English Missionary Saints

Views of the British Isles and particularly of England will vary enormously and will depend on where the viewer is coming from. The story of the Kingdom and the Church will go its way without an Orthodox perspective. However to fiish on a high note and not a low one it would not be right to ignore the work of the English missionaries abroad particularly in Germany at the turn of the eighth century. Before them Irish missionaries under St Columbanus achieved an astonishing number of monastic foundations. So also did St Boniface and St Willibrord and their companions. Their influence went on for several centuries. The Saxon link worked not only inwards into this country but also outwards into their blood relations on the continent, the Frisians. This makes for a much better conclusion than that posed by the Normans.

A much more interesting question would be how long did the living tradition of holiness continue. Christ God did not stop working his work of sanctification. But that will take us into other questions.