The Monks and their Missionary Work 355 Section 57. Missionary Work of the Monks The first great undertaking of the monks was the conver- The monks sion of those German peoples who had not yet been won over ^ries to Christianity. These the monks made not merely Christians, but also dutiful subjects of the Pope. In this way the strength of the Roman Catholic Church was greatly increased. The first people to engage the attention of the monks were the heathen German tribes who had conquered the once Christian Britain./ The islands which are now known as the kingdom of Great Early Britain Britain and Ireland were, at the opening of the Christian era, occupied by several Celtic peoples of whose customs and re- ligion we know almost nothing. Julius Caesar commenced the conquest of the islands (55 B.C.) ; but the Romans never suc- ceeded in establishing their power beyond the wall which they built, from the Clyde to the Firth of Forth, to keep out the wild tribes of the North. Even south of the wall the country was not completely Romanized, and the Celtic tongue has actually survived down to the present day in Wales (see p. 323, above). At the opening of the fifth century the barbarian invasions Saxons and forced Rome to withdraw its legions from Britain in order to que^^rita?n protect its frontiers on the Continent. The island was thus left to be conquered gradually by the Germans, mainly Saxons and Angles, who came across the North Sea from the region south of Denmark. Almost all record of what went on during the two centuries following the departure of the Romans has disap- peared. No one knows the fate of the original Celtic inhabitants of England. It was formerly supposed that they were all killed or driven to the mountain districts of Wales, but this seems un- likely. More probably they were gradually lost among the dom- inating Germans with whom they merged into one people. The Saxon and Angle chieftains established small kingdoms, of which there were seven or eight at the time when Gregory the Great became pope.
