Читать книгу History of the Fylde of Lancashire онлайн

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The advent of the Roman mission initiated a fresh epoch in the ecclesiastical history of the county, monasteries and religious houses sprang up in different parts, and at the consecration of the church and monastery of Ripon, lands bordering on the Ribble, in Hacmundernesse (Amounderness), in Gedene, and in Duninge were presented amongst other gifts to that foundation. Paulinus was created bishop of Northumbria in 627, and it is to his ministrations and pious example that the conversion of the inhabitants of the Fylde and vicinal territory is generally attributed. The Saxon Chronicle records, however, that in 565 Columba “came from Scotia (Ireland) to preach to the Picts.” Columba was born at Garten, a village in county Donegal, and according to Selden and other learned writers, the religion professed by him and the Culdees, as the priests of his order were called, was strictly Presbyterian. Bede writes:—“They preached only such works of charity and piety as they could learn from prophetical, evangelical, and apostolic writings.” Columba established a monastery at Iona. Dr. Giles states that “the ancient name of Iona was I or Hi, or Aoi, which was Latinised into Hyona, or Iona; the common name of it now is I-colum-kill, the Island of Colum of the Cells.” Bishop Turner affirms that “the lands in Amounderness, on the Ribble,” were first presented to a Culdee abbot, named Eata, on the erection of a monastery at Ripon, but that before the building was finished he was dismissed and St. Wilfred made abbot of Ripon, sometime before 661. If the foregoing assertion be correct there is certain evidence that the Culdee doctrines were also promulgated in Lancashire, and doubtless in our own district, at that early date. Bede seems to support such an assumption when he states that the Ripon lands were originally granted to those who professed the creed of the Picts to build a monastery upon, and did not pass to St. Wilfred, bishop of Northumbria, until afterwards, in 705, when he re-edified the monastery. Whatever discrepancies may exist as to the exact period and manner in which Christianity was introduced or revived in the bosoms of our forefathers, there is ample and reliable proof that the majority of them had embraced the true faith about the middle of the seventh century, when churches were probably erected in the hamlets of Kirkham and St. Michael’s-on-Wyre.