire was collapsing, the soldiers were leaving, a way of life would be gone forever.
But the treasure of truth deposited by the Lamb of God in the green and pleasant land would continue as civilisations rose and fell, as invaders arrived and became settlers – Jerusalem would be established.
Resources
How the British Church was Established in the 1st Century; Tony Bennett
History of the Christian Church; Philip Schaff
Sketches from Church History; S.M. Houghton
Ireland and the Celtic Church; George T. Stokes
A History of Britain; At the Edge of the World; Simon Schama
Jerusalem; William Blake
After the Flood; Bill Cooper
Our Island Story; H.E. Marshall
Clogher Valley Free Presbyterian Church 