, and it was at Andover that Olaf
Trigvason, King of Norway, was confirmed by Bishop Aelfeah, calling
King Aethelred father. He went back to Norway a Christian devoted to
the conversion of his people.[4]

The English Church at the beginning of the eleventh century was in full
communion with the Western Church, but was practically to a large
extent apart from papal influence. Church and State walked hand in
hand, and the relations between sovereign and archbishop resembled
those of the New rather than the Old Rome. The missionary energy which
had in former years sent forth Wilfrith and Winfrith was now for the
time exhausted. England needed a new religious revival. It came
later, at the time of a political conquest.

Meanwhile the Irish Church was regaining its learning and its
missionary zeal: both were expressed in {122} the _consuetudo
peregrinandi_ with which the Irish monks were credited in the ninth
century. But from the time of the Danish invasions the Irish Church,
and the Welsh also, suffered severely. Heathen settlements in Ireland
were only gradually converted, as that of Dublin in 943. The disturbed
state of their home encouraged Irish monks to cross the seas. Action
and reaction led Ireland more close than ever to the Roman papacy.

[1] Bury, _Life of S. Patrick_, pp. 212-13.

[2] R. L. Poole, _Illustrations of the History of Medieval Thought_, p.
10.

[3] Cf. Roger, _L'Enseignement des lettres classiques_, p. 236.

[4] See ch. xi.

{123}

CHAPTER XI

THE CONVERSION OF SLAVS AND NORTHMEN

[Sidenote: Cyril and Methodius, 868.]

The ninth century was a great age of conversion, and the work is very
largely associated with two great names in the development of
civilisation and learning, those of two brothers, born in Thessalonica,
probably between 820 and 830--Constantine (who changed his name to
Cyril when he was consecrated bishop by Hadrian II. in 868) and
Methodius. Their lives show the connection still existing between Rome
and the East in Church matters, and illustrate the zeal for educational
work which was so conspicuous a feature in the converting energy of the
Church of Constantinople. Cyril was not only a priest and a
missionary, he was a "philosopher." Methodius, it is said, had been a
civil administrator. Both were scholars and linguists, and the
influence which they exercised upon the Slavs is incalculably great.
In missions always it is the personal influence