CHAPTER X.
AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY AND THE IRISH CHURCH.
We have now to consider how the Irish Church came to be moulded by exterior influences. Up to the present our attention has been confined to such developments as took place independently. The Irish Church, as we have seen, stood alone beyond the reach of the revolutions and controversies that produced such changes in other parts of Christendom. It is a remarkable fact that it was her own missionary enterprise that first brought her within the sphere of foreign influence. The peculiarities of the Irish Church were well known. Columbanus and other Irish travellers had, in most countries of Europe, founded institutions which were formed after the model of those at home. The points in which they differed from those around them furnished subjects for discussion to popes and synods, but no effort seems to have been made to influence Ireland itself, or bring it into conformity with the other Western countries. It was only when in England the Irish missionaries met those who had been sent from Rome, and absolutely refused to regard them as other than heretical, that any action was taken; and even then it was anything but effectual. In regard to the particular matter—the Paschal controversy—which was first in dispute, it was the influence of native scholars and travellers
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