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To: Romulus
Uh, no. There were Christians in Rome even before the apostles Peter and Paul. The Roman Church was up and running by 45 -- about the time Claudius's first legions were landing in Britain. Any claim that these legions included Christian missionaries would be fanciful at best.

To use the patristic rule that the Church is "where the bishop is", there was no Church in Britain before Pope Gregory I the Great sent Augustine to Canterbury.

England didn't require "conquering" by Constantine. Have you never heard of Hadrian's Wall? Evidently you don't know that Constantine was in England himself, with his father's troops, when he launched the campaign that would make him Caesar.

Properly chastened for posting off-the-cuff and late at night! Also why I said "if memory serves" - although I would have been better served to wait for my memory.

I do know English history, I just suffer from a poor memory for names (an unfortunate result of having been a less-than-successful mountaineer).

Let me begin with the patristic rule. When Augustine arrived Ethelbert had a Christian wife, who worshipped with Bishop Luidhard of the Franks. True, Ethelbert converted later, but arguably the church was established before Augustine.

Also, Gregory's monks found that the Christian Scot missionaries from Ireland observed Easter at a time different than Rome, using a calendar used by St. John the Evangelist when he presided over Ephesus, and presumably preceding the First Ecumenical Council (Augustine argued that the Picts and Britons were the only peoples in the civilized world to still use the outdated calendar). Again arguably the established church in Ephesus is older than that in Rome, so it may be hypothesized that the Scot missionaries established a church before the Romans.

Fun to dig into history and speculate, isn't it? Blake went a bit further, expounding on British folklore that Our Lord may have visited Briton with Joseph of Arimathea:

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England?s mountains green?
And was the Holy Lamb of God
On England?s pleasant pastures seen?
And did the countenance divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark satanic mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!
I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England?s green and pleasant land.
132 posted on 11/04/2003 12:45:06 AM PST by keilimon
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To: keilimon
My apologies for a ridiculous triple post. Opera has been misbehaving since I moved to Windows XP (I miss 2000 Pro).
133 posted on 11/04/2003 12:51:02 AM PST by keilimon
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