Foundations of the Anglican Church XII

Let’s talk about the rivalry between the Sees of Canterbury and York that I mentioned in the previous post as the contested claims of the two Archbishops will drag the papacy more and more into the internal affairs of the English Church.  

A Celebration of the Holy
Eucharist in York Minster

You may remember from earlier entries that the See of Canterbury was established when Pope Gregory I sent Augustine as a missionary to the peoples of Kent, a southern English kingdom at the request of King Aethelberht in 597.   Gregory was sent as an Archbishop who would not only establish himself at Canterbury, but establish suffragen sees as well.  Augustine did establish suffragen sees at Rochester and London.  The issue of London is a bit tricky because there had been a Christian bishop there back in the days when Britain was a Roman colony.  Whether Augustine revived a lapsed See (which is the more commonly held idea) or simply appointed his disciple Mellitus bishop of a surviving Romano-British See, London became suffragen to Canterbury.  Later other Sees were established such as Dorchester (later moved to Winchester), Selsey (later moved to Chichester), Hereford, Leicester, Lindsey (later Lincoln), Dunwich (later moved to Norwich), Sherborne (later moved to Salisbury), and Worcester.  (These were in the Anglo-Saxon period; a considerable number of other Sees were added later, particularly in the Reforms of HenryVIII and then again in the Victorian era.  Canterbury was the Metropolitan See (an Archbishop’s See with supervisory rights and duties over the suffragens) for the South of England.
Now here is where it gets tricky.  York was a much older See than Canterbury, though it was not an Archbishopric until the eighth century.  Bishops of York were present at the Councils of Arles (314) and Nicea (325).  York is in the north of England where the faith was maintained and strengthened during the Anglo-Saxon invaders by Celtic missionaries from Ireland and Scotland.  Here again there is a dispute.  Did the See of York survive the Anglo-Saxon years or was it revived when Paulinus, a disciple of Augustine of Canterbury, became its bishop in 626?  Paulinus had accompanied Aethelburg, the sister of King Eadbald of Kent, who was sent north to marry King Edwin of Northumbria.  Paulinus was given the mission of converting the Northumbrians to Christianity and he established himself as Bishop at York. Again—there had been a Christian community and bishop in York in Roman days, but by the time of Paulinus and the seventh century, the majority of the population were Anglo-Saxon-Jutes who had migrated from what is today Denmark and northern Germany and were still pagan.  Paulinus had come to convert them.  As Bishop of York he filled an ancient See but there is a dispute as to whether he succeeded to that ancient See or re-founded it.  The question is important because if York had been in continuous existence from Roman days it could claim to be the oldest English See and thus the (arch)bishop could claim to be primate.  If it was refounded, then Canterbury had seniority and better claim to the title of primate of England. 
You may also remember from earlier entries that northern British Christianity differed from Roman and Continental Christianity on many points of ritual and Church calendar.  The melding of the northern and southern English Churches was not an easy task and was only accomplished by the Synod of Whitby in 664.  In fact, while the northern and southern Churches came to agreement on the date of Easter and several other contentious points, there would remain long after Whitby two distinct English Christian traditions, each a little suspicious of the other.  The fact that the northern Churches had their own rites—that of York and of Durham—and the South followed, for the most part, the Sarum rite (with Hereford  and Lincoln maintaining their own rites), one might ask to what extent the English Church ever did meld.  As the northern Church always looked to York for leadership and the southern Church looked to Canterbury, a rivalry grew up between these Sees. York was raised to an Archdiocese in 735 by Pope Gregory III but had only one suffragen See—Durham.  Carlisle would be added to the province in 1133 and Sodor and Man in 1154.  (Again, considerable new dioceses were created for the province of York by Henry VIII and again in the Victorian and early 20^th century periods.)  York was always resentful of Canterbury, a much larger and more influential jurisdiction and when Lanfranc of Canterbury demanded that Thomas of Bayeaux submit to the authority of Canterbury before, he, Lanfranc, would consecrated Thomas as Archbishop of York in 1071, not only did Thomas refuse but the clergy of York demanded that no such submission be made. 
Thomas and the York party claimed that Pope Gregory had given Augustine, the first Archbishop of Canterbury, jurisdiction only over the southern kingdom of Kent and not over the entire British Church.  Moreover, York’s claim to being the older See—going back to Roman times—made it senior to Canterbury and if anyone were to have the honor of primacy it would be York.  There was, in fact, no mention of Canterbury being the primatial see in the letters of Gregory the Great, but William the Conqueror, for political reasons, supported Lanfranc’s claim to primacy.
The issue surfaced again when Lanfranc died and Anselm succeeded him.  Anselm demanded to be installed not simply as Metropolitan of Canterbury but as Primate of England.  Thomas of Bayeaux, Archbishop of York, resisted the claim.  They appealed to the Pope.  This, of course, give the Pope another toehold in the English Church but both Anselm and Thomas were more anxious to keep the King—William II Rufus—out of Church issues than to keep out the Pope.  Pope Pascal granted the primacy to Anselm, but only granted it to him personally and not to his successors at Canterbury. 
The dispute broke out again after the deaths of Thomas and Anselm when Thurstan—elected in 1114 to take Thomas’ place as Archbishop of York, refused to swear obedience to Anselm’s successor Ralph d’Escures.  Thurstan was about to appeal to the Pope when Henry I stepped in and forbad an appeal to Rome.  This was an attempt by the king to check growing papal power in England and makes these issues be resolved within the realm to preserve what shreds of autonomy were left to the English Church.  Henry called a council of English bishops to resolve the matter.  Pascal II, however, seized the initiative and wrote Thurstan commanding Ralph to consecrate him (Thurstan) without any such oath of obedience.  Interestingly, even though the letter supported Thurstan’s claims of independence from Canterbury, Thurstan concealed the letter and instead resigned his claims to the See.  Here Thurstan too seems to have wanted to check growing papal interference in the English Church. 
Although Thurstan had resigned his claims to the See, the King, his fellow bishops, and the chapter of his own Cathedral continued to recognize him as the rightful (though unconsecrated) Archbishop.  Thurstand and Ralph both attended the Council of Reims in 1119 where Pope Callixtus II personally consecrated Thurstan.  Henry saw this as  papal interference in the English Church and was so angry he exiled Thurstan, not permitting him to return to England.  Callixtus, for his part, issued a papal bull, Caritatis Bonum, making it clear that York was not subject to Canterbury.  That did not put an end to the question however.   
When Ralph d’Escures died and was succeded by William of Corbeil, Thurstan should—as ranking English bishop—have consecrated him but William refused to have Thurstan as consecrator unless Thurstan acknowledged William as primate.  (One can only wonder what Jesus would have thought about all this arguing over who is the greatest.  It seems that these were not the first prelates to get into this catfight).  In the end William was consecrated by three of his suffragens as Thurstan was not about to concede any rights or honors to his rival.  William went to Rome with claims to the primacy but in 1126 Pope Honorius II decided that the documents William presented were forgeries and York’s independence was upheld.  More in the next posting.

Foundations of the Anglican Church, VI

St. Hilda of Whitby

The British historian, William Henry Maitland, (1850-1906-) was known for his sharp tongue and ironic sense of humor which provided several famous quips.  My favorite runs something like this: “High-Church historians are anxious to show that the Church of England was Protestant before the Reformation and Catholic afterwards.”  Maitland was correct in his ironic twist, but nevertheless there is some truth to the alleged claims of Maitland’s high-Church historians.  I am going through this Anglican history to show that the English Church indeed had a great measure of autonomy before the Reformation broke its communion with Rome and that even after the Reformation there were serious efforts to preserve much of its Catholic heritage. Right now we are focusing on that first premise and I want to be very clear that the Ecclesia Anglicana—the Anglican Church—was not something “invented” by Henry VIII but had existed within the Roman Communion for centuries yet with sufficient uniqueness and autonomy to be in its own right a “branch” of the Universal Church.  Indeed the very term, Eccclesia Anglicana, The Anglican Church, can be found as far back as the 13^th century, three centuries  before Henry VIII,  but the concept of an autonomous (which implies a measure of independence but not separateness) English Church can certainly be found in Bede and reflects the heritage which Bede chronicles. 
The North British Church which followed the Irish Celtic traditions it inherited from Iona was in full communion with the Roman Church but differed from it in several important matters of ritual and discipline.  The papacy never made any attempts to bring the North British Church—or its Celtic mother-Church—under Roman control, nor did it feel any need to.  (The Irish Church would eventually be Romanized in the twelfth century through the efforts of its primate, Saint Laurence O’Toole, 1128-1180.)  While there were difference in ritual and canon law, there was a unity of faith.  Of course many of the doctrinal issues which today divide Christianity: notably the Real Presence and the Marian dogmas of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption—were then non-issues because they did not yet comprise part of the canon of faith. 
One of the crucial differences between the Roman and Celtic/British Churches that is often overlooked is the different approaches to canonical penance.  In the Roman practice a Christian only submitted to Penance for extremely grave faults, most notably apostasy, murder, and adultery.  The first of these sins was not as rare as one might think.  Many Christians in times of persecution gave way to their fears and performed the ritual offering of incense to an image of the Emperor.  There was quite bitter argument in the early Church over whether this sin could be forgiven at all.  The consensus was yes, once.  Thus in the Roman Church one only received penance once in one’s lifetime and only for extremely grave sins as aforementioned.   Penance was public, it was imposed by the bishop, it lasted over a period of time, and the individual could not receive Holy Communion until it was completed.  Penitents were not even allowed to be present for the Eucharist, but like the catechumens had to leave the assembly after the homily and then devote themselves to prayer and penitential practices while the community proceeded with the Eucharist. 
The Irish had a different practice for penance.  The Irish Church was not organized into dioceses like the Church in the old Roman Empire.  The clan provided the basis for religious organization.  The clergy were all monastics and the leading ecclesiastic of the clan served as the abbot or abbess who did not have the sacramental powers of a bishop but exercise the episcopal jurisdiction over the clan members, religious and lay.  One of the monks would be an ordained bishop and the sacramental responsibilities fell to him, but not the jurisdiction.  And we know in several instances, such as that of Brigid of Kildare, that women sometimes held this jurisdiction.  (Incidentally, it was not rare on the Continent for Abbesses to hold ordinary jurisdiction over local churches either.  More on that in other entries, but as late as the eighteenth century there were over a hundred surviving abbesses nullius.)  To refocus on our topic of penance in the Irish/Celtic Church, monks and nuns would “confess” their faults (not only their sins) to the abbot or to a wise older religious designated by the abbot or abbess to be ones anam cara, or soul friend.  The Irish developed an elaborate system of penitentials, books containing advice and suitable penances for every fault and sin.  Some of these were quite harsh.  Indeed Celtic Christianity tended to be more puritanical and harsh than Mediterranean Christianity.  The sacrament of penance in the form we know it owes more to the Irish practice than the Roman, not in its severity but rather in the practice of more frequent confession and confession of minor (venial) sins, as well as it being a private arrangement between penitent and confessor.  On the other hand, limiting the role of confessor to an ordained person acting in the name of the bishop is a survival of the Roman tradition.  The synod held by King Oswig at Saint Hilda’s Abbey of Whitby in 664 marked the abandonment of Celtic customs for Roman, but at least in terms of the reconciliation of penitents, the Celtic custom won out.     

Wanted: Sound Leadership

Hilda of Whitby,

a match for any

bishop today

I was at a talk several weeks ago by Father John O’Malley SJ, a Georgetown professor who is a historian and who has written extensively about the Second Vatican Council.  Father O’Malley was asked about the role of women in the Church and he pointed out that until recently the Catholic Church has been seen as a champion of the cause of women.  He mentioned—as I always make a point in my classes—that sixty years ago the only women in the United States who were College Presidents or Hospital Administrators were Catholic nuns.  (Even the famous “Seven Sisters” women’s colleges had men presidents!)  Catholic sisters had broken any number of glass ceilings in the professional and academic world.  (Of course, this was an America in which few women worked outside the home.)  One can go further back in history and see the medical work done by Sisters on the battlefields of our Civil War as well as some of the horrible European wars.  Educational opportunities were open to Sisters that were not open to laywomen of any faith.  Catholic women like Mary Ward and her Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary and Angela Merici with the Ursulines, established schools for women in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when education was not available to women.  And of course in the Middle Ages the great Abbeys of nuns such as Barking, Gandersheim, Helfta, or the Paraclete were centers of learning for women that rivaled the great monastic schools of men.  There were remarkable women intellectuals such as Hildegard of Bingen, Roswitha of Gandersheim, Hilda of Whitby, Gertrude of Helfta, Heloise, Gertrude of Hakeborn.  In addition to these scholars there were the great women mystics of the medieval period—Hadewijch of Antwerp, Beatrice of Nazareth, Angela of Foligno, Catherine of Genoa, Julian of Norwich, Marguerite Porete, Catherine of Siena, Brigitte of Sweden and others who wrote books about their spiritual experiences that shaped the lives and spirituality of countless people. 
These women were not people who let others—even priests and bishops—think for them.  There were souls filled with grace and shaped by the faith of the Church but who had the courage and intellect to make up their own minds and be true to their own inner lights—or rather, to be true to the grace of the Holy Spirit within them.  And why do some people think that women—and men—should let the bishops and the priests think for them today? 
What we need are bishops and priests who themselves are intelligent, well-read, clear thinkers and articulate who can explain the principles of our faith in a intellectually convincing way. We don’t need fools like Bishop Daniel Jenky who use intelligence-free rhetoric or Bishop Thomas Olmstead who speaks without researching his subject.  We don’t need a Francis George who is brilliant but so tightly wrapped in his intellect that he inarticulate.  We don’t need a Donald Wuerl who with a second-class academic degree and no professorial experience thinks he can take on a far superior and more practiced intellect such as Elisabeth Johnson.  Hearing someone like Father O’Malley talk, I know there are people in the Church who know their stuff, see the connections between the historic faith of the Church and contemporary life, and can explain the faith at a level when people can make the connections for themselves and make rational and responsible decisions for themselves.  Is it too much to ask that bishops and Church leaders be selected from among the ranks of such men?  The day of a laity who will follow directions of a hierarchy and clergy are over.  People today need to be convinced and we need leaders in the Church who can make their case and not merely expect to impose their will. 

When Women Ruled the Churches

Ruins of Whitby Abbey

Yesterday I mentioned Matilda, the Abbess of Quedlinburg, and the immense ecclesiastical power she wielded.  It was not unusual in the Middle Ages for women to exercise such authority even though they were technically not in Holy Orders.  In the future, and perhaps in the near future, I do want to look at the issue of women’s ordination from a historical perspective.  It is not as black and white as some would have you believe—either as to the point that the Church has never had women priests and bishops, or the position that some have taken that in the early centuries the Church did in fact ordain women as priests and bishops.  But we will save that conversation for a series of entries of its own.  Let me for now just bring up the story of Saint Bridget of Kildare as her situation is pertinent to today’s topic of jurisdiction.  There is an ancient tradition that when Saint Mel was bestowing the canonical blessing upon Bridget as Abbess, he actually (but mistakenly) ordained her a bishop.  The rites of episcopal ordination and abbatial blessing are very similar.  Of course the key word here is mistakenly.  What is significant for us today is not whether or not she was a bishop, but what her powers as an abbess actually were.

The Irish Church before the twelfth century was very different than the other Churches of Christendom.  Irish society was very different.  It was clan based.  There were no cities or towns.  The various “kingdoms” of Ireland were ruled by clan chieftains or petty kings who were more or less subject (the Irish have never been good on authority) to the four regional kings of Ulster, Connaught, Munster, and Leinster who, in turn, owed allegiance to the High King.  The religious authority in each region was exercised not by a bishop, but by the abbot of the clan monastery—the monastery to which the monks of that clan belonged.  The Abbot was not necessarily a priest; sometimes the king himself was the abbot, or the abbot was also king.  Several of the monks would be priests and one would be a bishop but he had no authority (that being exercised by the abbot) and his role was to perform the various ministries reserved to bishops, notably ordination.  In the case of Bridget of Kildare, she was the abbot of her clan monastery and exercised the jurisdiction over her clan which was centered in Osraige (Ossory) which includes much of modern County Kilkenny and parts of  County Laois.  Bridget’s power, probably due to her family connections, was immense and her influence even more widespread.   Though she lacked ordination (despite the legend about Saint Mel there is no evidence that the mistaken ceremonial was taken to actually confer the episcopacy and its ministries upon her) she was the most important prelate in Ireland.

A similar Abbess of influence was Hilda of Whitby.  Converted in her youth along with the rest of the court of her uncle, King Edwin of Northumbria, Hilda was consecrated as a nun by Saint Aidan of Lindisfarne.   Aidan named her abbess of Hartelpoole and she then went on in 657 to establish a new monastery at Whitby.  B0th monasteries followed the Celtic monastic pattern of double communities of monks and nuns who lived in separate enclosures but worshipped together in a common church.  Hilda’s authority as abbess extended over the monks as well as the nuns.  In 664 Hilda hosted a synod at her abbey in which the English Church agreed to give up many of its Celtic traditions and conform to Roman practices, healing the division between the older English Church in the North of England and the newer Roman-planted Catholic Church spreading out of Canterbury.  This will be an interesting topic to return to when we talk about the Ecclesia Anglicana and non-Roman Catholicism and the question: Was there an Anglican Church  before England was ever Catholic?  Did King Henry VIII start a new Church or did he revive the ancient Church of England?  Sister never knew just how complicated the history of the Church is and Father was sworn to secrecy.  Fun, fun, fun.  But for today just note that women were not always without power in the Church.