itarian inscription is
dated 542-3. About the same time the Church in Abyssinia, founded in
the time of S. Athanasius, received the national religion of the
country through the conversion of the Negus at the end {112} of the
fifth century. While the land of Safar at times relapsed into
heathenism and massacred Christians, the Abyssinians remained firm in
the faith. Procopius tells that Ellesthaeos, an Ethiopian king, during
the reign of Justin I., invaded the land of the Homerites to avenge
their persecutions and to suppress the Jewish predominance and set up a
Christian king. With him and his successors Justinian entered into
treaties, as also with the kings of Axum or Abyssinia. While the
Muhammadan conquest swept away the Christianity of the Arabians and
drove those who clung to it northward to the banks of the Euphrates,
the Church in Abyssinia, which had accepted Monophysitism, remained
independent, just as its mother church of Egypt obtained toleration.
It still continues separate, Monophysite, and in communion with the
Coptic Church of Egypt.

{113}

CHAPTER X

THE CHURCH IN THE WESTERN ISLES

[Sidenote: Christianity in Britain.]

When Gregory the Great sent Augustine and his brother monks to preach
to the Teutonic tribes which had made Britain their home, there were
already two Churches in the island. There was the Church of the
Brythons, gradually separated by the advance of the Saxons into the
Churches of Cumbria or Strathclyde, Wales, and West Wales or Cornwall.
These stood apart from the English for a long time, were late in
accepting the Catholic customs of the West, and had no influence on the
progress of English Christianity. And there was the Church founded in
North Britain by Celtic missionaries from Ireland. In Ireland there
seems little doubt that Christianity was known by the end of the fourth
century. In the fifth century the progress was extraordinarily rapid.
S. Patrick "organised the Christianity which already existed; he
converted kingdoms which were still pagan, especially in the west; and
he brought Ireland into connection with the Church of the Empire, and
made it formally part of Universal Christendom." [1]

The subsequent history of the Church in Ireland forms a fit
introduction to that of the Church in {114} England, in spite of the
separation between them. Irish Christianity did not long preserve its
close union with Western Europe. The popes, as well as the emper