Cloigeann
Banned
If http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtic_Christianity survived in Ireland and Britain to the present day, how would that affect relations with Rome, how would it pan out during the Protestant reformation?
WI: Celtic Christianity survives in British Isles
- Thread starter Cloigeann
- Start date
I would guess the survival of the Celtic Church butterflies the Reformation. Perhaps we could see rival missionary efforts to the Vikings? Celtic Christian Vikings attacking Catholics on the continent and spreading the Gospel in the New World seems like a fun idea!
You didn't have such thing as a "Celtic Christianism". You had "national" churches, as in all the western Europe. Each of these churches had their particularities (that were not really more important than the Visigothic or Merovingian churches), and acknowledged the domination of Rome.
All the concept of "Celtic Church" is a thing invented during the creation of Anglicanism, to justify the "return to a precedent situation" rather than a pure and simple invention.
The Roman church is the direct heir of these "national" churches and the irish one, critically, influenced an enormous part (as the western monachism, or the confession rite).
All the concept of "Celtic Church" is a thing invented during the creation of Anglicanism, to justify the "return to a precedent situation" rather than a pure and simple invention.
The Roman church is the direct heir of these "national" churches and the irish one, critically, influenced an enormous part (as the western monachism, or the confession rite).
Prior to 660, the Church in the British Isles emphatically did not acknowledge the domination of Rome. Although it is true that they probably regarded themselves as a single body of Christ. I agree that asking about events 800 years after the PoD is pretty wild speculation.
In order to prevent Iona's absorption into Rome, you need to give them some compelling reason to resist Rome's blandishments. I propose the expedition of Melittus to the Isles in 601; instead of taking a conciliatory tone to the remaining British pagans, let him come with sword and fire (it seems losing a single letter from the Pope would accomplish this, which is why I like it as a PoD). He tears down the remaining pagan temples but generally leaves a bad impression, entrenching in the locals the idea that Rome = Bad.
The Muslims are going to take Spain soon, and when they do they recognize a monastery of the Ionic tradition as head of Christians within their realm, as OTL. Vikings' contact with Christendom was through the British Isles, so they follow the Ionic model as well. The battleground for hearts and minds will be Germania, as both churches compete to convert locals and build new monasteries and churches (Gaul/France is clearly already in the Roman sphere).
Doctrinal differences will also be helpful; at this point (the 7th century) they are so few as to be inconsequential. The key difference between them is at this point organizational - the Ionic church posited the clear supremacy of the monastic branch of the church over the temporal; priests answered to bishops, bishops obeyed abbots, and abbots were arrayed into a highly theoretical hierarchy based on who founded the monastery when (in practice, abbots answered to nobody. But then, in practice an archbishop of the Roman church seldom answered to anybody at this point either, communications being what they were).
What I think this gets you, if it remains entrenched, is a de facto separation of church and state. Since abbots, people who have withdrawn from the wider world into exclusively Christian communities, are perceived as heads of the church and thus more holy, it follows that meddling even in the local politics of a secular community takes one further away from God. Conversely, the monasteries have their own craftsmen, own lands to grow food, are typically built like fortresses, may have their own militias - if they don't answer to a church temporal, it's difficult to see why they would consider obeying a secular lord. The Ionic church perceives itself as separate from the temporal world in a way the Roman does not.
Carrying such a timeline forward to the OTL reformation would be a mammoth achievement, with much depending on individual personalities. However, I think there will usually be a desire to unite that may be thwarted by practical problems, and in time Rome seems likely to win out - they're going to have richer lands, more people and more opportunities for expansion. For example, the Reconquista or its analog would likely be conducted by Roman Christians, forcibly reorganizing the christian communities of the peninsula along Roman rather than Ionic lines, which probably increases their validity in the eyes of Germania whose people abandon their Ionic communities for Roman (I'm seeing them as 50/50 for some time), leaving only Britain, Ireland and Scandinavia organized on the Ionic model. That's not a rivalry, it's a footnote.
Just some musings. I'd be interested to see other takes on it.
In order to prevent Iona's absorption into Rome, you need to give them some compelling reason to resist Rome's blandishments. I propose the expedition of Melittus to the Isles in 601; instead of taking a conciliatory tone to the remaining British pagans, let him come with sword and fire (it seems losing a single letter from the Pope would accomplish this, which is why I like it as a PoD). He tears down the remaining pagan temples but generally leaves a bad impression, entrenching in the locals the idea that Rome = Bad.
The Muslims are going to take Spain soon, and when they do they recognize a monastery of the Ionic tradition as head of Christians within their realm, as OTL. Vikings' contact with Christendom was through the British Isles, so they follow the Ionic model as well. The battleground for hearts and minds will be Germania, as both churches compete to convert locals and build new monasteries and churches (Gaul/France is clearly already in the Roman sphere).
Doctrinal differences will also be helpful; at this point (the 7th century) they are so few as to be inconsequential. The key difference between them is at this point organizational - the Ionic church posited the clear supremacy of the monastic branch of the church over the temporal; priests answered to bishops, bishops obeyed abbots, and abbots were arrayed into a highly theoretical hierarchy based on who founded the monastery when (in practice, abbots answered to nobody. But then, in practice an archbishop of the Roman church seldom answered to anybody at this point either, communications being what they were).
What I think this gets you, if it remains entrenched, is a de facto separation of church and state. Since abbots, people who have withdrawn from the wider world into exclusively Christian communities, are perceived as heads of the church and thus more holy, it follows that meddling even in the local politics of a secular community takes one further away from God. Conversely, the monasteries have their own craftsmen, own lands to grow food, are typically built like fortresses, may have their own militias - if they don't answer to a church temporal, it's difficult to see why they would consider obeying a secular lord. The Ionic church perceives itself as separate from the temporal world in a way the Roman does not.
Carrying such a timeline forward to the OTL reformation would be a mammoth achievement, with much depending on individual personalities. However, I think there will usually be a desire to unite that may be thwarted by practical problems, and in time Rome seems likely to win out - they're going to have richer lands, more people and more opportunities for expansion. For example, the Reconquista or its analog would likely be conducted by Roman Christians, forcibly reorganizing the christian communities of the peninsula along Roman rather than Ionic lines, which probably increases their validity in the eyes of Germania whose people abandon their Ionic communities for Roman (I'm seeing them as 50/50 for some time), leaving only Britain, Ireland and Scandinavia organized on the Ionic model. That's not a rivalry, it's a footnote.
Just some musings. I'd be interested to see other takes on it.
Excuse me, but have you in your disposition some text or study that say or find that they "didn't acknowledge the domination of Rome"?
All the missionaries that Christianize Ireland (or Britain, for that matter) where send by Rome, as Palladius by exemple. You have, if not constant exchanges, at least massive use of Irish scholars by Rome to evengelize continental regions, etc.
You don't have any contemporary text that say anything about an acknowledgment of papal domination. Admittedly the sources are quite blur about some semi-historical councils as Withby, but unless to over-use the negative proof...I don't see anyone can deduce that.
Otherwise, I massively agree with that. The differences were so tiny between Rome and Iona that is likely they were of the same importance than Merovingian and Roman churches before Boniface.
And you're totally right about the Irish monasteries being more prone to be part of their secular backgrounds, as monks fighting monks of another place because it was fund/supported by another noble family.
That said, I think the bishopry power over monasteries would have been likely to impose itself with or without more formal agreements with Rome, only because of the development of trade centers and by imitation of what you had in Britain and continent.
Iona had already made sure bishops wouldn't get the upper hand by denying them an independent power base; no cathedrals or even churches of their own, with an enforced requirement to visit every single church in their diocese regularly, then deliver formal reports on affairs to their abbots. The word 'bishop'(episkopos) was thus used in a completely different fashion than it was in Italia.
The Irish were essential to the evangelism on the continent...in the 8th, 9th and 10th centuries, after the notion of an independent celtic church had been laid to rest.
As to not acknowledging the domination of Rome, while the negative proof is important, I'm thinking primarily of letters back and forth between the abbot of Columba and the Pope (a few abbots and a few popes, one of the best preserved collections we have from the period). The most glaring examples were exhortations from the popes to properly control their women and stop them from being landowners and officeholders, to which the abbot's consistent reply was "no, that's stupid." It's pretty clear that Columba did not think of the bishop of Rome as someone entitled to give them orders. While it's possible that Columba was an outlier, I think it far more likely that the other christian communities in the area followed Columba's lead.
The Irish were essential to the evangelism on the continent...in the 8th, 9th and 10th centuries, after the notion of an independent celtic church had been laid to rest.
As to not acknowledging the domination of Rome, while the negative proof is important, I'm thinking primarily of letters back and forth between the abbot of Columba and the Pope (a few abbots and a few popes, one of the best preserved collections we have from the period). The most glaring examples were exhortations from the popes to properly control their women and stop them from being landowners and officeholders, to which the abbot's consistent reply was "no, that's stupid." It's pretty clear that Columba did not think of the bishop of Rome as someone entitled to give them orders. While it's possible that Columba was an outlier, I think it far more likely that the other christian communities in the area followed Columba's lead.
And this is not saying they didn't acknowledging the domination of Rome. The pope "giving orders" is a post-carolingian feature, and while the bishop of Rome was the head of Church, all the early medieval churches were "nationals" with their own rites.
Whatever the frankish or visigothic church, the councils were "nationals" with the king as the de facto leader. I mean, look at the pope Vigilius by exemple : the whole reason of his excommunication and of his inprisonment by Byzance was while he was agreeing with the Patriarch of Constantinople, the western bishops didn't.
As the represented of at least the western Church, the pope had to acknowledge this : if he was only the bishop of Rome, the opinion of western bishops wouldn't have been important.
And if it was about "giving orders", he would have made something about it.
Nah, before Gregorius and critically Nicholas I, you had more a representent rather than an head. Still, this representation was acknowledged as well a symbolical dominance.
For the complains about land-owners and women, you just have to see how many councils were made before Trente about that to see that even during the "great period" of Middle-Ages, where Papal power was theoretically undisputed, that nobody really care about.
And regarding the doctrinal differences...There were so insignificant that we have too choices : or two "isolated" christianism developed almost the same doctrines during more than 200 years without differences, or the two churches ("Roman" and "Celtic", in fact Franco-Roman and Britto-Irish) were in contact except for some practical purposes.
I beg to differ, the main part of western monasteries in the Kingdom of the Franks were founded by Irish or British monks or missionaries before this date. In fact, after the VIII century, they were sent in Germany, not in Francia proper by exemple. I would only quote Luxeuil, Faremoutiers, Remiremont in Francia, Bobbio in Lotharingia...
The fact that the benedictine rule (supposedly better accepted by monks, but in fact the official imperial rule) replaced the irish one in these monasteries, actually contributed to the decline of the irish rule on the continent, and when the irish monks were used for evangelization in Germany, they certainly didn't had the possibility to streghten their influence. I hardly think the IX/X evangelisation can be called "celtic".
Or in Brittany, with the ermit tradition, opposed to the lack of monasteries.
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There was a case and I may get the details wrong but a delegation of Priests from Rome went to Ireland to bring the Celtic Christians to heel. After debates the Romans demanded to know from where the Celts drew their ecclesiastical authority. The Celts replied, " St. Patrick." the Romans claimed that since their authority was derived from St. Peter the Apostle they had a superior Authority.
Yes and No. As I sad, you didn't had a clear determination of which region was under which church outside the king's demesne. While the ermitage tradition, coming from "British" church was really alive (at the point of having few monasteries in Brittany), you had a policy of bishopries and monasteries really develloped by Franks and Carolingians, at the point the independent Bretons kings would impose an archbishopry of their own.
The medieval church, and critically the pre-Carolingian one, wasn't homogenous and really divided between urban centers and rural ones, and were united (even for uniting the centers between them in fact) only thanks to the authority of a king/emperor. It's why talking about established churches outside or above kingdoms is really abusive.
That's more or less anecdotical. For a start, it concerned the Irish churches, not "celtic". And the debate was anterior to the roman demands : between Irish clergy, if you're about bishop power you supported the prevalance of St-Patrick but if you was about monasteries you wasn't and quote one of his predecessors.