XL
“MY OWN SOUL WOULD NOT RELEASE ME”
To Bishop Sigurd and his priests Olaf intrusted the propaganda of the Christian faith. The strained relations between the Eastern and the Western churches, the jealousy of Constantinople at the power and influence of Rome, made the bishop and his priests uneasy. Accustomed to allegiance to the Roman Pontiff, they could give no countenance to the hostility of the Greek priests to Pope Gregory V. So it was with a sense of relief that Bishop Sigurd saw Sergius and his companions depart for Constantinople. These dissensions were a growing cloud that gathered thicker, until four hundred years later it burst, in the fifteenth century, in the formal separation of the Greek and Latin churches.
Bishop Sigurd spoke earnestly to Olaf of this matter, and urged upon the king a firmer loyalty to the Roman See.
“My years among the Saxons have shown me, my King,” he said, “that since Augustine came with his forty monks, from the first Gregory, England has always looked to Rome. In Ireland, too, since the Easter morn that brought Patrick from St. Celestine,
