lock
him out. Wilfrid triumphed, and the English Church was in all outward
matters regulated in conformity with that of Rome.

23. =Archbishop Theodore and the Penitential System.=--In =668=, four
years after Oswiu's decision was taken, Theodore of Tarsus was
consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury at Rome by the Pope himself. When
he arrived in England the time had come for the purely missionary
stage of the English Church to come to an end. Hitherto the bishops
had been few, only seven in all England. Their number was now
increased, and they were set to work no longer merely to convert the
heathen, but to see that the clergy did their duty amongst those who
had been already converted. Gradually, under these bishops, a
parochial clergy came into existence. Sometimes the freemen of a
hamlet, or of two or three hamlets together, would demand the constant
residence of a priest. Sometimes a lord would settle a priest to teach
his serfs. The parish clergy attacked violence and looseness of life
in a way different from that of the monks. The monks had given
examples of extreme self-denial. Theodore introduced the penitential
system of the Roman Church, and ordered that those who had committed
sin should be excluded from sharing in the rites of the Church until
they had done penance. They were to fast, or to repeat prayers,
sometimes for many years, before they were readmitted to communion.
Many centuries afterwards good men objected that these penances were
only bodily actions, and did not necessarily bring with them any real
repentance. In the seventh century the greater part of the population
could only be reached by such bodily actions. They had never had any
thought that a murder, for instance, was anything more than a
dangerous action which might bring down on the murderer the vengeance
of the relations of the murdered man, which might be bought off with
the payment of a weregild of a few shillings. The murderer who was
required by the Church to do penance was being taught that a murder
was a sin against God and against himself, as well as an offence
against his fellow-men. Gradually--very gradually--men would learn
from the example of the monks and from the discipline of penance that
they were to live for something higher than the gratification of their
own passions.

[Illustration: Saxon church at Bradford-on-Avon, Wilts.]

24. =Ealdhelm and Caedmon.=--When a change is good in itself, it
usually bears fruit in unexp