Celtic-Gnostic-Christianity

The date and circumstances of Christianity's origin in England are unknown. According to the legend of St. Joseph of Arimathea's missionary journey to Glastonbury, it was shortly after the Crucifixion. Bran the Blessed is credited by the Welsh with bringing Christianity to the British Isles in the first century, and there is a record of King Lucius's receiving missionaries from Rome in 167.

Although the Romans persecuted the early Church and made St. Alban the first English martyr at the end of the third century, their soldiers and officials in Britain were susceptible to the new religion and no doubt helped to spread it among the natives. Yet it was recorded by Tertullian in about 200 that there were Christian colonies in parts of Britain which the Romans never reached. Many other old writers remark on the early beginnings of Christianity in Britain, implying that it was never imposed on the Celtic culture but developed naturally from the existing religion as a reformation of Druidism.

The original institution of British Christianity was the Celtic Church. Its history, rituals, and above all its spirit were essentially different from those of the Roman Church. Its saints, as the early priests and holy men were called, were heirs to the Druid tradition, often literally so, in that many of them were children of Druids or former Druid priests themselves. Like the nonconformists of modern times, they rejected the formalism of the established religion and re turned to the source of religious spirit in the wild places of the countryside. The doctrines of Christianity were not unfamiliar to them, for the Druids recognised the mystical Trinity, and the image of Divinity sacrificed on a cross or tree was significant in their own theology. Thus the Celtic Druids readily adopted Christianity in its original, gnostic form. Their Celtic Church was that of St. John the Divine, visionary and spiritual, rather than that of St. Peter in Rome. In many ways the Celtic Church perpetuated the customs of the Druid religion from which it sprang. The Celtic monks adopted the Druid tonsure, shaving their heads across the crown from ear to ear and leaving it long behind. That was the tonsure of St. John rather than that of St. Peter, where the head is shaved on the crown. The Celts celebrated Easter on a day calculated by the Jewish lunar calendar, also used by the eastern churches, while the Roman calendar, as amended by a succession of popes, produced a different Easter Day.

As successors to the Druids, the Celtic bishops and priests were appointed by their own tribes and ministered to their own tribal districts. Their monasteries replaced the Druid colleges, which had been suppressed by the Romans, as centres of learning. In them were preserved the native traditions of philosophy, craftsmanship, and bardic lore. The wisdom and scholarship of the ancient world survived in the Celtic monasteries during the Dark Ages, when missionaries from Britain and Ireland spread the light of Christianised culture throughout Europe.

The Celtic Church was distinguished by its close relationship to nature, its belief in immortality and individual free will, its married priests and women saints, and its tolerance. These were also features of Druidism. Religious fanaticism was alien to the Celtic spirit. For several centuries Christians and pagans lived side by side, warring among themselves for traditional tribal reasons rather than for ideology. One of the last of the old-fashioned pagan kings, Penda of Mercia in the seventh century, fought his rivals, pagan and Christian alike, without rancour, and said that he had nothing against Christians except bad ones. Pagan kings married Christian princesses and allowed them to practice their own religion, and the Christians refrained from aggressive proselytising. One complaint the Roman Church brought against the Celts was that they were not active enough in the missionary field.

When the Roman legions withdrew from Britain at the end of the fourth century, leaving cities, temples, and great country houses to fall into ruin, the only cultural institution remaining in these islands was the Celtic Church. Native and classical learning was upheld in its monasteries, which were the sole providers of higher education. Pagan nobles sent their children to them, and thus Christianity began to prevail in the ruling families. Pagan customs were long maintained throughout the countryside, but among educated people paganism was regarded as outmoded and provincial. Christianity had become the religion of modern international culture.

THE END OF THE CELTIC CHURCH
The Church of Rome was long jealous of Celtic independence and disapproved of the pagan customs and doctrines that the Celtic Church had adopted. When St. Augustine was sent to England by the pope in 597, his mission was both to convert the pagan kingdoms of the Anglo-Saxons and to bring the native church under Roman discipline. The Celtic bishops refused to oblige him, but Roman influence nevertheless began to prevail. Rome was the world centre of power and scholarship and was thus naturally attractive to ambitious clerics. Rome's constant appeal was for worldwide Christian unity, by which it meant total subservience to Rome. Some of the Celtic clergy thought the price was worth paying, while others were firm in preserving the traditional rites of their church.

The two sides met in 664 at a synod or church council in Whitby, a town on the east coast of Yorkshire with a Celtic abbey founded by St. Hilda. The immediate point at issue was the date of Easter and whether it should properly be calculated by the Celtic or the Roman method. Attached to this was the whole question of whether the Celts should keep their independent rites or whether they should reject them in favour of Rome's.

At the Synod of Whitby, Bishop Colman of Lindisfarne spoke for the Celtic Church. Being Irish, he was not fluent in the Saxon English language of the debate. Opposing him was Bishop Wilfrid, a man of formidable intellect and ambition with powerful connections in Rome. His patron, King Oswy of Northumbria, presided over the debate. He may not have understood the subtle arguments which both sides produced, for he settled the issue on one simple point. Colman claimed the apostolic descent of his church from St. John. Wilfrid asserted the seniority of the Roman Church's founder, St. Peter. King Oswy knew of St. Peter as the keeper of the gates to heaven and said that he would not dare to offend him for fear of being refused admittance. He therefore awarded victory to the Roman party.

Bishop Colman resigned his see at Lindisfarne and retired with a few followers to the old Celtic monastery at Iona. Even there the Roman influence was soon apparent, and the Celtic diehards found their last refuge on an island off the Irish coast.

The absorption of the Celtic Church by the Roman caused pain and resentment but no bloodshed. The Celtic virtue of tolerance was displayed by many priests of the old church who accepted with good grace the new order and worked peacefully to implement it. One example was St. Cuthbert, who obeyed the Synod by converting to Rome and was then sent as prior to Lindisfarne, where he tactfully persuaded the monks to abandon their Celtic practices. Compromises were allowed and local customs were often respected, with the result that the Roman Church in Britain became subject to Celtic influence. That influence can be seen most clearly today in Ireland, where feast days and pilgrimages from Celtic and pagan times are patronised by the Church.

In England the traditions of Celtic Christianity were inherited by the Saxons whom the Celtic saints converted. Their churches were built on the old sanctuaries, and their sacred art followed Celtic models. The Celtic spirits survived the Norman invasion. Medieval kings boasted of their Celtic lineage from King Arthur, and Celtic ideals were revived in the age of chivalry. In churches and cathedrals the medieval craftsmen carved symbolic figures that had nothing to do with Roman Christianity but reflected the Celtic love of nature and humanity. Mystics in all ages have been inspired by the memory of Celtic Christianity.

CONTINUITY AND REFORMATION
Stability and change are the two opposing principles in nature that lie behind the world of appearances. In English religious history they are represented by the two themes which govern its entire course: continuity and reformation.

Continuity is demonstrated by the ancient, enduring sanctity of many of the great religious centres. It is illustrated, for example, by the prehistoric holy wells which are found beneath such cathedrals as York, Winchester, Carlisle, and Ely and at innumerable parish churches.
Reformation plays a necessary part in religious history because spiritual powers can never adequately be confined, codified, or institutionalised. All man-made systems are imperfect and doomed sooner or later to fail. The more powerful and elaborate they become, the nearer they are to collapse. Religion expresses the communion between the human spirit and the divine spirit in nature. That communion can be achieved through various forms of magical or religious techniques, by invocation in appropriately designed temples, or through sacred architecture, chants, music, incense, and images in dimly lit cathedrals. These methods are of course artificial, and the more ritualised they become, the more they diverge from the simple, natural processes of spiritual communion. When a religious system becomes too formal and oppressive, religious people abandon it and return to the natural sources of spirit in the wild places of the countryside.

There they build shrines and oratories, thus beginning a new cycle of religious development.
Sacred places are not fixed and permanent. Formerly great shrines are abandoned and desecrated; others spring up with the cult of a saint or a memorable person and fade away with it. Then there are places such as Stonehenge, which retain their reputation for sanctity but, through losing their local populations, or for some other reason, fall aside from the mainstream of religious continuity. Yet many of the sites described in this book have been religious centres since before the dawn of history, and they illustrate the themes of continuity and reformation.