I recently discovered the excellent BBC4 radio programme, “In Our Time” with Melvin Bragg. The April 10th episode, “The Norman Yoke”, was particularly interesting to me, since I’ve always been a bit skeptical of some Orthodox accounts of the religious significance of the “Norman Invasion” of 1066: that this event marks some sort of transition from something called “Orthodox England” to something called “Roman Catholic England” (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, see here, here or here).
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The whole argument that England was Orthodox, and not Roman Catholic, prior to the Norman Invasion sounds very anachronistic to me. It’s an example of forcing categories that weren’t clearly defined at the time onto people who would not recognize our version of those categories. Everyone involved in the battle at Hastings was born before the schism; they were all just Latin catholic Christians.
England has ALWAYS been Latin (until the Reformation, obviously). To say otherwise is absurd and bares no relation what so ever to the facts. The fact that Britain was converted by Roman priests means that, on the contrary, England was on of the most Roman Churches is the Latin world – much more so than, say Germany, which was converted by French, English and Italian priests. Part of the special papal interest in the Norman invasion was the fact that England had a particularly strong connection with the papacy. “Peter’s Pence” was originally the name for the annual gift of gold to the papacy England gave every years since it became a united Kingdom. To be specific “Peter’s Pence” paid for the candles in St Peter’s basilica. Furthermore the penultimate pre-1066 King of England, Cnut, visited the Pope in Rome personally and offered homage to him in person.
Do y’all know Edwin Tait, who posts hin and yon as Contarini? He is quite a character. He’s also a trained Church historian (PhD from Duke), formidably knowledgeable, and quite clever (although dead-wrong about ecclesiology, LOL).
Anyhoo…once, when someone was claiming (at some forum or other) that the early Celts were Eastern Orthodox, Saint Patrick was an Orthodox who allegedly did not recognise papal authority, blah blah blah, Ewin commented: “Sounds like the Orthodox equivalent of the Baptist ‘Trail of Blood’ theory.”
LOL, well put.
“Saint Patrick was an Orthodox who allegedly did not recognise papal authority”
Apparently the Protestants want him too:
http://christiananswers.net/q-eden/patrick.html
:-/
I think too many people on our side of the fence have a knee jerk reaction to all things Western. We see this in silly ways like attempts to claim St. Patrick as somehow Eastern Orthodox. He was Orthodox in the same way the Pope of Rome was at the time. The West was indisputably Orthodox for the first thousand years or so. Whatever else divides us, that part of our common history is generally not very controversial.
Christ is risen!
John