The Celts - Softcover

Inhaltsangabe

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1893. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XL CONCLUSION. It is now time to gather together the salient points which mark the history of the conversion of the Celts. (i.) And first, we cannot fail to be struck with the fact that the Celtic missions addressed themselves, in the first instance, to the kings and chieftains. This was not so in the first age of the Church. Then her conversions were individual rather than national. The new faith made its way from below rather than from above. The early Church worked her way, in the literal sense of the word, ".underground, under camp and palace, under senate and forum."1 But turn where we will in these Celtic missions, we notice how different were the features that marked them now. In Dalaradia St. Patrick obtains the site of his earliest church from the chieftain of the country, Dichu. At Tara, he obtains from King Laoghaire a reluc 1 Dean Stanley's ' Tntrod. Lecture on Eccles. History,' p. xxxviii. tant toleration of his ministry. In Connaught lie addresses himself first to the chieftains of Tirawley, and in Munster baptizes Angus, the king, at Cashel, the seat of the kings. What he did in Ireland reproduces itself in the Celtic missions of Wales and Scotland, and we cannot but take note of the important influence of Welsh and. Pictish chiefs. The policy thus pursued was dictated as much by the wants of the case as by a knowledge of the character and habits of the people. "The chieftain," it has been observed, "once secured, the clan, as a matter of course, were disposed to follow in his steps. To attempt the conversion of the clan, in opposition to the will of the chieftain, would probably have been to rush upon inevitable death, or, at the least, to risk a violent expulsion from the district. The people may not have adopted the actual profession of...

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.