Synod of Whitby - Legacy and Historical Significance

Legacy and Historical Significance

If the focus regarding the Synod of Whitby is on the specific decisions made, then it was simply one of many councils held concerning the proper calculation of Easter throughout Latin Christendom in the Early Middle Ages. It addressed the issue of Easter calculation and the proper monastic tonsure, and concerned only the part of the English Church that answered to the See of Lindisfarne – that is, it was a Northumbrian affair. Wilfrid’s advocation of the Roman Easter has been called, “a triumphant push against an open door”, since most of the Irish had already accepted the Roman Easter and for this reason Iona “was already in danger of being pushed to one side by its Irish rivals”.

If the focus on Whitby is on the eventual consequences, then we might see the effects as more than just decisions on tonsure and dating of Easter, and instead see it as an important step in the eventual Romanisation of the church in England. This Romanisation might have occurred anyway without the Synod of Whitby. Nonetheless, following the Protestant Reformation, the events of the synod have been symbolically interpreted as a “Celtic Church” opposing a “Roman Church”, and the decision of Oswiu was thus interpreted as the “subjugation” of the “British Church” to Rome. There is a debate regarding the reality of a pre-Whitby "Celtic" Church versus a post-Whitby "Roman" Church. (Until fairly recently, the Scottish Divinity Faculty course on Church History ran from the Acts of the Apostles to 664 before resuming in 1560.) In the words of Patrick Wormald:

“From the days of George Buchanan, supplying the initial propaganda for the makers of the Scottish Kirk, until a startlingly recent date, there was warrant for an anti-Roman, anti-episcopal and, in the nineteenth century, anti-establishment stance in the Columban or ‘Celtic’ Church…. The idea that there was a ‘Celtic Church’ in something of a post-Reformation sense is still maddeningly ineradicable from the minds of students.”

Whatever might be the facts, to supporters, the symbology of a Celtic Church has importance post-Reformation.

In placing the synod in its proper historical context, Anglo-Saxon historians have also noted the position of the synod in the context of contemporary political tensions. Henry Mayr-Harting considered Alchfrith’s interest in the convocation of the synod to be derived from his desire to see his father’s position in Bernicia challenged and to see the replacement of Colmán with another bishop who would be more aligned with himself.