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The ancient Celts were a fierce war-like people, but also a people who were highly sensitive to poetry, music and the arts. When these warrior poets embraced Christianity, they lost none of their fierceness or their poetry, but put these qualities to the service of God’s Kingdom. Like King David, the prayers and hymns of the Celts show a vision of the Lord that was raw, rugged and untamed. It was a hardy faith that would later give birth to stalwart reformers such as John Knox.
The Celtic church was known for its incredible missionary endeavours. From bases such as the monastery established at Iona, the Celts sent evangelists deep into the Nordic lands that had previously been inaccessible to missionaries.
Because of its geographically separation from the Continent, the Celtic church was immune to many of the ecclesiastical excesses and deviations that began to surround the Roman Church. The Celts remained some of the most outspoken critics of the developing papacy during the early middle ages. The Irish poet and scholar Columban (543 – 615) even had the audacity to write to the Pope and accuse him of heresy while the Britons, whom we now call the Welsh, continued to be strongly independent of the Roman church. Not infrequently, defenders of the Roman church would lash out against the Celts, who remained detached from the growing ecclesiastical system imitating from Rome and actually allowed their clergy to marry. Even during high middle ages, Britain remaineda thorn in the side of the papacy, with such proto-reformers like John Wycliffe (mid-1320s – 1384) anticipating the Protestant cause that would later reach fruition in the Scottish reformation.
Boniface's Early Years
It was into the robust and masculine environment of the Scottish church that Boniface was born around the year 672. Although the Celtic church had been brought into communion with the Roman church in the century prior, in the border region where Boniface was born the church retained much of its original Celtic character. Though never a critic of the papacy, Boniface would imbibe all the fierce independence of the Celts. His pastor set an example to the young boy by always preaching with his sword by his side – lest anyone take umbrage with the sermon.
The Celtic church was known for its incredible missionary endeavours. From bases such as the monastery established at Iona, the Celts sent evangelists deep into the Nordic lands that had previously been inaccessible to missionaries.
Because of its geographically separation from the Continent, the Celtic church was immune to many of the ecclesiastical excesses and deviations that began to surround the Roman Church. The Celts remained some of the most outspoken critics of the developing papacy during the early middle ages. The Irish poet and scholar Columban (543 – 615) even had the audacity to write to the Pope and accuse him of heresy while the Britons, whom we now call the Welsh, continued to be strongly independent of the Roman church. Not infrequently, defenders of the Roman church would lash out against the Celts, who remained detached from the growing ecclesiastical system imitating from Rome and actually allowed their clergy to marry. Even during high middle ages, Britain remaineda thorn in the side of the papacy, with such proto-reformers like John Wycliffe (mid-1320s – 1384) anticipating the Protestant cause that would later reach fruition in the Scottish reformation.
Boniface's Early Years
It was into the robust and masculine environment of the Scottish church that Boniface was born around the year 672. Although the Celtic church had been brought into communion with the Roman church in the century prior, in the border region where Boniface was born the church retained much of its original Celtic character. Though never a critic of the papacy, Boniface would imbibe all the fierce independence of the Celts. His pastor set an example to the young boy by always preaching with his sword by his side – lest anyone take umbrage with the sermon.
From his earliest years Boniface was known for his rugged toughness. After church when the villagers would eat their fellowship meal, Boniface led the boys in his favourite sport – throwing boulders at one another.
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It was the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms who had originally conquered Christian Roman Britannia driving the Church into exile in what we now call Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. The re-Christianizing of the British Ilse occurred in the late 6th century, with missionary efforts of both the Celts and the Romans.
The Holy Church in the kingdom of Northumbrian was founded by Paulinus and revived by Aidan, who introduced Celtic customs from the island monastery of Iona. It must be noted that this Celtic form of Christianity was itself originally from Roman and West-Mediterranean Churches and culture. Meanwhile St Gregory the Great, pastor of the Church in Rome, filled with evangelical zeal, sent a missionary to the Anglo-Saxon people in 597 who would come to be known as St Augustine of Canterbury. Under the direction of Gregory the Great, Augustine reintroduced the Liturgy, calendar, and other customs of the Church in Old Rome to southern England.
By and large the Celtic and Roman Churches cooperated in the evangelization of England, the Britons (Welsh) being the only exception. The date of Pascha (called Easter only in England) became a difficult issue to resolve for the sake of Christian unity.
Synod of Whitby was called by King Oswy of Northumbria in 663 (or 664) at Whitby, England. Its purpose: to choose between the usages of the Celtic and Roman churches, primarily in the matter of reckoning the date of Easter. Key Northumbrians representing the Celtic cause at Whitby were Abbess Hilda, Cedd, bishop to the East Saxons, Bishop Colman of Lindisfarne, and Cædmon, the poet who favored the Celtic tradition. Wilfrid of Ripon was spokesman for the visiting Frankish bishop Agilbert from Wessex, and his priest Agatho, main advocates for Rome.
King Oswy's decision to adopt the calendar and traditions of the Church in Rome may have been politically expedient. Nonetheless it contributed to the unification of the English church and brought it into closer communion with the Christian Churches on the continent, Rome, Constantinople, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria. The synod also prepared the way for unification of the English church by Theodore (of Tarsus?), next archbishop of Canterbury.
Your first four footnotes show that you understand the gradualism of the falling away of the Pope. It does not seem to be limited to 'just' the Frankish Popes. I tend to feel this way because Charles the Great (and Alcuin) tried to pressure Pope Leo to add the fillioque but he refused, place a gold plaque with the original Nicean-Constinpolitain Creed in the Cathedral in Rome. Leo was a Roman. Later popes were appointed by the Frankish emperors who came after Charles the Great.
In the 11th century, Frankish soldiers occupied Sicily and forced pastors there to add the Filioque to the Creed, use unleavened bread in the Eucharist, and other practices they found heretical. In response to this the Patriarch of Constantinople required all the Latin (Western Rite) pastors in Constantinople to stop using the Filioque and to use leavened bread. When they refused he shut down their churches prompting Rome to send a delegation in AD 1054. This delegation was anything but diplomatic and excommunicated the Patriarch of Constantinople.
Thus the Frankish Papacy broke away from the Orthodox Church, fully embracing the heretical doctrine of the double procession of the Holy Spirit.
The last Roman Orthodox Pope was Benedict X (1058-9) who had given the pallium to Stigand (1052-1070), the last Saxon Archbishop of Canterbury and defender of the true Faith. The Filioque was not said in England until after 1066 when William the Conqueror and his Norman army, with papal blessing, invaded England, deposed the faithful pastors and replaced them with Filioquist bishops loyal to the Frankish pope thus bringing England under papal control through fire and the sword.
Archbishop Stigand and his brother bishops, all natives of England, were condemned to prison by the foreign bishops as schismatics and heretics where they all died. It would seem highly unlikely that one would receive apostolic succession by murdering one's predecessors.
The English aristocracy fled to Ireland and the main centers of Orthodox Christianity in the East, Constantinople and Kiev. The Great Schism was finalized when the western barbarian Franks pillaged, disfigured, raped, and murdered the Eastern Christians in what would be remembered romantically as the Crusades. They set up competing Latin patriarchates in Constantinople, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria. The Church in the West had finally become the apostate Frankish Catholic Church.
No more would one hear the untamed fierceness or their poetry upon the green hills.
So I guess I want to say that St Boniface, one of the Anglo-Saxon saints I feel kinship and devotion for, would not have considered himself anything but a Apostolic Catholic (Orthodox) Christian, in full communion with all faithful Christians throughout the whole world (ekomenie). Perhaps this is a bit naive, but I don't believe he would have considered his Christian identity as being defined contrary to an already about to apostate Roman prelacy. I am sorry if I have misread you. In my opinion, there was no serious interruption of communion between East and West Roman Christians until the Photian Schism (863-867). (See:photius and the carloginians.) St Boniface is a great saint venerated by Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Protestant Christians alike. He is a monument to the glory of Christ the Arch-Victor over the power of sin and death and the old gods who used to hold our ancestors captive. Glory to God for all things!
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