Synod of Whitby
Abbot John has commanded that a history of our Abbey at Whitby be written, to record the work that has been done in this place to the glory of God.
An extract from the annals of the Abbey of St Peter at Whitby, formerly known as the Priory at Streoneshalh. The year of our Lord 664.
It is well known that in the year of our Lord 664, Oswiu, King of Mercia, Bretwalda of Great Britain took it upon himself to call a synod here at Whitby, to make a decision about whether the people under his protection would continue to follow the ways of the Ionan Church or that of Rome. The deliberations of this synod were recorded by Blessed Bede within the lifetime of some of those who had been present. The Ionan church was an offshoot of the Irish Celtic church, which had begun its missionary work among the pagan Saxons in AD563 with the arrival Columba and twelve of his companions on the Island of Iona. The Roman church had been sending missionaries to convert the heathen people of the Angles and Saxons since the arrival of Augustine in AD597.
The reasons behind the synod were these. Oswiu had been brought up in Ireland in the Celtic Christian tradition. After the death of his father he had had to flee with his mother and brothers to Ireland when he was just four years old, and had not returned until his 21st year. He was fluent in Irish Gaelic, and Celtic in his Christian practice. He became King of Mercia following the death of his brother.
Oswiu would probably never have even had to face the decision between the two branches of Christianity had he not married Aenflaed, daughter of Edwin, King of Northumbria and Aethelburgh of Kent. She had been promised as a Christian from birth, and was baptised by Paulinus, a Roman missionary and first Bishop of York. Throughout her life she followed the teachings of the Roman Church.
One might wonder why there was such a problem in the Royal household with the king and Queen believing different things. Well, there was the obvious, that their households at best took to sniping at each other, and at worse got a little enthusiastic and killed or maimed each other, all in the name of religion. More to the point, it directly affected the way the royal household was run. The periods of Advent and Lent were times of abstinence and fasting, broken with great feasting and jollity. However as the two churches, Celtic and Roman, could not agree on the date of Easter in particular, the King would want to start feasting when the Queen was still fasting, or at the beginning of Lent the King would begin his Lenten penances and the Queen would still be living the merry life. It was a situation which after many years of married life became unendurable for the King, so he resolved to do something about it. He summoned all the senior church men and women of Great Britain and Ireland to his court sitting here in Whitby and ordered them to present their arguments to him regarding which of the two churches he and his people should follow.
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