Nor was the power of the Christian Church in Britain of a more united
character than that of the civil rulers. No doubt a church had been
formed and organized. There were bishops, so called, in the several
cities; but their authority was little concentrated and their tenets
were discordant. Pilgrimages were even made to the sacred places of
Palestine; and at a very early period monasteries were founded. That of
Bangor, or the Great Circle, seems to have had some relation to the
ancient Druidical worship, upon which it was probably engrafted in that
region where Druidism had long flourished. There were British versions
of the Bible. But that the church had no sustaining power at the period
when civil society was so wholly disorganized, may be inferred from
circumstances which preceded the complete overthrow of Christian rites
by Saxon heathendom.
Bede devotes several chapters of his _Ecclesiastical History_ to the
actions of St. Germanus, who came expressly to Britain to put down the
Pelagian heresy; and, amid the multitude of miraculous circumstances,
records how "the authors of the perverse notions lay hid, and, like the
evil spirits, grieved for the loss of the people that was rescued from
them.
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