ANGLO-SAXON INFLUENCE ON WESTERN CHRISTENDOM By S. J. Crawford The
late Dr. S. J. Crawford's three lectures on Anglo-Saxon Influence on Western Christendom, 600-800 (Oxford University Press, 5s.) well deserve the commendatory preface by Pro- fessor R. W. Chambers. They show that in two critical cen- turies, when Rome had lost her hold upon France and Spain and was none too strong in Italy, the missionaries of the infant Anglo-Saxon and the older Irish Church converted the Low Countries and Western Germany and brought them within the Roman obedience. The Northumbrian Willibrord about the year 700 established the Church in what is now Holland and in Denmark. The Devonian Wynfrith, or St. Boniface, evangelized Central Germany and met his death at the hands of the heathen of East Friesland in 755. Dr. Crawford explains in his third lecture the part played- by the Irish and Anglo-Saxon clergy in the transmission of ancient culture. These small islands were politically insignificant in the Dark Ages, but, like other small countries before and since, they exercised a great moral and intellectual influence on the world.
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