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Reclaiming the English Tribes
Rome was the first to send light and teaching, for tho
the Irish Columbanus and Dicuil with companions are
said to have been in East Anglia before they were in
Gaul, there is little evidence of any work accomplished
there by them. 1 Thus it came about that Augustine and
his associates appeared in Kent thirty-eight years before
the Irish missionaries left lona for Northumberland. But
again in the case of the Roman missionaries we have evidence
of the dread and repugnance felt in relation to the
English barbarians. Augustine and his company had set
out from Rome in June, 596; but the more these repre-
sentatives of Roman civilization neared their destination
the more pronounced became their distaste for the enter-
prise in hand. At each stopping place accounts reached
them concerning the uncouth islanders sufficient to deter
the stoutest hearts. The Saxons were more ferocious
than wild beasts, it was said; they preferred cruelties
to feasting; they thirsted for innocent blood; they held
in abhorrence the Christian name; and torture and death
were sure to await the emissaries of civilization. At
Aries, or Aix-en-Provence, the missionaries, says Bede,
"were seized with a sudden fear and began to think of
returning home, rather than proceed to a barbarous, fierce
and unbelieving nation to whose very speech they were
strangers," 2
finally deputizing Augustine to acquaint Pope
Gregory with the facts as they had learned them. Augus-
tine went back to Rome and saw the Pope, while his
companions
awaited the new word of command. That
word, carried back by Augustine, was to go forward on
their journey in the words of the pope, the greater the
1 Jonas, the biographer of Columbanus, Is the chief authority for this
sojourn in England. They appear to have "found the hearts of the people
In darkness," and despairing of "sowing the seeds of salvation," went to
the "nearest nations" (Migne, Pat. Lat., v. 87, col. 1016).
2 Hist. Eccl., Book I. Ch. XXXII.
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