AH Challenge: Survival of the Celtic Church.

Simply put, have the Celtic (or Irish) Church survive to the present day. It should:

- Be a clearly seperate institution to the Church in Rome.
-Be the dominant Church in Ireland.

Plus points if it's a strong church in Northern Europe.

Alex Richards said:

Simply put, have the Celtic (or Irish) Church survive to the present day. It should:

- Be a clearly seperate institution to the Church in Rome.
-Be the dominant Church in Ireland.

Plus points if it's a strong church in Northern Europe.

Click to expand...

Have the Synod of Whitby go the other way. Have the Celts change the date of Easter, but have all the other points go their way.

Let the Celts make the point that all that pomp and wealth came from parishioners pockets, and the AS kings might not be quite so happy to give up their gold...

If Anglo-saxon England is 'Celtic', then the British missionaries who spread across northern Europe (e.g. St Gall) convert much of OTL Germany.

When the Norse raid and invade England, they get converted to the Celtic rite, which is probably more congenial to them. Imagine Viking Missionaries - Norman/Viking zeal harnessed to missionary work...

They could get recognition from the Orthodox, no doubt.

Dathi THorfinnsson said:

Have the Synod of Whitby go the other way. Have the Celts change the date of Easter, but have all the other points go their way.

Let the Celts make the point that all that pomp and wealth came from parishioners pockets, and the AS kings might not be quite so happy to give up their gold...

If Anglo-saxon England is 'Celtic', then the British missionaries who spread across northern Europe (e.g. St Gall) convert much of OTL Germany.

When the Norse raid and invade England, they get converted to the Celtic rite, which is probably more congenial to them. Imagine Viking Missionaries - Norman/Viking zeal harnessed to missionary work...

They could get recognition from the Orthodox, no doubt.

Click to expand...

yeah, I'd had similar thoughts myself. How does the Reformation shape up here then? Are the circumstances there, and how does the Pope deal with a second schism?

Alex Richards said:

Simply put, have the Celtic (or Irish) Church survive to the present day. It should:

- Be a clearly seperate institution to the Church in Rome.
-Be the dominant Church in Ireland.

Plus points if it's a strong church in Northern Europe.

Click to expand...

Having the Celtic Church survive just a century or more could have change the religious history of Europe and maybe of the entire Western Hemisphere.

If Ireland was able to exert full control over its Church, it could have provided an example for other nations in Europe as well. A Catholic Anglican Church in England, a Catholic Iberian Church in Spain and Portugal and so on.

The dominance of Rome in religious themes would have non existed and maybe even the Reformation could have been useless since every nation had its own naional Church.

I could only imagine the Aztec, American, Inka, South African or Australian version of Catholicism if Celtic Christianity had survived.

jach79 said:

If Ireland was able to exert full control over its Church, it could have provided an example for other nations in Europe as well. A Catholic Anglican Church in England, a Catholic Iberian Church in Spain and Portugal and so on.

Click to expand...

Depending on what you mean by that, 'Ireland' didn't 'control' its church. There wasn't any Ireland, in the sense of a single government or anything. In terms of culture and language, then sure.

If what you mean is that the church controlled itself, and was independent from Rome, that could certainly lead to less Papal control over e.g. France and Spain. OTOH, it might lead to MORE control, as they differentiate themselves from the 'heretics'.


The OTL churches of England, France and Spain that pursued their own goals and fought control of the Papacy (breaking off for the first, and controlling their own national churches within Catholicism), were politically inspired to do so, it was Kings' policies not evolution of local denominations that mattered.


Could we have seen a bunch of autocephalous, autonomous churches like the Eastern Orthodox churches. Yup, we sure could. Could we some unitary, but very decentralized church? Yup. In fact that's what the 'celtic' church was OTL.

Dathi THorfinnsson said:

Depending on what you mean by that, 'Ireland' didn't 'control' its church. There wasn't any Ireland, in the sense of a single government or anything. In terms of culture and language, then sure.

Click to expand...

Precisely, Ireland was a not a unified country but cultural hegemony did exist at the time. A system of autonomous Churches in each European nation was more my idea.

Poland-Lithuania could get very interesting, with a religion drawing influence from the Celtic, Catholic and Orthodox Churches.