ours were made to win converts. Money was found for the erection of beautiful churches, and the maintenance of attractive services. Convents of men and women were dotted over the country; charitable institutions presented the religion in its most persuasive character; social influences were brought to bear upon individuals; in short, all that statesmanlike plan, skilful intrigue, Jesuitical astuteness, and money, all that Christian earnestness, and zeal, and self-devotion, ably directed, could do, was done, to spread the Roman schism, in the hope of gaining a preponderance of influence and political power, and so ultimately of winning back England to the obedience of Rome.

The result has been disappointment. It soon appeared that High Churchmanship was not an easy introduction to Romanism, but, on the contrary, its most formidable opponent. The Roman priests and sisters have won a number of influential converts from the higher classes, and a certain number out of the mass of the poorer classes, who, having no religion, were sure to be attracted by all that is really good and attractive which the Roman sect has to offer them. But the total number of adherents gained by all these extraordinary efforts is comparatively small, and is not increasing.

Meantime the character of the sect has deteriorated. The old respectable Gallicanism has been replaced by an exaggerated Ultramontanism; and the new dogmas of the Immaculate Conception and the Papal Infallibility have placed two new barriers in the way of the acceptance of modern Romanism by intelligent and educated

men.

ROMANO-BRITISH CHURCH. The victorious expeditions of Julius Cæsar into Britain, B. c. 55 and 54, made the island known to the Roman world, and opened up a commercial intercourse with it; but it was the Generals of Claudius, A.D. 43, who finally con

A

island, and made it a province of the Roman Empire. It is of course very possible that Christians may have visited Britain at an early period, but there is not a particle of evidence to prove that they did so. There is absolutely no authority whatever for the idea that the Apostle St. Paul ever personally visited these islands. The earliest authority for the Glastonbury tradition is William of Malmesbury, who is of post-Norman date; and though Glastonbury is an ancient British foundation, and perhaps one of the earliest Christian settlements in the island, yet the story of its foundation is purely mythical. third legend, that we owe our Christianity to Lucius, King of the Britons, who in the second century sent an embassy to Elentherus, Bishop of Rome, asking for Christian teachers, rests on a note inserted in the catalogue of Roman Pontiffs in the year 530, which briefly says, under the name of Eleutherius (177-190), "in his time, Lucius, King of Britain, was converted.' There may possibly have been some local chief of that name who had the title of king of a British tribe; but in the second century the whole of England was under the Empire.

"

The high probability is that the Church of Christ was not extended into Britain until about the middle of the third century, and that it passed over from Gaul. It is known that a few scattered churches were planted in Gaul from 150 to 170, of which Lyons was the chief and the most northern; and that a new impulse of missionary zeal about 250 A.D. spread the gospel throughout the north of Gaul; and it is conjectured that it was at this time that the unspent force of this spirit of missionary enterprise crossed the channel and planted the Church in Britain. The first fact in the history of the Church of England is that at the Coun cil of the Western Church, which Constantine summoned at Arles, in the

south of Gaul, in A. D. 314, there were present three British bishops attended by a priest and a deacon, viz. Eborius, Bishop of York, Restitutus, Bishop of London, and Adelfius, Bishop of "Colonia Londinensium," which has been variously conjectured to be Colchester, Lincoln, and Caerleon-on-Usk. If Adelfius were Bishop of Caerlon, then the three bishops would be the bishops of the capital cities of the three provinces into which Roman Britain was then divided. From this fact we draw the conclusion that at this period Christian Churches had been founded in the cities of the British province; that they had diocesan bishops, priests, and deacons; and that they were in full communion with the rest of Christendom. And we conjecture that a Church thus spread over the land from York to London, and from London to Caerleon, must have been the work of years; if we say of fifty or sixty years, that will bring us to the period of the planting of the Churches of northern Gaul, and the supposed extension of the Church to Britain about the middle of the third century above suggested.

Bede's story of the martyrdom of St. Alban outside the city of Verulamium in the first year of the Diocletian persecution, A.D. 303, may be accepted as authentic in its main features, and helps to fill in the dry historical outline. Resuming the historical notices, there were British bishops at the Council of Sardica, A. D. 347, and at that of Ariminum A.D. 360. The emperor had ordered the expenses of the bishops attending this latter Council to be paid out of the imperial purse, but it was deemed unbecoming to accept this bounty on the part of the Aquitainians, Gauls, and Britons, who paid their own expenses: "Three only of those from Britain, on account of poverty, made use of the public gift, rejecting the contributions offered by the other bishops, because they considered it more proper to burden the treasury than individuals."

In the latter part of the fourth century the writings of Chrysostom, Sozomen, and Jerome, indicate that there was a Church in Britain, having churches, altars, scriptures, and holding intercourse both with Rome and Palestine.

At the beginning of the fifth century the Churches of Britain were troubled with the Pelagian heresy, which had either spread so widely, or was so influentially supported, that the orthodox party sought help from the Gallican Church (in 429 A.D.) to combat the heresy. That Church held a Synod which deputed two of its greatest men, Germanus, Bishop of Auxerre, and Lupus, Bishop of Troyes, to go to Britain to confirm the faith. At a Synod held at Verulamium their arguments and authority seem to have silenced the heretical party for a time; but seventeen years afterwards (446) Germanus and Severus, afterwards Bishop of Treves (Lupus having died in the mean time), paid a second visit to Britain on a similar errand.

Geoffrey of Monmouth tells us of three archbishops presiding over the three provinces into which the southern part of the island was divided, and twenty-eight bishops in the principal cities, and would lead us to suppose that Christianity had at length become the religion of the people of the province of Britain generally, and that the old heathenism lingered only in the remote corners of the land.* The legendary details with which Geoffrey of Monmouth has filled his pages give a fabulous air to all that he writes; but Mr. Haddan says, "the general tenor of Geoffrey of Monmouth's history (obvious fable apart) is in accordance with probability, so far as regards the fortunes and acts of the British Church; its details are wholly untrustworthy."

Some particulars of the British Church are as follows: "The mode of computing Easter was the cycle called

According to Bede, 'Eccl. Hist.' ii. 2, Augustine found seven British bishops, a large body of monks at Bangor, and many learned men.

by the name of Sulpicius Severus, a disciple of St. Martin of Tours (though really of earlier date), which had been adopted by the Western Churches, and which continued to be used by the British Church after the continental Churches had adopted the more correct cycle of Victorius Aquitanus. The ecclesiastical tonsure was neither of the Greek nor the Roman fashion, but peculiar to the British and Celtic Churches it shaved the fore part of the head, and left the hair long behind. The absence of an archiepiscopate; the consecration of bishops by a single bishop; peculiar rites in the ordination of priests and deacons different from those of other Churches; a peculiarity in the mode of administering baptism (it consisted probably of single instead of trine immersion); a custom in the consecration of churches and monasteries, of giving the dedication not to some departed saint but to the living founder. There are indications that

B. C.

the liturgy of the British Church, though of the same family as that of the Gallican and Spanish Churches, had its distinctive peculiarities; and that the British Church had a Latin Version of the Bible peculiar to itself founded upon the old Latin, and different from the Vulgate." We do not perhaps need these evidences that the British Church was independent of Rome; there is no shadow of pretence for assuming any such dependence. The true historical value and interest of these facts is that they show an unexpected vigour of initiation in the British Church, and probably indicate a greater isolation from the Churches of the continent than we should have anticipated.

'British Church Councils and Eccl. Documents,' Haddan and Stubbs; Remains of A. W. Haddan,' by Bishop Forbes, 1876; Early English Church History,' by Professor Bright, 1878; The Ancient British Church,' by J. Pryce, 1878.

CENTURY. A.D. 1.

43

II.

of Ariminum.

arch. From this gallery, or loft, the gospel was sometimes read in the Communion Service; here sometimes (as in the gallery at the end of a domestic hall) were placed the minstrels or musicians who accompanied the Service; and in later times the organ which superseded them. It was called the rood loft because a rood was usually placed upon it, from the fourteenth century downwards. [See Rood.]

ROOD SCREEN, a name given to the screen between the chancel and the nave of a church, because a rood was usually placed upon its top. [See Screen, Chancel, and Rood.]

ROSARY, a chaplet of beads, consisting usually of five decades (tens) of small beads, divided by four larger beads, with a cross, and sometimes a medal and other religious trinkets, attached to the knot. It was a help to pious people to keep account of the aves and paternosters which they said; the small beads representing aves and the large ones paternosters; the devotee saying an ave let a bead fall from his fingers; and so on till he came to a large bead, which told him that he had said ten aves, and that he was now to say a paternoster; and so on till he had completed his rosary. St. Dominic is usually called the inventor of the rosary; in truth rosaries had long been in use, and are still in use in the East, to answer the same purpose as the abacus still used in our Infant Schools, viz. to help people to perform arithmetical computations in the ordinary transactions of buying and selling. It had been adapted to the purpose of keeping account of prayers long before the time of Dominic, but he probably brought this form of devotion into general popularity, and introduced the more complex use of it, and the various meanings to be attached to it, and various prayers to be used with it, which may be found described in the ordinary devotional books which teach its use. The beads of a rosary were of various material, from natural berries and carved wood up to silver and gold,

and even pearls and gems; the trinkets attached to it might include saintly relics.

ROYAL SUPREMACY. [See Supremacy, Royal.]

RUBRICS. The general name given to the rules or directions which indicate the mode of celebrating the Holy Eucharist, and of saying the offices and rites of the Church. It is commonly said that they are so called because written in red ink so as to distinguish them from the text and catch the eye. But the fact is, that these directions are not always found in the ancient MSS. to be written in red ink; sometimes they are in blue ink. The word is derived from rubrica, the string covered with red ochre used by carpenters to mark a straight line on wood. The word came to imply any rule or direction; and thus came to be applied to the directions of the liturgy and offices.

RURAL DEAN. The office was not unknown in the Saxon Church; as the diocese was originally coterminous with the kingdom, and the archdeaconry with the county, so the rural deaneries seem to have coincided with the hundreds, and to have taken their titles from them, as they do for the most part to this day. The title dean may have arisen from the fact that every hundred was at first divided into ten tithings; and in fact, in Wales especially, and in some places in England, the deanery does still contain precisely ten parishes. They were appointed by the bishop, to execute his processes within the deanery, to report to the bishop on cases of scandalous offences among clergy or laity, to inspect the fabrics and furniture of the churches. As the institution of rural deaneries almost coincided with hundreds, so the inquisitorial and executive functions of the rural deans were analogous to those of the sheriff and hundred-reeve; the fixed synodical assemblies of the clergy, for minor causes every three weeks, and for more important business once a quarter, correspond with the sheriff's tourn and the sittings of the popular courts.