promising state of things was destroyed, and the clergy
driven by the pagan invaders to the inaccessible parts of Wales,
Scotland, and Ireland. The sight of some English children exposed for
sale in the slave-market at Rome suggested to Gregory the Great the
attempt of reconverting the island. On his assuming the pontificate he
commissioned the monk Augustine for that purpose; and after the usual
exertion of female influence in the court of King Ethelbert by Bertha,
his Frankish princess, and the usual vicissitudes of backsliding, the
faith gradually won its way throughout the whole country. A little
opposition occurred on the part of the ancient clergy, who retained in
their fastnesses the traditions of the old times, particularly in regard
to Easter. But this at length disappeared; an intercourse sprang up with
Rome, and it became common for the clergy and wealthy nobles to visit
that city.

[Sidenote: Irish and British missionaries.]

Displaying the same noble quality which in our own times characterises
it, British Christianity did not fail to exert a proselytizing spirit.
As, at the end of the sixth century, Columban, an Irish monk of Banchor,
had gone forth as a missionary, passing through France, Switzerland, and
beyond the confines of the ancient Roman empire, so about a century
later Boniface, an Englishman of Devonshire, repaired to Germany, under
a recommendation from the pope and Charles Martel, and laboured among
the Hessians and Saxons, cutting down their sacred oaks, overturning
their altars, erecting churches, founding bishoprics, and gaining at
last, from the hands of the savages, the crown of martyrdom. In the
affinity of their language to those of the countries to which they went,
these missionaries from the West found a very great advantage.

It is the glory of Pope Formosus, the same whose body underwent a
posthumous trial, that he converted the Bulgarians, a people who came
from the banks of the Volga. The fact that this event was brought about
by a picture representing the judgment-day shows on what trifling
circumstances these successes turned. The Slavians were converted by
Greek missionaries, and for them the monk Cyril invented an alphabet, as
Ulphilas had done for the Goths. The predatory Normans, who plundered
the churches in their forays, embraced Christianity on settling in
Normandy, as the Goths, in like circumstances, had elsewhere done. The
Scandinavians were converted by St. Anschar.