first fight was with Cadwallon. A small Northumbrian force
gathered in 635 near the Roman Wall, and pledged itself at the new King's
bidding to become Christian if it conquered in the fight. Cadwallon fell
fighting on the "Heaven's Field," as after times called the field of
battle; the submission of Deira to the conqueror restored the kingdom of
Northumbria; and for seven years the power of Oswald equalled that of
Eadwine. It was not the Church of Paulinus which nerved Oswald to this
struggle for the Cross, or which carried out in Bernicia the work of
conversion which his victory began. Paulinus fled from Northumbria at
Eadwine's fall; and the Roman Church, though established in Kent, did
little in contending elsewhere against the heathen reaction. Its place in
the conversion of northern England was taken by missionaries from
Ireland. To understand the true meaning of this change we must remember
how greatly the Christian Church in the west had been affected by the
German invasion. Before the landing of the English in Britain the
Christian Church stretched in an unbroken line across Western Europe to
the furthest coasts of Ireland. The conquest of Britain by the pagan
English thrust a wedge of heathendom into the heart of this great
communion and broke it into two unequal parts. On one side lay Italy,
Spain, and Gaul, whose churches owned obedience to and remained in direct
contact with the See of Rome, on the other, practically cut off from the
general body of Christendom, lay the Church of Ireland. But the condition
of the two portions of Western Christendom was very different. While the
vigour of Christianity in Italy and Gaul and Spain was exhausted in a
bare struggle for life, Ireland, which remained unscourged by invaders,
drew from its conversion an energy such as it has never known since.
Christianity was received there with a burst of popular enthusiasm, and
letters and arts sprang up rapidly in its train. The science and Biblical
knowledge which fled from the Continent took refuge in its schools. The
new Christian life soon beat too strongly to brook confinement within the
bounds of Ireland itself. Patrick, the first missionary of the island,
had not been half a century dead when Irish Christianity flung itself
with a fiery zeal into battle with the mass of heathenism which was
rolling in upon the Christian world. Irish missionaries laboured among
the Picts of the Highlands and among the Frisians of the northern