CELTIC CHURCH, Icirtik, the name ap plied to the Christian Church in Great Britain and Ireland before the mission of Augustine (597) and which for some time thereafter maintained its independence by the side of the new Anglo-Roplan Church. In Britain, the origin of the Christian Church remains in ob scurity. There are sufficient records, however, to prove that throughout the 4th century there was a well-organized Church in Britain which stood in constant touch with the rest of the Church, particularly in Gaul, and considered itself an active part of that body. In the 4th century, there are records of bishops, but for a hundred years after the mission of Germanus (429) nothing is heard of the Church in Britain. The Anglo-Saxon conquest drove the Britains to the mountains of the West, where, in the 6th century, Christianity again became prominent. There were several minor differ ences between the Roman forms. The day of Easter, according to the former, followed the Eastern calendar; and there were also. diver gences in the methods of administering baptism. The coming of Saint Augustine in 597 intro duced the Roman form of Christianity which gradually gained precedence over and absorbed the Celtic. In 777 its ascendency was complete in Britain and South Wales. Still the Celtic Church continued farther north until 1172 when Queen Margaret introduced complete reforms.
In Ireland, there is much legendary history concerning the foundation of the Church, which indicates that Christianity was brought from Britain to Ireland as the natural result of the close intercourse between those countries. The establishment of the Church itself seems to have been an outcome of the first mighty wave of monasticism which swept from Egypt over Gaul and Britain and carried a number of half-Romanized Christians to Ireland. The
first important figure in the history of the Church in Ireland is Saint Patrick (q.v.), who converted the island and was most active in preaching and founding churches. In the region now known as Scotland, Ninian, Saint Columba and their fellow apostles established institutions which were monastic and mission ary in nature. From Iona (q.v.) as a centre, the movement soon embraced all of North umbria. The Celtic Church there was finally fused with the Roman in 664; and the Scottish and Irish churches' lost their individual char acter in the same year, from which time their histories are identical with the Roman Church. See CULDEES.
Bibliography.—Haddan, A. W., and Stubbs, W., and Ecclesiastical Documents Relating to Great Britain and Ireland' (3 vols., 1869-78); Bede, 'Historic ecclesiastics gentis Anglorum' (ed. A. Holder, Freiburg 1890; E. Plummer, 2 vols., Oxford 1896) Zimmer, 'The Celtic Church in Britain and Ireland' (London 1902); Overton, J. H., 'The Church in England' (in Vol. I, (The National Churches,> London 1891); Bund, J. W., 'The Celtic Church of Wales) (London 1897) ; Lani gan, 'An Ecclesiastical History of Ireland to the Thirteenth Century> (4 vols., Dublin 1829); Stokes, G. T., 'Ireland and the Celtic Church' (6th ed., London 1907) ; Skene, W. F., 'Celtic Scotland> (in Vol. II, 'Church and Culture,) 3 vols., Edinburgh 1887); Dom Columba Evans, 'The Early Scottish Church) (2 vols., Edin burgh 1894-96).