The English mission was the first in which a Bishop of Rome had made any effort to extend the existing frontiers of Christianity. It is curious and probably significant that previous major Christian missionary efforts had nearly all been undertaken by people whom the imperial Chalcedonian Church labelled as heretics – Bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia and the ‘Arian’ Ulfila to the northern ‘barbarians’, the Syriac Miaphysite Jacob Baradeus in the Middle East and the Syriac Dyophysites who spread Christianity into Arabia, Central Asia and (initially) to Ethiopia. The one substantial exception to
...more
