The next few posts will be based on part IV of Diarmaid MacCulloch's book, A History of Christianity . This section covers the Church in Western Europe during the Dark and Middle Ages. The posts will not be a commentary or a review of the book. They will use these chapters as a departure point to explore some aspects of modern ecumenism.
This first in this series hardly touches on the book at all. MacCulloch makes only a passing mention of the Synod of Whitby in 664 CE.
I remember being taught about the Synod of Whitby at school and finding it difficult to understand why the date of Easter or the shape of monks' tonsures mattered. (The Roman tonsure is shown at the top of this post, the other picture shows a tonsure which may or may not be Celtic; its shape is a matter of conjecture.) After all, these days people accept the date of Easter in any given year, even though they have no idea how it is determined.
Of course, I know now how to look for the power in these situations. When trivial matters are at issue, someone somewhere is exercising their muscle.
The Celtic Church had been enormously successful. It's evangelising monks had spread out from Iona, throughout Scotland and from there into England and even to northern Europe. At the same time Pope Gregory sent his own mission to England, which established itself at Canterbury.
What mattered was the recognition of Rome by the Celtic Church. The date of Easter and the shape of the tonsure were signs of obedience to the Pope.
For us today, Whitby's significance is not about whether or not submitting to the hegemony of the Pope was a good thing or a bad thing. It was probably a mixture. It can't have been that bad as people lived with it for several centuries.
What we learn from this is church relations were, and still are, determined by the exercise of power. What is right is determined not by any absolute truth but by what those with power say it is. Indeed those with power often claim to be in possession of absolute truth. Sometimes it is safer not to argue.
When we look back at old arguments, perhaps we can see more clearly the contours that shape our own world.
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