This essay on the history of the Synod of Whitby is written by Tony Marshall Griffiths. Tony is a wise and compassionate presence in our online community as well as a dear personal friend. A little while back we had a conversation about historical and contemporary expressions of Celtic Christianity with Kenneth McIntosh. You can watch that video HERE. You can find more of Tony’s work on his website The Enchanted Silence HERE.
The story of the Synod of Whitby starts with the war fought by the Houses of Ida and of Yffi for the throne of Northumbria. At the start of the year 616, Aethelfrith of the House of Ida ruled Northumbria and a large part of northern Britain with his queen Acha of Deira, born from the House of Yffi. Later that year however, Aethelfrith died on the banks of the River Idle in the English Midlands, where he was defeated in battle by an army led by King Raedwald of East Anglia, and the queen’s younger brother Edwin Yffing.
Edwin became ruler over Northumbria in place of Aethelfrith, and the queen, fearing for the lives of her children, fled to the gaelic kingdom of Dal Riata on the western coast of Scotland. During this exile, the sons of Aethelfrith and Acha were sent for their education to the monastery founded by Colmcille (Saint Columba) on Iona, where they would have been taught a broad curriculum that included not just scripture and theology but also in all likelihood the seven liberal arts of classical learning – grammar, logic and rhetoric, arithmetic, music, geometry and astronomy.
In the fullness of time, Edwin was killed and Northumbria was plunged into chaos by a raiding war band led by King Penda of Mercia and King Cadwallon of Gwynedd. Seeing his chance, the young prince Oswald Iding, eldest son of Aethelfrith and Acha, led an army out of the North to reclaim his father’s kingdom. He tracked down Cadwallon in the shadow of Hadrian’s Wall, and pitched camp to prepare for battle.
As he slept that night, Oswald according to Adomnan’s Life of Saint Columba was visited in a vision by Colmcille, the founder and patron of his home in exile on Iona. In the vision, the saint’s “appearance shone with heavenly beauty, and he seemed so tall that his head touched the clouds and, as he stood in the middle of the camp, he covered it all except one far corner with his shining robe.” Echoing the words of Yahweh to Joshua son of Nun, Colmcille urged Oswald to “Be strong and act manfully”, and promised to be with him in the battle. Oswald shared this vision with his war council the next morning, and the nobles all decided to accept baptism once the battle was done. A wooden cross was erected in the camp for Oswald’s prayers before the battle.
Oswald routed the Welsh and southern raiders and was true to his word. Once crowned he sent to his previous host, abbot Ségéne of Iona, and asked for the monks of Iona to bring their faith to Northumbria. The request was answered, although Corman, the first bishop sent from Iona, was unsuccessful in his preaching and returned home complaining that the anglo-saxon Northumbrians were an “uncivilised people of obstinate and barbarous temperament.” Aidan was sent instead and established the monastery at Lindisfarne as a daughter house of Iona. The new community eventually flourished under his guidance, and Aidan as well as baptising the nobility toured the hinterland preaching the gospel to the villages, establishing the church amongst the anglo-saxons of Northumbria.
After taking the throne in AD 633, Oswald himself would only rule for seven or eight years. Having claimed his throne by force, he died in battle before the age of forty, once more battling the Mercian king Penda. His brother Oswiu was in some ways a much more successful king, succeeding Oswald and ruling over decades of relative peace and prosperity in Northumbria.
This finally brings the story to the Synod of Whitby. Oswiu’s queen was Eanflæd, raised in the court of the Kingdom of Kent in the continental Christian tradition of her Frankish grandmother Bertha. Because of this, there was a presence in Oswiu’s court at Bamburgh of both the Columban clergy from Lindisfarne and also the Kentish priest Romanus who had come North at the invitation of the queen. This in turn highlighted the fact that the Irish church had retained a more traditional method of setting the date of Easter, whilst the English clergy who looked to Canterbury used a more recent method for calculating Easter based on the 19-year Metonic cycle.
This may sound like a technicality but the king could hardly ignore the fact that “Easter was kept twice in one year, so that when the king had ended Lent and was celebrating Easter, [Eanflæd] and her attendants were still fasting and keeping Palm Sunday.”
The different parties were able to live with their differences in the early days, as Aidan, the champion of the Irish practices, was so widely beloved. After Aidan passed away however and was succeeded by Finan and then Colman, things steadily became more acrimonious.
To resolve the disputes a council was called, hosted by the Abbess Hild at her monastery of Streanaeshalch and chaired by the king, in AD 664. Straenaeshalch is said by Bede to be a translation of “the Bay of the Beacon” and unbroken tradition has identified the place with the modern day town of Whitby, so that the gathering is now better known as the Synod of Whitby.
The council was attended by Colman and his clergy from Lindisfarne on the one hand and “Bishop Agilbert with the priests Agatho and Wilfrid” on the other. “[The deacon] James and [the priest] Romanus supported the latter while Abbess Hild and her community, together with the venerable bishop Cedd, supported the [Irish].” It was Cedd who acted as a translator between the two parties.
According to Bede’s account, the king opened the debate by declaring that “it behooves those who serve one God to observe the same rule of life; and as we all hope for one kingdom in heaven, so we may not differ in the celebration of the divine sacraments.”
Colman spoke for the Columban side and argued that his church was simply following the unchanged tradition that had been handed down to them and that “it is recorded that they owe their origin to [John, the beloved disciple], and all the churches over which he presided. “
Wilfrid replied that the Irish were alone in their practice; “the only people stupid enough to disagree with the whole world are these [Irish] and their adherents the Picts and the Britons, who inhabit only a portion of these two islands in the remote ocean.” The argument over the dating of Easter goes on for several pages in Bede, taking in various authorities and technicalities of the calculation until Wilfrid doubles down on his original position. “You certainly sin if, having heard the decrees of the Apostolic See and of the universal church, and that the same is confirmed by Holy Writ, you refuse to follow them. For though your fathers were holy, do you think that a few men, in a corner of the remotest island, are to be preferred before the universal church of Christ throughout the world?”
Wilfrid eventually closed by reminding the synod that it was Saint Peter, the first bishop of Rome, to whom the keys to the kingdom of Heaven had been trusted. When Colman confirmed that similar authority had not been granted to Colmcille, the king declared his decision. “Peter is the guardian of the gates of Heaven and I shall not contradict him. I shall obey his commands in everything to the best of my knowledge and ability; otherwise, when I come to the gates of heaven, he who holds the keys may not be willing to open them.”
Many of the monks of Lindisfarne struggled to accept this ruling. Bishop Colman “seeing his teachings rejected and his following discounted, took away with him all who still dissented from the Catholic Easter and tonsure […] and returned to Ireland to consult his compatriots on their future course of action.” The leadership of the Northumbrian church was taken up by men (and women) of Anglo-Saxon descent, even if many were trained in the early days by the mission from Iona, and the Northumbrian church was soon after absorbed by the newly founded Archbishopric of York.
Some contemporary writers like to present the Synod of Whitby as a clash between authoritarian “Roman” christianity and an independent “Celtic” christianity. However the clear assumption underlying the Venerable Bede’s account, which is the only substantial one we have of the meeting, is that the two parties despite their differences met as participants in a shared faith to debate the correct way to practice that faith.
Importantly, the Northumbrian church is never called heretical – there is no suggestion that the southern contingent had any concern about the doctrinal beliefs of Colman’s monks. The disputes that gave rise to the synod are without exception described as differences of practice, with the focus on the dating of Easter and the appropriate style of the monastic tonsure, although unidentified “other matters” were also discussed.
The synod was a very local affair, concerned solely with how Christianity would be practiced in the kingdom of Northumbria. The gathering was convened and chaired by King Oswiu who was also the final decision maker. He was a shrewd and successful man who ruled for three decades and died peacfully at a time of great turblence. His decision was essentially a pragmatic one geared towards the stability of his own kingdom and strategic relationships with the other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, with the added bonus of resolving the division in his own household.
Whitby itself wasn’t the beginning or end of the debates about the Irish practices. The mother church on Iona, and much of the rest of the Columban familia throughout Dal Riata and Ireland, retained their older practices for a few decades more until the English monk Egbert arrived in Iona around the year AD716 and was able to persuade the abbot Dúnchad to accept the continental ways.
Bede’s account transcends a simple binary of “roman” against “celtic” and he is unable to hide his admiration for the Irish monks, despite his clear approval for the continental practices. He repeatedly emphasises the error of the Irish ways, but at the same time laments how the church has now fallen away from the spirituality of previous days. He admire’s Aidan’s saintliness and despite his sympathies, makes Wilfrid seem terribly condescending in his speeches to the synod. Colman, who was unable to personally accept the decision of the synod, is still noted approvingly for his frugal and austere rule of life and for his “singular good sense”. Cuthbert, who would soon after take on the leadership of the Northumbrian church was remembered for his personal example and sanctity without any innuendo about the Columban tradition in which he was trained.
These figures were inspiring spiritual giants whose ascetic lifestyles and devout spirituality Bede profoundly admired. Incredibly, we are still talking about them nearly fourteen hundred years later. Whatever may have been lost through the decision at Whitby, it’s a huge gift that we still have their memory to challenge and inspire us in the twenty first century. May we be given the grace to accept the invitation that their lives still bring to us.
The quotations in the article are taken from “A History of the English Church and People” by Bede, often known as “Ecclesiastical History of the English People” translated by Lou Sherley-Price, Penguin Books 1955 – with the exception of Oswald’s vision of Colmcille on the eve of battle which appears in “Life of St Columba” by Adomnán, translated by Richard Sharpe, Penguin Books 1995. The historical narrative is taken mostly from “The King in the North” by Max Adams, Head of Zeus 2013.
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