One thing we do know about is that in the 420s, the Christian Church
in what was still Gaul, not yet France, became concerned about a
recurrence of Pelagianism in the British Church. We don=92t know much
about the British church of that time, except that there was one. We
have little idea of how far Christianity had penetrated, what were the
episcopal centers, or who the bishops were. But because one of the
leaders of the Gaulish Church was the eminent Germanus, bishop of
Auxerre, we know about his involvement with the British Church.
Germanus was a not unusual type of the time, the Roman secular
governor and lawyer who moved into Church Administration. He had been
a lawyer, politician, and soldier, was fond of hunting, and was
governor of the area before he became bishop. The Church in Gaul,
distressed by a revival of Pelagianism across the Channel, sent
Germanus to look into things. They did not write polite letters to the
British Bishops asking their permission - the British bishops may have
been part of the problem, since the Pelagian revival was promoted by
one Agricola, either a bishop or a son of a bishop, and the ruling
class seems to have been persuaded by him. Hmm. This starts to sound
familiar.
So Germanus went over - some stories hint that he may have been
accompanied by St. Patrick, who may have spent some time in Germanus=92s
school in Auxerre - held a public debate with the Pelagians, and seems
also to have led an army against some Saxon invaders. It=92s a little
confusing. He returned a decade later, because Pelagianism, as always,
was restless in its grave.
The point being that, whatever other issues were certainly involved,
the Church had no problems with sending a delegation to confront and
refute a regional church establishment that had gone bad. Germanus=92s
biography, written about 80 years after his death, makes a point of
saying that the Bishop of Rome gave his permission to the Gaulish
mission to Britain, but whether or not that is the case, it=92s sure
that the initiative began in the local Gaulish synod, and there was no
hand wringing about going into some other bishop=92s territory.
Christian truth is always more im****tant that Christian polity, if a
choice must be made. At the time of Germanus=92s visit, the Church was
unified. Germanus and Agricola or Agricola=92s father and all the
Pelagian-tinged Brits were part of that unified Church. No one said
that Germanus and his companions were somehow schismatic, breakers of
unity, for confronting the British Church in its vagrancy. Their
business was to restore the witness of the errant branch of the
Church, and its hard to see how that mission could be conceived as
divisive - except by miscreants.
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