EVANGELIZZAZIONE DELLA B

EVANGELIZATION OF B. - Armorica, the extreme north-western projection of Gaul, after the Roman conquest (57 B.C.) sheltered within its dense forests the last resistance of the Druidic religion. Christianity struggled greatly to gain a foothold there. Up to the time of Martin of Tours (d. 397) we have no reliable information about the existence in B. of a genuine Christian community. The martyrdom of the two young Christians Donatian and Rogatian at Nantes (cf. Martyro, Romanum, p. 264) at most attests to the presence of some Christians. Local traditions, not yet fully verified, would assign to Nantes a bishop, Claro, as early as the mid-4th century. In any case it was Martin of Tours (372-97), metropolitan of the entire Lugdunensis III, of which Armorica formed the northern part, who began the regular evangelization of the region. It cannot, however, be said whether he reserved direct jurisdiction over these Christian communities for himself or whether he appointed bishops for them. The fact remains that by the time the Bretons arrived, there already existed in Armorica the three Gallo-Roman bishoprics of Nantes, Rennes and Vannes. Paganism, however, continued to predominate among the sparse population, especially after the devastations wrought by the Alans and Saxons between 406 and 416. Christianity finally triumphed when, about the middle of the 5th century, the Bretons began to migrate from neighboring Greater Britain into Armorica, and as they gradually increased in numbers, soon changed the peninsula’s name and language. Some groups were led by their own bishop, and a Mansuetus, bishop of the Bretons, appears at the Council of Tours in 461 alongside his Gallo-Roman colleagues; others were guided by priests and monks, but all their organization centered around monasteries. There were no dioceses with precise boundaries; rather, bishops governed the faithful from their monasteries, as in Greater Britain and Ireland, and Irish influences were indeed felt in those early centuries of organization, with the monastic element remaining predominant. Breton bishops are regularly found at Alet, Tréguier, Quimper, Léon (St-Pol-de-Léon), St-Brieuc, Dol, St-Malo, alongside their Gallo-Roman counterparts. The entire territory continued to depend on the metropolitan see of Tours, but a movement for separation grew steadily stronger from the 8th century onward, due to political conflicts with the Carolingian rulers. Indeed, at one point Dol attempted to arrogate metropolitan authority to itself. A large part of the legislation of the False Decretals was in fact directed toward regulating the religious affairs of the region.