destroyed every relic of Roman life and faith, the land became
a desert so far as Christian art was concerned. The van-
quished Romano-Britons were slowly driven back into
Cornwall, Wales, and Cumberland, and such was their
hatred for the invading English, that, instead of trying to
conquer their conquerors by the faith of Christ, as the
Christians of Provence had done, they were glad to believe
them lost amongst the heathen. In Wales, however, the
Christian Church of Roman times had lasted on, and when
in the middle of the sixth century the Christianity introduced
into Ireland by St. Patrick in 432 had practically died out,
it was re-founded there by Gildas and other Welsh mission-
aries. This Irish Church became very flourishing and in
565 Columba passed over into Scotland, where he founded
the monastery of Iona, and in conjunction with a band of
Welsh missionaries under Ninian established the Celtic
Church of Northern England. This Irish Church had re-
tained the traditions and liturgy of the Romano-British
Church, but had never owed anything to Rome herself. Her
faith and ritual had come to her with the eastern tinge of the
Ephesine liturgy, from the Gallican Church of Lyons and
Vienne. The influence of this source of its Christianity is
traceable in English art well into the Middle Ages. Amongst
other eastern usages was that of the Veil or Curtain dividing
the sanctuary from the nave during the consecration of the
elements, a use which the Roman Church had early aban-
doned for that of the Ciborium and Baldacchino. That this
separation was used in Ireland we know from the account
of St. Bridget's church in Kildare, ¹ where a wooden screen
with two doors in it divided the nave from the choir. This
use the Celtic clergy brought with them when they settled
in Iona and subsequently under Aidan in Lindisfarne in 634,
whence they christianized the North of England about thirty
years after Augustine had landed in Kent and had baptized
King Ethelbert. Both forms of this re-established Christi-
anity were essentially missionary and monastic, and their
buildings were small and unimpressive compared with those
few of the continent which had escaped the ravages of the
northern invaders, in France and South Europe.

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