was less in England than elsewhere in Europe. Dean Milman[1] says on this point, 'With all the Teutonic part of Latin Christendom the belief in the supremacy of the Pope was coeval with their Christianity. It was an article of their original creed as much as the Redemption; their apostles were commissioned by the Pope. To him they humbly looked for instruction and encouragement, even almost for permission to advance upon their sacred adventure. Augustine, Boniface, Ebbo, Anschar, had been papal missionaries.' Almost 100 years before Augustine,[2] Pope Innocent I. had put forward a claim to the filial obedience of the Churches planted by Peter and his successors, and in 347 A.D. the Council of Sardica had countenanced the metropolitan claims of Rome. Thus the Church in England was in every sense a daughter of the Church of Rome, or rather was an extension into England of the one great Catholic Church of the West whose metropolitan seat was Rome. And the papal power remained in England, in varying degrees no doubt, but continuously, until it was abruptly ended by the anti-papal legislation of Henry VIII.
In the century following Augustine, we find Wilfrid obtaining his episcopal authority from Rome, and Theodorus sent direct from Rome to Canterbury. In the seventh century, Bishop Stubbs tells us, Augustine's succession had almost, if not entirely, died out; and towards the end of the eighth, King Offa set up Lichfield as an archbishopric by papal authorisation, obtained, as he suggests, by a 'liberal tribute;' and from that time, or even earlier, until the 25th of Henry VIII. Peter's-pence continued to be paid to Rome.[3] And so we
- ↑ Lat. Christianity, vol iv. p. 4.
- ↑ Milman, op. cit. vol. i. p. 115.
- ↑ Stubbs's Const. Hist. vol. i. pp. 238, 250, 2-51.
