CHAPTER X.
ROME AND IONA.
It was not the Roman mission which finally succeeded in converting the North and the Midlands.

That success was due to the Scottish and Pictish Church.

At the end of the sixth century, Columba, an Irish missionary, crossed over to the solitary rock of Iona, where he established an abbey on the Irish model, and quickly evangelised the northern Picts.

From Iona, some generations later, went forth the devoted missionaries who finally converted the northern half of England.
The native churches of the west, cut off from direct intercourse with the main body of Latin Christendom, had retained certain habits which were now regarded by Rome as schismatical.

Chief among these were the date of celebrating Easter, and the uncanonical method of cutting the tonsure in a crescent instead of a circle.