.
The Christians at Lyons and Vienne were a small and isolated flock, not
however isolated as foreigners speaking a strange tongue, for Irenaeus,
who was one of them, mentions his daily use of the Gallic language. They
seem to have been almost the only Christians known in Gaul. The ignorance
of the practices of Christianity was so great among the Gauls, that they
were accused of crimes such as they did not believe any man
committed,--banquets of Thyestes, incests of Oedipus. That was in the year
175. Lyons was a wonderful water-centre. An examination of a good map will
surprise even those who know France fairly well. North, south, east, and
west, there were water-ways. Even Eusebius, writing far away in the East,
remarked on this; and you know how tantalisingly silent early historians
are as a rule about such things. And yet Christianity spread exceedingly
slowly. Gregory of Tours, whose inclination would not be to make little of
the early Church in Gaul, seeing that he was a Gallo-Roman of lofty
lineage, and not a newfangled Frank, quotes with complete assent the
statement that a great missionary effort had to be made in Gaul about the
year 250 to spread Christianity; and that so late as that, missionary
bishops had to be sent--neither he nor his authority says by whom--to
seven cities and districts, in most of which, we should otherwise have
supposed, Christianity in its full form had for many years existed. These
were Tours, Arles, Narbonne, Toulouse, Paris, Auvergne, and Limoges[27].
With the exception of Paris, that does not carry us very far towards
Britain, even in the middle of the third century. There is not any
evidence, and without evidence it would be unreasonable to imagine so
improbable a thing, that far-away Britain was in advance of Gaul by
decades of Christian years. Gregory of Tours, however, was not completely
informed. We may probably accept, as having some historical foundation,
the story that some of those who escaped from the persecution at Lyons did
push up northwards and teach Christianity at Autun, Dijon, and Langres.
The last-named town was well up on one of the routes to Britain. It was
the death-place of Abbot Ceolfrid on his journey towards Rome in 716.

If we look to the traditional dates of the establishment of bishoprics in
the parts of Gaul which face the Britannic isles, we shall find that even
tradition does not assign to them any very early origin. Beginning with
the archdiocese of Ro